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I
started to like sending photographs to the
exhibition gallery in Göltürkbükü website.
I like going through the archives, finding
the photographs that I like, scanning and
sending them, and seeing them altogether
in the web-site..
It
is not unlikely that the memories are awakened
in the meantime,of course..
I found the black and white photograph of
Bodrum(Halicarnassus) Monastery while looking
for pictures I like the other day.
I took that picture with great pleasure
and realized that the monastery was about
to crack in the middle after taking the
picture. I informed the Manager of the Museum
Oğuz Alpözen about this. Bodrum Museum was
working on a shipwreck at that time, and
O. Alpözen was dealing with that. He got
interested. I immediately went to Ankara
to visit the deceased Ahmet Taner Kışlalı
who was the Minister of the Culture then
and told him about the monastery and I think
the monastery was strengthened and saved
with the fund he sent.
I don’t know if the monastery is still there,
because I have not been to Bodrum for exactly
20 years.
Did I not go because I did not get a chance
to? No, it’s because I did not want to go
there... The reason being, Bodrum was not
the Halicarnassus I knew a long time ago.
Instead of seeing my people with their new
faces, I prefer to see them in the photographs
I took in those days. There was a big difference
between what I am told about Bodrum now
and the Halicarnassus I lived in.
No, no.. I do not say these to critisize.
It just does not suit me....
The death rate started to increase among
the native people of Bodrum towards the
end of the 1970s. When I talked to Rauf
Birol, who was a businessman and owned a
house by the sea in Cumhuriyet Caddesi,
as a native of Bodrum, he told me "When
people from Istanbul and Ankara started
moving to Bodrum, the lifestyle and the
eating habits changed too, the natives canot
keep up with this and die consequently"..
I cannot forget this explanation, which
includes a little bit of humor and a little
bit of critisizm, because according to what
people say, there are no natives left in
Bodrum. Whoever I see, whoever I talk to
has a house, a partly owned residence, a
small bay or a small island. There are even
people I know of who have mansions built
in coves reachable only by water planes.
Bodrum is not Halicarnassus anymore...
I visited Bodrum between the beginning of
the 1970s and December 1981 almost every
year, often. I have had very good friendships
there, I met some nice people and continued
to see some of them and did not see some
others ever again. Some passed away.
There was Hayatlı Kaptan. He did not know
how to swim. He moved to Bodrum when he
heard that Bodrum was attracting tourists,
learned to drive a a small sail boat and
started to earn his living by taking tourists
around. We used to go to Poyraz Port in
October and November, which were not busy
months, to drink raki with octopus hunted
and beaten well by Ömer. I heard later that
Hayatlı Kaptan fell off the boat on his
way back from Poyraz.. He was drunk. He
drowned because he did not know how to swim...
HUK was "Symbol of Halikarnas"
for our period. He had long hair like an
Indian’s and a feather attached to a band
on his head. He was believed to be a retired
banker, he died there. He drank too much
raki and had his picture taken with almost
all of the tourists in Bodrum in the 70s.
Mustafa Yeşilova, the author of the novel
“KOPO”, was the famous police chief of Halicarnassus.
After serving in the East, he settled in
this town he moved to as tourism police
chief and passed away here. We had a long
conversation about his book, which was published
by Milliyet Yayınları in those years. With
his own handwriting he wrote down the answers
to some of my questions and gave it to me.
I still keep them.
Bahattin Kaptan was as handsome as the Greek
Gods. Women loved him. He was a good friend
of Ömer Birol who introduced me to him.
He had a boat called Yaralı Ceylân (Wounded
Gazelle). There was not a cove we had not
seen in the vicinity with the boat. We used
to go to Bardakçı frequently. The sea was
exactly turquoise color in Bardakçı. Zeki
Müren used to come over too, we listened
to him sometimes, he used to tell us things.
Zeki Müren had a house with a very beautiful
garden; my passion for begonvil flowers
started after I took the pictures of the
flowers in that garden.
Bahattin Kaptan had a father who had very
big hands, and I was told that he was a
sponge catcher. I often used to see him
at the coffee shop by the sea on Cumhuriyet
Caddesi; I used to sit at a table closest
to the sea if not the closest, at any table
and wrote poems.
Our frienship with the famous Turkish poet
İlhan Berk had started in Halicarnassus
too. I used to go to his house at the opposite
bay. His cheerful wife, Edibe Hanım always
offered me something to drink or eat. İlhan
Berk on the other hand used to go from room
to room without wearing a shirt and with
his uneasy manners said ”let me read you
this poem." I learned a lot from him
on poems and women. God be with him.
I met Ahmet Sel, a distinguished Turkish
photographer in Paris, at the house of İlhan
Berk in Halicarnassus. We became very good
friends and have been seen each other for
years. He was here recently. He took pictures
of the Russian cemetery and Russian Temple
in Nice, France.
