It is six months since my last post in August 21. That was just after the fire in Islamlar and the much more massive blaze in Manavgat, spelled disaster for the environment and for tourism in the Antalya area. Now the heat is coming from a serious regional conflict between Ukraine and Russia, both important trading partners for Turkey. And then there is old Pandemic, which has hopefully been tamed but it has not yet been extinguished.
In the face of that it is tempting to shrug at environmental problems, whose effect is less immediate. Indeed I do try to look away from the damage around me to focus on the good and enjoy my life here in this beautiful country.
And it is beautiful. Last Sunday, in the company of a several others, I walked a few kilometres around the ruins of the ancient Lycian mountain settlement of Pınara. Established around 2,500 years ago, it is one of 30 or so cities that constituted the Lycian League. Their considerable remains are scattered over this part of Turkey, which was once part of classical Greece. At this time of the year standing on the ruins of the temple, you can look over across green sward to the largely intact amphitheatre set against the magnificent snow clad mountains. Honestly, it takes your breath away.
But then, there are times like this morning when I want to howl at the wanton destruction of natural beauty. Evidence of which destruction is what has driven me to my keyboard.
This morning I set out for my 40 minute circuit around my home in Pınarbaşı above Islamlar. As you round the tight bend below our house, you descend to a small bridge over a river bed which is foaming with water from the snow melt higher up. Birds sing, pine trees sway and there it is; a bloody great 2m wide slick of concrete, now nearly set hard, running down the bank into the gurgling stream (that feeds the trout farm reservoirs).
A concrete lorry from a supplier like Atlas or Albayrak Beton has stopped here to wash out its drum before the concrete sets. And not for the first time either. What sort of idiot washes out his concrete into a mountain stream?
Depressed, I cannot avert my eyes now from the rubbish strewn by the side of the road all the way around my circuit. My spirits are lifted towards the end by the sight of the Bay of Kalkan in the near distance with its distinctive islands Sıcan and Yılan adaları (Mouse and Snake to we English speakers). But the built environment offers no comfort, no solace to the traveller’s eye. Once, cottages sat amongst the vines and olive groves which, along with a few livestock, afforded a hard subsistence living to tough country folk. The mellow stone walls and red gable roofs of these cottages wore the patina of a hundred years and, dotted in with more modern white painted cement bağ evi (farmhouse), were easy on the eye.
In a few short years, just five in fact, the scale of destruction has been horrible. First Islamlar, then Üzümlü, followed by Sarıbelen and now Bezirgan have been buried under an avalanche of cement and glass villas: no planning, no controls, no infrastructure, no respect for history or a local aesthetic. Do what you want, whatever will look good in a photograph on rentmyvilla.com. Flat roofs, jostle with tin ones, red with green ones. To afford the privacy demanded by the conservative guests whose tourist lira underpins the whole ghastly development, the structures are curtained in a variety of materials; once-white fabric often hangs torn and sad, artificial grass, match boarding, corrugated steel, the whole illumined at night by fluorescent LED lights of every colour.
Nobody can blame the country dwellers for cashing in on the massive uplift in land prices. Subsistence farming cannot compete with rental income as a way of providing for the future. But we can surely expect that those who hold office show some vision and exercise some control in the name of protecting and enhancing the village lands that are the seedcorn of the future.
Lands that have been nurtured for centuries have been thrown to the wolves. Our mayor Mutlu Ulutaş I believe to be an intelligent and dynamic man. His job is a very difficult one. He has promised several times (most recently just two days ago) to visit me and talk about the future for Islamlar and understand the concerns that many foreigners share. It’s not too late to salvage something but as the elections near and, I believe, a new Building Amnesty is being prepared, the deterioration is gathering pace.
Betjeman wrote of Slough in 1937
“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!”
He later apologized for the harshness of his verse (and the damage to the reputation of the town). As did David Puttnam to the Turkish Government for the damage his film “Midnight Express” did to Turkey’s reputation.
Hopefully I will feel the same about Kalkan’s villages, although my reach is not quite as great as that of David Puttnam or John Betjeman.
