Sizzling Bodrum

Old Bodrum Town has hit the season running. In the heat of the day people slowly amble along the promenade, gorge on gossip in the cafés, browse and graze in the posh shops or relax under cooling shade of a tall palm tree. By night the prom sizzles to the heavy beat of Turkopop and a madding crowd of the weird, the wonderful and the well-to-do. This is my rapid round up of what’s hot and what’s not along Bodrum’s celebrated promenade.

Is there anywhere the world without a Starbucks?

The Yacht Club - A cool place with cool music

Tango - So so steaks, stratospheric wine prices, arrogant waiters

Marina Vista - A pretty hotel in a great location. Pity about the surly service

Sungar Pizza - A Bodrum stalwark. Great food. Try and get a table on the roof terrace

Marks and Spencer - The older Turkish yachting fraternity just love their Blue Harbour range

Hong Kong Restaurant - Cross the street to avoid the relentless hassle from the annoying waiters

Musto's - Great food, great host, reasonable wine prices

Rest you bones in the heat under the trees

Play and pray

Fink - You'll need a second mortgage to drink here

Helva - I spy a lady of the night

Kahve Dunyasi - The best coffee in town and a chocolate spoon with every cup

 

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The Turkish Election Result

The results of the Turkish jury are in and the outcome is as widely predicted. The incumbent AKP government won by a landslide with an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats (though not votes) that British political parties can only fantasise about. However, the AK Party failed to achieve the two thirds majority in Parliament required to change the Turkish Constitution without the need to hold a referendum. Crucially, they are also about four seats short of the number required to be able to devise amendments without parliamentary consultation. Expect some lively debates. What is also interesting is the polarised distribution of seats across the country with the main opposition CH Party dominating the Aegean coastal provinces and European Turkey outside Istanbul. Apart from the Kurdish regions, the rest of the country is bathed in yellow (the AKP colour). It begs the question is Turkey the crossroads of east and west or the fault line?

It’s a clear victory for the AKP and a mandate for change. The Government is now in a commanding position to do whatever it wants. The failure to win the required threshold of seats will only delay their ambitions. Liam is currently investigating how to build and maintain a still for the distillation of potcheen and scrumpy, and looking up the cost of renting in Spain. Only kidding, obviously.

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Alice's Bucket List

It takes a lot to make this cynical old queen cry. Okay, I confess. It doesn’t. I cry at sentimental films cleverly contrived to elicit an instant emotional response. I cry when Karen (Emma Thompson) realises that her husband Harry (Alan Rickman) is having an affair in Love Actually. I weep when Mary (Joan Plowright) and Arabella (Judi Dench) wave farewell to Luca (Baird Wallace) in Tea with Mussolini. I am inconsolable when Ste (Scott Neal) and Jamie (Glen Berry) run through the forest to the soundtrack of Make Your Own Kind of Music by the Mamas and Papas in Beautiful Thing. It’s an acting thing and it gets me every time.

Alice Pyne is not acting. Alice has cancer and she has a blog. She writes:

‘Hi, I'm 15 years old and live with my parents and sister in Ulverston. I've been fighting cancer for almost 4 years and now I know that the cancer is gaining on me and it doesn't look like I'm going to win this one :( I'm hoping to write in here as much as I can and I'm also going to show my bucket list which I'm trying to get done before I have to go. Hopefully, I'll update as I tick each one off the list :)’ Alice's Bucket List


I began to read Alice’s wish list out loud to my partner Liam. I had to stop half way through. It was all too much. Her courage astounds and humbles me. It should humble us all. Alice has restored my faith in humanity. Thank you Alice.

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Be Careful What You Wish For

Election fever has gripped the nation ahead of the national vote on June 12th. Democracy is a serious and sometimes deadly business in Turkey judging by the recent bomb attack in Istanbul. Thankfully, no-one was killed this time.

The view from our balcony provides a visual treat of meandering misplaced tourists, lunatic drivers in a rush and colourful electioneering travelling vans blazoned with party political slogans crowned with giant loudspeakers. We’re serenaded by an ear-piercing mix of Turkopop and Soviet-era patriotic marching tunes. It’s all very jolly.

The current government incumbents, the AK Party is flying high in the polls and victory seems assured. It’s the margin of success that interests me. A strong opposition is essential for a healthy democracy anywhere but the Opposition here appears fractured and ineffective. The AK Party may secure a sufficient majority in Parliament to revise the Turkish Constitution without recourse to a referendum.  If Turkey continues to slip towards religious conservatism, we may reconsider our place in the sun.

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Pansies on the Go

Google Blogger has just released a new mobile phone version of the Perking the Pansies Showcase which makes following the Showcase on the go a breeze.

American Idol

A pansy flasher from Los Angeles prompted me to do a bit of digging about and I think I’ve just exceeded my 15,000^th American hit to my main blog Perking the Pansies. I can’t be completely certain as Wordpress doesn’t do geographical stats so I cobbled the figures together from other sources. However, what is clear is that around a fifth of pansy fans now come from across the pond. I’m at a complete loss as to why this is. Perking the Pansies is about expat life in a faraway land written in a peculiarly British camp Carry On style with a side of extra bite. I never imagined my irreverent drivel would appeal to our Yankee cousins who've developed a different brand of humour since independence. I hoped I might capture a few punters in New York and San Francisco but it seems that the pansies have penetrated every single state in the Union. I feel like a minor American Idol.