Ali
Güven is the person who invented and made
the best of the Halicarnassus sandals. I
hear that he is still there.
His sandals were very expensive; tourists
paid him well, which increased his prices
quite high, this is the reason why I wore
his copies for years. Finally in 1979 I
had a pair of Ali Güven sandals. He used
to have an English girl friend called Virginia.
When I was going to England in 1979, he
gave me her phone and address and sent a
pair of sandals as a gift.
Later we became very good friends with Virginia
but years passed then. I received a new
year card from her 15-16 years ago and I
didn’t hear from her again.
Cemil Eren, an artist from Ankara had a
house at the beginning of the beach in Türkbükü.
We used to go there and he brewed tea for
us. Once, next to a picture of a gull he
painted at the courtyard, he made my portrait
with graphite and I took its photo. Thanks
God I took it; I’ve found out there is a
holiday village or something similar where
his house used to be! Oh my God ...
I was the one who opened the first exhibition
at the Museum of Bodrum Castle. The exhibition
hall at the entrance did not exist then.
For this reason I exhibited my photos at
the garden of the higher courtyard. Füsun
Orçun cut and drew the backgrounds of the
Faces exhibition one by one. İlhan Berk,
Güzin Özipek, Salih Kalyoncu, Cemil İpekçi
and many others were at the opening... It
was a very hot and exciting opening. After
this exhibition in 1979, I did not open
any other photo exhibitions any more because
as you can see from the photos in Göltürkbükü
website, I have not kept the same theme
but
pictured various themes. Whereas years ago
I got influenced from the door drawings
of Cemil Eren and wanted to take pictures
of doors a lot. This is the reason why the
photo of the door of the Orkide Hairdresser
at Cumhuriyet Caddesi is so important to
me. And the deep scars of a passion that
started that year (1976)...
We lived beautiful days with the artist
woman whom I fell in love with in 1976 in
Halicarnassus at the white skinned, blue
framed house at a narrow Bodrum street.
Then we went to İzmir and our passion blew
apart. The woman I mention mostly in my
published poetry books is the same woman.
I knew the famous Turkish poet, the late
Cahit Külebi from the Association of Turkish
Language in Ankara but my only conversation
with him was at the balcony overseeing the
sea at the hotel he was staying at a time
he came to Bodrum for his vacation. I remember
that he read me his beautiful poems. The
famous Turkish artist Avni Arbaş too used
to visit Bodrum and stayed at the MaçaKızı
pansion. From time to time I went up to
his room and watched him painting the pebbles
he collected from the beach. And there was
Mr.Müntakim. He was a serious man and had
a house by the shore.
He was an ex-communist and everyone respected
him. I used to pass in front of his house
early in the morning, expected him to call
me in and liked listening to what he would
tell me while drinking coffee.
The most important place in Bodrum was Raşit’s
Coffee Shop at the port. In the evenings
he used to call out "Çaylaaaaar/Teeeaaaa"
but in the mornings Raşit was more silent.
I heard that the coffee shop is no longer
there!
That is Halicarnassus is no longer there...
Think of it, how can I go to Halicarnassus
now? None of the memories I left behind
are there . . Giritli İbrahim (İbrahim of
Crete) did all these...
It was 1978. I was a private secretary at
the Department of Turkish Highways. The
37 km Milas - Bodrum touristic road project
was approved. That road opened and Halicarnassus
has all of a sudden become today’s Bodrum.
When I look at the photos at Göltürkü.com,
I look at a place I don’t know at all, I
don’t recognize the place. I am sure many
others just like me don’t know the place
either. When I last met İlhan Berk at Lodevé,
he said "it’s been a very long time
since I came out of that house" and
it seems to me that it is impossible to
find the address he gave me. Is what I have
obsession? But in Halicarnassus I left behind:
· A youth
· Loves and one big love
· Lots of "first"s
And Halicarnassus wiped it all away, I heard,
and you know the sandal maker Ali Güven...
he got old!...
I wonder if the places I mention still exist:
In the street of bars, No. 7 Orhan Abi’s,
is it still there? Is Han Restaurant still
there, Zümrüt used to work there, I know
that she does not work there anymore. Is
Yaralı Ceylân (Wounded Gazelle) still there
untouched? Can you hear Zeki Müren singing
at the Bay of Bardakçı? Or can you hear
him at a Bodrum night, if not the songs,
have they kept the walls where his laughters
hang? There used to be Melengeç Newspaper
in Bodrum, we had our poems published there,
what happened to it? Mehmet Sönmez cannot
draw pictures anymore because he is long
dead now. How
we enjoyed the bottles of raki that he drew,
he had found the perfect blue.
All these I mention are a Halicarnassus.
For most, those days (70s) that is
Halicarnassus is long gone...
Cüneyt Ayral
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