Turkish Letters #12 part 3 -- Bodrum and getting there (John)

We are basking in the sun on a café terrace at the beachside in Bodrum. A perfectly clear, ludicrously blue, sky arcs overhead and drops to the horizon like a sheet of paper with its edge torn to reveal the silhouettes of islands. A gentle breeze expends just enough energy to keep the Turkish flag above the nearby fortress flapping. The surf is so small and lazy it could be mistaken for the wake of the passing sailboat that tootles by aimlessly cutting figure eights back and forth.

Bodrum is a resort town with a population of 32,000 that explodes to, at least, five times that in the summer season. It is the peak-season playground of the English and other Europeans. Despite the horror that prospect holds it is quite delightful in the off-season. The town council wisely insisted that all development be within keeping of the original town’s character. Thus it has escaped the high-rise hell that has scarred so many of its sister resorts. All the buildings are low-rise, the tallest things in town being the masts in the marina, and whitewashed to an eye-scathing intensity. The street plan is based on a piece of crumpled wire, and gardens and mini-orchards dot the town.

The harbour is presided over by a very impressive crusader fortress built by the Knights of St John. Its strategic value escapes me. Obviously they built it as a great place to kick back and relax after the Muslim killing season. The town also claims several other sites of historic interest but most have been so severely trashed as to be of little interest at all – historic or otherwise. The Mausoleum, fifth or sixth wonder of the world, is little more than a pit with some fragments of columns. The Temple of Mars isn’t even a pit. We saw a much more impressive ruin jutting up out of an olive grove on the way into Milas, a town that is so ugly it’s frightening. The UN should declare it a World Demolition site.

In the centre of town is an Ataturk sculpture. The great men stands looking aghast at the fact that the locals have made him out of rough-cast concrete. Which all leads me to how we got to Bodrum in the first place. On our return from London we decided to visit one or two of the more distant parts of Turkey. One was Edirne on the Greek border. Two was Antakya on the Syrian border. We were going to approach Antakya along the south coast via Ephesus. However, sub-Arctic conditions put the kybosh on that plan so we fled the blizzard and headed south.

But first a bit about Edirne. >>