The Viking Pirates Take Turkey

You have to feel a little sorry for the hostess at Bistro Floyd, stationed here nightly at the ugly underbelly of international tourism. 

"What language do you speak?" the hostess asks us in English as we stand at the entrance of the Dutch restaurant.

"I’m Swedish," Ola tells her, "but I also speak English, Dutch, some German ..."

"Yes, I speak English, too," I say, chiming in, "but also a little Turkish, some French, not a lot but I can get by ..."

The hostess holds up her hands to stop us.  I think she might next ask for our favorite color, or a description of what we would do if she were an ice cream cone.  But no, apparently we are not on The Dating Game, and she's not looking for a recitation of our Curriculum Vitae.

"I just need to know what menu to give you," she says. "We have Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German and English."

Notably, Turkish is not mentioned as a menu option.
 
"You want English?"

Sure, let’s go with English.  What country are we in again?

*     *     *

Welcome to Alanya, quite possibly the most un-Turkish place in all of Turkey.

Although purporting to be a Turkish city of some 100,000 on the Mediterranean coast, in August at least, Alanya is something else entirely.  Currently this is a city populated almost exclusively by Danes, Swedes, Norwegians and Finns:  mostly tall, blond, blue-eyed and under 25, all with their Scandinavian skin toasting to a rosy red.    

Outside of the shop owners, good luck finding any Turks to talk to in Alanya.  You have a much better chance of sitting at a table next to Bjorn Borg, or one of the original members of A-ha.

Don't get me wrong:  I love Scandinavia.  I just never expected to find it located on the southern coast of Turkey.

*      *     *

I know Ola from a year spent long ago at a university in Brussels, Belgium.  I was there faking my way through a program in "International and Comparative Law," information that ever since has been gathering dust in the back-room filing cabinets of my brain.

Ola and I actually had gone to the Bistro Floyd our second night in Alanya with the twisted, nostalgic hope that a Dutch restaurant on the coast of Turkey might possibly be serving Belgian beer. 

They were, in fact.  Let's all drink to the Free Movement of Goods and Alcohol.

Ola now lives back in his home country of Sweden, in the southern town of Malmö. In recent years he’s become quite the scuba diver, periodically posting envy-inducing underwater photos on Facebook from places like Malta and the Egyptian Red Sea.

While I haven’t seen Ola in more than a decade plus, several weeks ago he wrote and told me he was planning a scuba-diving trip to Alanya, on the southern coast of Turkey. He knew I was in Istanbul, which he realized was not exactly close by. But he invited me to join him anyway because both places are in Turkey (technically), and, as he put it, "you seem to get around."

I seem to get around.  Say what you will about me, Spandau Ballet, but I know this much is true.

Scuba diving in Alanya?  I'm not exactly sure where Alanya is, but what the hell, Ola.

Wake me up before you go go.


*    *    *

As long as I am shamelessly throwing out 1980s song-lyric allusions, you may ask yourself (last one, I promise):  do I even know how to scuba dive?

Don't be ridiculous.  Of course I know how to scuba dive.

That is to say, I used to know how to scuba dive, much in the same way that I used to know how to solve an algebraic equation.  You know, back in the ninth grade.

With one exception, all of my previous scuba diving experience pre-dates the current century.  I figure it's all like riding a bicycle, which is basically correct. Except that the design of the bicycle has changed a bit during the past few decades.  

Ola looks at me with disbelief on the dive boat, for example, as I search for a place to manually inflate my buoyancy vest.
  
Yeah, we hook that up to the air tank now, Grandpa.

And yes, I am only marginally humiliated when the Turkish female dive guide, Aşkım -- literally in Turkish, "My Love" -- informs me that I am putting my wet suit on backwards.

Damn kids and their crazy new wet suit fashions. When did they start putting the zipper in the backs of these things?  Apparently sometime just shortly after the cancellation of "Sea Hunt," but never mind.

So I'm Old School.  Or perhaps I'm just old.  No matter.  I don't care what My Love says, I still look damn good in a backward wet suit.
  
