Seaside manners of Turks

BELGİN AKALTAN - belgin.akaltan@hdn.com.tr

Turks don’t have any seaside manners. Some of us have acquired certain manners but we generally have bad manners. Not only on the beach, but almost everywhere.

SOUND EFFECT: When you approach the seashore from the sea or from the land, you can figure out immediately whether or not there are Turks on the beach through the peculiar “blee blee blee blee” sound only Turks can make while they are swimming, half-filling their mouths with sea water and squirting it.

VISION: If the beach is filled with litter, here in Turkey or in any other international beach, just call out “Merhaba,” and be sure to get an answer. Exactly as the sound effect above, this nonstop littering of any collectively used venue that is not their home is an unsolved mystery of Turkish people. Why they do it is a good issue to research. Lack of a civilized approach? Selfishness? The result of living under the Sultan for centuries and not being able to take responsibility? How hard can it be to comprehend that the fish do not particularly like your coke can?
 
CHARACTERS ON THE BEACH:

Anatolian girl: She comes from a smaller town but fits in perfectly. She looks gorgeous; she has the most fashionable swim suit; she knows all the jet set gossip. She also knows how to chat, joke and flirt with guys. She is adorable. It is better to avoid them or you have the risk of ending up marrying her (and be unhappy for the rest of your life.) Don’t ask me why. It’s a package deal; no girl who looks that perfect on the beach will make you happy forever. Especially if you are the kind of guy who falls in love and marries a girl you have met at the beach.

People with children: They have one or two children. Sorry, prime minister, I have not seen anybody with three children this year. (People are not listening to you? There must be a foreign conspiracy in this. Or an Israeli one.) As a matter of fact, the number of children does not seem to matter. One is just about enough to ruin any beach activity. These people arrive on the beach. They feed the baby, they play with the child, they change its t-shirt, they put sun cream on it. They change the t-shirt again. And again. If they have time, they build castles, they play ball… These poor grownups think they have come to the beach but they have actually extended their child care services from their living room at home to the beach. The only change is the addition of the sun, sea and sand. They come and stay at the beach but have absolutely no fun and go back with a feeling of, well, like any other day spent with children. They of course ruin the beach for all the others within a 100 meter radius.

People with a lot of newly earned money: You wouldn’t want to be around them.

People who arrive on a boat: They are absolutely different. They are sea people. They appreciate the sea and life seems to have appreciated them a lot.

Drinkers: How much alcohol can a human body consume under the sun, I am always surprised. They drink and drink and drink. And they don’t seem to be affected. It is always fun to watch them. And listen to them. They have the most fun.

Turks with Islamic suits at the beach: Wait for some 50 years; they will grow into becoming any one of the other categories you see in this article.

Foreigners who happen to be among Turks at the beach: They are totally lost; they are in a huge shock. They genuinely want to fit in but their nature prevents them from making so much noise on a beach, to litter the environment so much and their respect for others gives them away as non-Turkish.

Turks at Bodrum beaches: Bodrum is not Turkey; so it does not count.
 
People without enough money: They are in the same category as people with children.
 
People with perfect bodies: They have a parallel universe. They walk and act as if they are in another world. They should have their own beaches.

People playing beach volleyball: They should also be banned from regular beaches.

Lifeguards: They have nice bodies. They have nice colors. When I say color, I mean skin tan plus the color of their shorts and t-shirts. Do they wear t-shirts? Plus they have very nice helping, caring attitudes. I think we can kick everybody else out of the beach and only allow lifeguards. How about 50 lifeguards for every 20 meters? That would be perfect.

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