A Typical Market Day in Turkey

Tuesday mornings until 1.00 p.m. is market day in our village, we like to take our groups up to make sketches of the great commercial activity there; actually two old ladies and a blanket covered with home grown produce and one stall holder!

However, we sometimes get in high summer an extra table or two with crocheted woolie hats and vast Turkish bloomers.

The stall holder takes great pride in showing how enormously large these pantaloons can expand, eying up our backsides with a steely stare. We try not to be too insulted, a trader has to be a pragmatist.

Great for People Sketching

I can combine my fruit and veg shopping with showing the painters good sites for sitting and making sketches, but it has to be said that mostly they too are waylaid by the excitement of it all and end up buying those vast bloomers and the headscarves.

The prodding and the squeezing, not always fruit and vegetables, continues for a couple of hours all under the undisputed paternal gaze of Ishmael the shop keeper, who, arms behind his back surveys who is buying what, who is selling what and who is the one with guests or relatives to feed, who is too late to get the firm tomatoes (a heinous crime hereabouts) and who just doesn’t turn up at all.

All this to be regurgitated later whilst serving bread inside his dark and cool shop. I will reveal more about the shop, the ONLY shop later.

Market Day = Gossip Day

This is a day the villagers look forward to, time to natter and exchange views, time to discuss who has got married or engaged, whose grandchild has achieved scholastic greatness, what is the state of health of their family cow or donkey, recent deaths, animal or human, and all the latest gossip on the ‘bad’ people of the village. (I know of one lady of easy virtue who was sadly drummed out of the village only recently, I liked her!)

Surprisingly, in this day and age, there are still folk in Gokcebel, who do not travel outside the village, the thought of going as far as Bodrum City, about twenty minutes away is adventurous in the extreme, but further, Milas or even Mugla? NO way!

We show you the real Turkey as it was and still is lived today, with or without the bloomers.