*     *     *

No one can really give us a good answer as to exactly how or when the Scandinavians took over Alanya.  The driver from the airport tells me it used to be Germans, but they've now mostly moved on to other places.

Americans and Brits seem completely non-existent, as do the French, Italians and Spaniards.  The Russians go to nearby Antalya.  The Turks pretty much stay away in the summer all together, opting for Bodrum and Fethiye and other spots along the coast farther west.

That apparently gives the fair-skinned Nordics a clear path to invasion, overwhelming Alanya through continuous waves of direct charter flights from the north.  By mid August the population is so blond that I'm pretty sure Alanya would be able to field an internationally competitive hockey team.

But it's not just any Scandinavian who is coming to Alanya.  Those Scandinavians who are married, child-laden, middle-aged or elderly apparently are stopped at the border, or have found something else to do on holiday.

No, instead Alanya seems specifically designed as giant Scandinavian Club Med for blond-haired, blue-eyed twenty-somethings, looking to spend a couple of weeks in Turkey with their friends getting tan and/or drunk. 

Or laid.  Preferably all three, I'm sure.

The harbor of Alanya is lined with massive, multi-decked party boats -- ships, really -- designed to pack in several hundred young adults, ply them with alcohol, deafen them with disco music and ship them out to sea.

Some of the boats appear to have sailed straight out of Disneyland, designed to look like a Viking knarr, or a pirate ship.  Or sometimes, what the hell, let's just cover all our bases and make it ... like ... a Viking Pirate Ship!

One company, the "Big Baba Boat Tour," advertises a daily "foam party,"  where soap suds bubble out of a pipe above the deck alongside the reflective rotating disco ball, as the dance music thumps away.


The party continues until someone vomits, slips and falls off the boat, or drowns in the rinse cycle.

Remember those great parties you used to have in college, where you'd pour a box of powdered detergent into the Laundromat washing machine and set the dial to "spin?"

Yeah, me neither.

Keep in mind, we are in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, smack in the middle of the holy month of Ramazan.   Two weeks earlier I had been in the slightly more religiously observant city of Bursa, where it was nearly impossible to find someone to sell us a single beer, even after sundown.

In contrast, the first business I see after arriving in Alanya belongs to a 24-hour liquor store located a block from my hotel, with the unambiguous name of "Hello, Alcohol!"

It may be Ramazan, but I assure you, there will be no problem here getting a drink.

In addition to the party boats, the harbor area of Alanya is lined with non-floating discos and tourist restaurants selling the Cuisine of the Young:  pizza, pasta, hamburgers, and -- for reasons I still can't explain -- "Tex-Mex." 

I will admit, the last thing I ever expected to find in Turkey was a table of Norwegian frat boys devouring a tray full of Ultimate Nachos.

Perhaps now I truly have seen everything.

*     *     * 
Back on the dive boat, we've had lunch and are headed back to the cliffs for our afternoon dive.  There are 16 divers on the boat -- mostly Scandinavian, of course -- with a few Germans and assorted other nationalities sprinkled in.      

For the crime of speaking neither Swedish nor German, My Love has teamed me as a "dive buddy" with Pavel, a gap-toothed, slightly pot-bellied, Speedo-clad Eastern European of otherwise undetermined origin.  

Pavel doesn't understand English and I have no idea what he is saying to me, but My Love figures this shouldn't be a significant problem breathing out of a scuba tank 30 feet underwater.

True enough.  But what is a problem is that you are supposed to swim along with your Dive Buddy and keep an eye on them in case a problem develops.  My Dive Buddy, however, has an apparent inability to stabilize his underwater buoyancy.  Pavel spends the majority of the morning dive continuously inflating and then de-flating his buoyancy vest, floating above and sinking below me like an underwater yo-yo. 

Leading the group underwater, My Love keeps pointing to me, then to her eyes, then drawing her two index fingers together.  This is the official scuba diver signal for "Keep your eye on your Dive Buddy!"  I respond with the unofficial yet internationally recognized palms out and shrug of the shoulders.

I'm trying, My Love. Believe me I'm trying.

