| By Salvatore Genovese |
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| June 16, 2009 12:00 PM EDT |
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1,270 |
Turkish Riviera, the Turquoise Coast Magazine
Every year gulet (wooden yachts) owners and Bodrum's "blue voyage" tourism industry bring tens of thousands of tourists to Aquarium and other local spots by boat.
And every year tourists enjoy the same garbage and litter mountains which were left behind by animals (I can't call them human beings) on the shore.
Here are my questions:
1) Where is the mayor of Bodrum, and what is he doing? http://www.bodrum.bel.tr.
The mayor's name apparently is Mehmet Kocadon. Well he is directly responsible from this embarrassing picture.
2) What is the gulet owners association doing? I understand they are broke and barely pay their bills but they are part of the big picture here.
3) Is there a tourism organization in town? What are they doing?
In short this picture shows how primitive the concept of "tourism" is in Turkey and a hot destination such as Bodrum is of course part of this culture, or the lack of it.
If the mayor of Bodrum were a Japanese mayor he would kill himself with shame, but he is a Turk after all and I can assure you after reading this, he won't even understand what the problem is.
The problem is, as the mayor, he needs get in to one of those gulets,a nd clean up the garbage with his own hands.
His job is not to look prety with his waxed hair and take pictures and add new pages to the official city website photo album.
What is wrong with these people? If he is so much in love with himself, then he needs to post his photos as he is cleaning the city he is in charge of.
It is a cultural thing and the subject is a "non issue" in primitive societies such as this tourism destination in Bodrum.
Turks and the captains of these tourist gulets will never get it. If they did, tourists would not be taking pictures of these garbage piles in shock.
Next time I am in town will I take the picture of an even bigger and much expanded garbage mountain in Aquarium, and of course many other tourist destinations?
Here is where the mayor of Bodrum sends a message to the residents of Bodrum, which is a blank page. Doesn't he have anything to say? Or he could not find more briyantin photos of himself to add to this page?
To be fair to the mayor, after cleaning up his city's major tourist spots, he should send us the pictures of his work, and we will happily post the before and after photos to his credit.
Deal, Mr. Mayor? Yes, deal!