Talking of the City of Angels, I have many fun memories of my whirlwind tour of southern California way back in 1991. I was rendered speechless by the sheer scale of the larger than life city, fell head over heels for the charm of Laguna Beach, got gloriously drenched at SeaWorld*, screamed like a girl at Disneyland, leered lasciviously at the muscle marys  pumping iron on Venice Beach and laughed out loud at the absurdity of Palm Springs. The final part of my all too brief break saw me tripping the light fantastic in seedy West Hollywood, epicentre of gay life in LA LA Land. I lodged at the San Vincente Inn, a delightful gay hotel back in the day. Alas it now appears the place has degenerated into a cesspit of shameless debauchery.  None of that happened to me, more’s the pity.


*I don't really approve of performing animals these days even when it's done which such care as is the case with SeaWorld.

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To Comment or Not to Comment, That is the Question

I recently followed a heated debate on the Turkish Living Forum in response to an article in the Guardian called Turkey is not a free country. The predicable salvos from unbending minds ensued - I think this, you think that and never the twain shall meet. It’s a futile exercise in grand standing and the usual stuff of forums. I rarely comment on the rhetoric. I moved to Turkey to keep control of my blood pressure, not to see it go into orbit. However, one particularly rigid point of view really got me thinking. One of the combatants declared with absolute righteousness that foreigners who live in Turkey do not have the right to criticise their foster land. Is this right, I wondered? The more I thought about it the less clear-cut my own view became.

To some extent I found myself in agreement with his statement. Whinging is a peculiarly British national pastime. It must be frustrating and irritating for Turks to endure the endless whining of the bar room bores. After all, if you choose to live in a different country you need to accept that it’s different. We Brits are the first to complain when immigrants to the UK refuse to learn the language or make no attempt to integrate. Sound familiar? It should do. This is the everyday practice of many expats in Turkey (or Spain or Portugal or any other destination of choice for north Europeans wishing to live out their dotage in the sun). Too few venture out of their whitewashed ghettos to sample the real Turkish delight. Frankly, I’m surprised that our hosts are as tolerant as they are.

There is another side to the argument of course. Turkey has actively encouraged foreigners to invest and settle here. With this comes a responsibility to give non-nationals a voice about the issues that matter most to them. It won’t wash to say ‘thanks awfully for the cash but put up and shut up.’ We are supposed to be living in a democracy. All the money Liam and I spend goes into the local economy. As consumers of goods and services we have the right to complain when they’re not up to scratch. Who pays the piper calls the tune I say. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. We do the right thing and pay our dues to the Government to be bone fide residents (no regular visa and bacon runs to Kos for us). We have tax numbers and our income from our capital is taxed at source, all adding to State coffers. Given the size of the black economy this can’t always be said of Turks. We cannot vote, of course, but does this mean that we can’t hold a view on the political process? After all, what the Government does affects us too.

I think we need a more balanced approach. It’s immature and insecure to state that foreigners cannot express a contrary opinion, even a mildly critical one, but we foreigners have a responsibility to ensure that what we say is reasonable and culturally sensitive. After all, we can always get out of the kitchen if we can’t stand the heat. There are taboo subjects best avoided by everyone of course, Turks and foreign residents alike. Now that’s another story.


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Just Shout Loudly in English

'"Avustralyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına' is a Turkish term pronounced as a single word and an extreme example of agglutination, the process of adding affixes to the base of a word. This word is translated into English as 'as if you were one of those whom we could not make resemble the Australian people.' Crikey. Turkish is stuffed with tortuously lengthy agglutinations and therein lies my knotty problem.

Turkic Language Distribution

Though rhythmic and poetic on the ear, Turkish is not an easy language for Europeans to assimilate as it is thought to belong to the Altaic language family and is distantly related to Mongolian, Korean and other inscrutable Asiatic tongues. Despite Atatürk’s valiant 1928 adoption of the Latin alphabet and the fact that the language is phonetic and mostly regular, the word order, agglutinations and the absence of familiar sounds all conspire to make learning Turkish a very daunting prospect. At least that’s my excuse. Liam is trying. I am just hopeless.

Although our hosts are remarkably tolerant of the average Brit's lazy attempts to nail a foreign tongue, I’m a zealous believer that a little learning goes a long way. Taking the trouble to remember a few choice words and phrases can make a world of difference. One rainy afternoon, we were buying DIY essentials in Koçtaş. A yellow-haired, haughty emigrey ignorati strutted into the store and bellowed imperiously at a random selection of bewildered staff 'Excuse me, I am English! I need help! Do you speak English? Yes, you there. Do you speak English?' It made me cringe with acute embarrassment and I peered apologetically at the pretty till girl. Despite my lacklustre language skills, I will never become one those all too common high-handed, po-faced little Englanders.

So what’s the Turkish for 'as if you were one of those whom we could not make resemble a drag queen'? Answers on a postcard.

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