I keep looking around for Pavel, above me or below me, and then signaling to him with a forward wave of my hand and pat on my hip, like I'm trying to convince a stray dog to follow me home.

"Come on, Pavel!  Come on, boy!  Up here, Pavel!  Look, look!  Let's go, Pavel!  There's a treat back at the boat! Come on!"

Despite the compatibility issues, in the afternoon Pavel and I are back together again, re-uniting for one more dive.  We're like Hall & Oates, or Prince and Apollonia.  Slightly less talent, yes, but with approximately the same number of Speedos.

The dive boat anchors in a secluded cove for an afternoon of cavern diving.  Both the water and sky are beautifully clear and blue.  As we climb back into our wet suits (zipper in back; hey, I remember) and strap on our tanks, the only sound are the waves lapping against the boat and the rocks of the nearby cliff.

 It's all quite idyllic and amazing.  I would swear I was in a Jacques Cousteau film, if only Pavel wore a stocking cap and spoke a little French.

Just then I notice something off in the distance, at first not so much a sound as a ... sensation. A throbbing sensation. Like the throbbing of the vein in your forehead, at the beginning of a particularly memorable migraine headache.  

The throbbing sensation slowly becomes audible.  Then I see the source of the throbs, rounding the cliffs and sailing into our cove.  

One of the party boats  -- not of the Viking/pirate ship variety but a party boat all the same -- cruises around the bend and puts down anchor less than 50 yards away from the dive boat.  Music of course is blaring from the giant, IMAX-quality loud speakers housed somewhere on board.   

Even though it’s scarcely past noon, bikini-clad Scandinavian twenty-somethings are already dancing on the deck, plastic beer cups held high. Several revelers immediately leap -- or perhaps stumble -- off the ship's deck into the water below, squealing all the way.

Just like that, the idyllic dive cove becomes Paradise Lost, as if someone has towed in a fully-operational disco into your back yard on a Sunday afternoon while you were napping in the hammock.

The speakers on the boat thump out a continuous stream of ... okay, let’s call them "songs," all with the same throbbing, non-stop techno beat, and just a slight variation of the following lyrics:

"I’VE GOT TO PARTY, PARTY!!
I’M GONNA TO PARTY, PARTY!!
SHE WANTS TO PARTY, PARTY!!
THEY NEED TO PARTY, PARTY!!
WE HAVE TO PARTY, PARTY!! ..." 

The subtleties may be lost on you, but I think you get the general idea.  An apparent drunken attempt to conjugate the verb, "to party."

Okay, now everyone together:  the future conditional!
"WE MIGHT JUST PARTY, PARTY!! ..."

Pavel and I both stare dumbfounded at the party boat for a few moments, then strap on our fins and step off into the water.  There is nothing really to say.  As far as I know, there is no official scuba diver signal for "Let's go before they start doing Jell-O shots."


The party boat is still there when we surface 45 minutes later.
But things have progressed, as they are now playing "The Chicken Dance," (or as we say in Swedish, "Fågeldansen"),  the international signal that everyone at the wedding reception is drunk enough to dance around tables flapping their arms like a chicken.

Say what you will about these people, but even with polka music, they know how to party, party.

I have a feeling suds from the overflowing washing machine can't be far behind.

*    *    *
Around dusk that evening we take a taxi to the cliffs above the city, up to the walls of a castle that have towered over the Alanya's bay since some time in the 12th Century.

Ola clicks a photo of the harbor below us, the neon lights of the discos just now blinking into visibility.

"You know, this type of tourism kind of depresses me," Ola says.  "Because the thing is, this is a very beautiful place."  

He's right: Alanya still is a beautiful place, despite all attempts to scrub it of its Turkishness and turn it into some kind of hedonistic amusement park.

Up here on the cliffs above the city, you can almost forget that somewhere below there is a miniature golf course with a hole that requires you to putt your ball through the nostrils of a Norse god.

In the harbor I can see a line of tourists disembarking from a large black bus, walking across the concrete quay straight up the gangplank of a waiting party ship.  They haven't cranked up the speakers on the boat yet, at least not to the level where I can hear it on the cliffs 2,000 feet above.

