A Brief Footnote, or Paradise Lost?

After posting this morning a fairly detailed tribute to the attractions and quiet beauty of Çiralı and enjoying a wonderful breakfast here at Baraka House, we decided to drive in to one of the markets by the bridge in downtown (so to speak) Çiralı.  The road is not wide anywhere along the seashore and you always check carefully before pulling out because there could be cyclists or pedestrians or cars or small trucks.  So I did check, and something was clearly coming.  The first thing that crossed my mind was that a Boy Scout group was parading through.  It was the berets, the khaki shirts, and the red neckerchiefs that did it, but then I realized these were men, not boys, and something else was going on; they were, in fact, jandarma, serious people you don't mess with here.

We sat in the car, waiting for a break in the parade, and wondered.  We wondered even more when a small squad in riot gear went by, their clear plexi shields at the ready.  What was this?  Some big jandarma paddy wagons were next, followed by a couple of TV cameramen, many people walking, then two big flatbed floats with large excavators on board, and then more jandarma.  This was not cennet gibi; this was the big mean world of confrontation between people and state marching into Çiralı.

Finally the road cleared, and we asked a young German woman who had been walking and taking pictures what was going on.  She told us that the local citizens had blockaded the bridge this morning in protest against a planned government move to tear down some houses and maybe some trees.  She said that her boss, who owned the pansiyon where she worked, had been arrested at the protest and thrown into a vehicle with many other local citizens.

We asked at the shop and learned only that there had been a protest, that it was a buyuk problem (a big one), and that it seemed to have been caused by buyuk para (big money).  We drove around the back road to try to find out and saw the two empty float trailers down by the football area but no sign of the excavators.  Coming back along the sahil yolu, we came to crowds of people and cars with jandarma lining both sides of the road outside Fehim Pansiyon, the first place we ever stayed here in Çiralı.

Later Ihsan told us that there was a problem with some people's deeds to their properties and that some of it had to do with orman (forest) being improperly used (olive and citrus groves, pansiyons, etc.).  It seemed clear that there may be a push going on to change the character of Çiralı by pushing small operations out and letting big hotels in, and clear that many people were very unhappy.  We learned later that some or all of Fehim Pansiyon was torn down, even though there were guests staying there, and that Peace and a couple of others were gone or going.


There is much concern and puzzlement here and many conflicting stories, including that many businesses had no deeds to the property they were on and that the government had offered the land to them.  Who knows?  There are two newspaper stories here and here (for Turkish readers, who probably know much more about this than I do) and a typically poor Google translation here (for non-Turkish readers like me, and you'll have to scroll down a bit to find it).


So we still swam today, still walked way down to Olimpos and had a picnic supper there, and still photographed the ancient harbour and ruined walls and doorways from Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, and Ottoman times.  

The whole place is still magical, still beautiful, but also now somehow a little more ephemeral.