But hey, the night is still young.

"It is something, though,"  Ola says as he snaps another photo.

Again, I agree with Ola. It is something, that's for sure.

But whatever it is, I'm not sure it's Turkey.























 

The Evil Eye Olympics

About halfway through the 2012 Summer Olympics, the air conditioner in my sweltering Istanbul apartment became possessed by Satan.  Back in London, the medal count of the Turkish Olympic Team remained cemented at zero.

I'm not saying these things are necessarily connected.  But I can't help thinking that if I was sitting in New York or Beijing, the A/C would have been working flawlessly. 

The wall-mounted air conditioner, known in Turkish as a klima, decided on the sweltering Friday night a week into the Games that, until further notice, it would be turning itself off and on when it damn well felt like it.  All frantic button-pushing attempts to stop and/or start the klima would be mocked accordingly.

All right, I can't absolutely state that the air conditioner is possessed by the Satan.  For now I'm willing to call it extreme mechanical freakishness and leave it at that.

Still, if the temperature control turns itself to 666 degrees, I'm telling you I'm out of here.

Meanwhile back on the TV screen, the Turkish Olympic coverage team -- which seems to consist of two guys with hand-held microphones and a studio host with his laptop computer standing in front of cardboard backdrop -- is asking yet another Turkish athlete yet another time why they finished 15th in a 16-man competition.


This explanation is much the same as others previously offered: there is no explanation. And they feel really bad about it.

I don't know what happened the athlete tells the Turkish nation, and I'm really, really sorry.  Or words to that effect. 

The klima turns itself on, blows on high for 10 seconds, then switches off again.

Thank you for those comments, the interviewer tells the dejected athlete before turning to the camera.  Now, back to our coverage of medals being won by Mongolia, Moldova, Malaysia, and a Caribbean island apparently named after a four-door sedan from the 1980s.

You remember the Ford Granada.  Sure you do.

*     *     *   
By current estimates, Turkey has a population of about 75 million. That is significantly larger than the populations of France, Italy, Great Britain, South Korea, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Hungary, The Netherlands, South Africa, New Zealand, Denmark, Romania, Belarus, Cuba, Jamaica, Poland, Ukraine, Australia, Canada, The Czech Republic, Sweden, Kenya, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland, Lithuania, Colombia, Spain, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belgium, Armenia, Mongolia, Norway, Serbia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Taipei, Greece, Moldova, Hong Kong, Qatar, Singapore, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan.

After the first week of competition, all of these countries had won at least one Olympic medal, in something. Meanwhile, Turkey was still waiting for its first. In anything. 

Anything at all.

Judo. Fencing. Synchronized swimming. Women's Weight Lifting. Broomball.  Please, we'll take anything. Have mercy and just throw us a bone.

Tunisia, a country of 10 million that just last year went through the turmoil of a revolution, already had won a medal. Georgia, a country of 4 million on Turkey's northeast border that most people would mistakenly place between Florida and South Carolina, already had a gold.

On the other hand, in Turkey's defense (I guess), Bangladesh, the world's eighth most populous country with 130 million people, had yet to win a medal, either. And India, with a population more than 10 times that of Turkey (around 1 billion), itself had taken only three.

But that kind of makes it worse, doesn't it? It's hard to whip up much national pride with a rallying cry of, "Yay! We're tied with Bangladesh! With zero!"

Yet as the week goes on, the medal drought continues. The woman's volleyball team, featured as a serious medal hope in bank and MacDonald's ads on Turkish television, gets bounced after the first round.  The woman's basketball team, also counted on for medal contention, is ousted shortly thereafter.

On Day 6, Nagahan Karadere, a female sprinter who holds the Turkish national record in the 400-meter hurdles, leaves the starting block early, disqualifying her from her event.  She is unceremoniously led away from the track by a race official (dressed, inexplicably, like a leprechaun), to the waiting microphone of the Turkish TV sideline reporter.

If they handled out medals for self flagellation, the Turks would be raking them in.


"I don't know what happened," Nagahan tells the reporter as she wipes tears from her face. "I worked so hard ... and I'm really, really sorry."

You're sorry, I'm thinking, as the klima switches itself off again.  It's the middle of August, and my air conditioner doesn't work. 

And I don't know whether to contact an appliance repairman, or an exorcist.

*     *     *

Turks are big fans of the nazar boncuğu, a blue and white eye-shaped amulet that hangs over doorways and off of bracelets, necklaces and ear rings across the country.  The purpose of the nazar is to protect those under it from the unwanted consequences of the Evil Eye.

It's hard to get a consistent answer on what exactly the Evil Eye does, where it comes from, or what is necessarily evil about it.  But it's pretty commonly accepted that whatever the Evil Eye is, it's not a good thing.

Bad things happen.  Weird things.  Inexplicable things.

And if you can a stave off a curse, or even run-of-the-mill bad luck, by hanging a 75-cent piece of blue glass around your neck?  You know, what the hell, you probably should do that.

At my previous apartment in Istanbul, a nazar hung over the outside door of the building, and on a door frame inside the apartment.   Not once in the entire six months I was there did I have a major appliance adversely affected by demonic possession.


There are no nazars in my current apartment, however.  And from what I can see on my TV screen, the Turkish athletes aren't wearing them, either.

You can call it a ridiculous superstition if you want to.  But if I was the head of the Turkish Olympic Team currently 0 for 778 in medal attempts?

You know what I'd be going out and buying at the trinket store.

*    *    *

Here's the scary thing about the current state of the possessed air conditioner: it can not be unplugged. There is no plug.  It is mounted in the wall without any controls, or even a simple on/off switch.

 And before you ask, this is not a case of the remote not working because the batteries are dead.  I have taken the batteries completely out of the remote, and the klima still turns itself on. And off.  And on again. 

I eventually figure out that the only way to stop the madness is to cut off the electricity entirely, by throwing Switch Number 3 at the fuse box.  Yes, this cuts off the electrical current to the klima. It unfortunately also takes out the TV, the hot water heater, and half the lights in the apartment.

As the weekend starts, the klima is turning itself off and on every few minutes, signaled each time by a series of happy little chirpy chimes.

Biddledy, biddledy, bing!
(Air conditioner is on).

Biddledy, biddledy, bong!
(Air conditioner is off).

You wanted to sleep? Biddledy, biddledy, bing!
Oh no. There will be no sleep. Biddledy, biddledy, bong!
You might want to invest in some earplugs. Biddledy, biddledy, bing!
Talk to you in few minutes! Biddledy, biddledy, bong!


Gradually, like a glue-sniffing mental patient, the klima begins to pick up the pace of its mood swings as the weekend progresses, until the off/on sequence comes in seconds instead of minutes, eventually becoming instantaneous.  
Biddledy, biddledy, bing! Biddledy, biddledy, bong! Biddledy, biddledy, bing! Biddledy, biddledy, bong! Bing! Bong! Bing! Bong! Bing! Bong!

On TV, another Turkish athlete, this time a weight lifter, is being asked why he failed to qualify and is going home early.  I already know the answer, having heard it so many times before. I head for the fuse box to shut off the chiming madness.  

Because the TV and the klima share the same breaker switch, this will end our Olympic broadcast for the day. 

Or at least until I can go down to the amulet store.

*    *    *  

 Clearly watching the Olympics in Turkey is not the same as it is in the U.S., China, or Russia, countries that expect to count up their medals like dollar bills at a cock fight. 

"What'da we got now? 95? 100? Crap, only 95?"

Of course the Turks know they are not going to out-medal the super powers. Still, being shut out of the medal table entirely is not something that going down the national gullet particularly well.

The hunt to televise a national athlete being competitive in something does lead to some odd event coverage decisions for the Turkish national network, TRT.   Early on a U.S. men's basketball game is pre-empted to show women's weightlifting, where the Turkish women were given an outside shot at receiving a medal.

They didn't.

Likewise women's gymnastics, which receives nearly round-the-clock coverage on U.S. television because of the success of the American team, is almost impossible to find on TRT, especially when the Turkish athletes might possibly, maybe, still get a medal in boxing! 

They didn't.

The overall lack of competitiveness does seem to defy explanation.  If Belarus can produce a 300-pound woman to throw the shot put 50 meters, is there any rational reason why Turkey can't do the same?

Some Turks are criticizing the government for the poor Olympic record.  Others are claiming the athletes don't receive enough support from the public in general. 

I don't know, maybe.  But I'd be looking into the Evil Eye thing all the same.

*     *     *

New batteries now have been placed in the remote control of the klima, and I flip the electric breaker back on to see what happens.   Sadly even with the new batteries, the klima continues to operate on its own accord.  

But there is some improvement.  Now at least, I find that if I point the remote and randomly push enough buttons, I can silence the bings and the bongs for stretches of five or ten minutes before it starts chiming again.

I sit watching the Olympics with the klima remote in hand, like a nurse armed with a hypodermic and a strong sedative at the bedside of a schizophrenic metal patient.

I've even begun talking to it now, attempting to soothe it into submission.

"Shhh.  (Bing) Shhh.  (Bong) It's aaall right.  It's aaaaall right.
Yes, that's it.  Shhhhhh.
Now calm down and let me watch the hammer throw."

*    *    *

On Day 11, I watch as a Turkish Roman-Greco wrestler named Rıza Kayaalp grabs a large Georgian man by his hairy shoulders and pushes him a half-step outside of the wrestling ring.  This gives the Turk the lead in the match, 1-0.  

Apparently this is the Roman-Greco wrestling equivalent of a slam dunk, or a right cross to the jaw.   The Turkish commentator on TRT is getting more and more excited as seconds tick off the match clock.


"We are just seconds away!"  the commentator yells in Turkish, anticipating a victory.  "Just seconds away!"

Cheers go up from the arena's Turkish cheering contingent as the clock hits zero.   Rıza Kayaalp has just taken bronze in the 120 kg (265.5 pound) Roman-Greco Wrestling weight division, Turkey's first medal of the games of any kind.

The country's long national nightmare is finally ended ... by a 265-pound, baby-faced 23-year-old kid in blue leotards.

The next day Turkey wins a second medal -- this one a gold -- by 23-year-old Servet Tazegül in the taekwondo flyweight division.  Granted, most Turks would have trouble pronouncing taekwondo, let alone tell you exactly what it is, but a medal is a medal.  And this is a gold one at that.

A day later, Turkey gets a second taekwondo medal when a female welterweight named Nur Tatar takes a silver. 

Then on Day 13, Turkey shocks the world -- or at least the part of the world that includes Turkey -- by placing first and second in the Women's 1500 meter run.   Aslı Çakır Alptekin takes the gold, while the woman with my new, all-time favorite name, Gamze Bulut -- which in Turkish literally means "Dimple Cloud" -- wins the silver.

With not one but TWO Turkish women at the head of the pack of runners sprinting to the finish line, I am almost sure the announcer on Turkish TV is going to hyperventilate and/or have a heart attack.

It is the first Olympic gold medal for Turkey in a track and field event, EVER.   I don't know much about history.  But I do know that ever is a really, really long time.

Yes, it took a while to see it.  But in the end two tiny Turkish women named Aslı and Gamze blew away the competition and proved that, at this moment in time, at this particular thing, they are indeed the very best in the world.

This a pretty astonishing feat for anyone, from any place. But maybe it's easier to appreciate in a country that is deliriously happy when its athletes win one medal, in contrast to those that are disappointed when its athletes fail to win them all.

*    *    *

As I watch the ecstatic TRT reporter interview Aslı and Gamze  (when was the last time you ever saw Bob Costas congratulate an American athlete by hugging them?),  I look up to see the klima is humming away without incident.  I push the "on" button it goes on; I hit the "off" button it goes off.   

As quickly as they came, the air conditioning demons that  tormented me for days have moved on.  I have no idea why.  Some things you simply can't explain.  

But for now it's safe to put the amulets away.  Until further notice, I think the curse is over.