It was inspired, of course, by the recent tragedy that left many families grieving for loved ones lost while heading here for a holiday. That was a high-profile disaster involving the deaths of children and with the added pathos that the victims had been on a school outing, so of course it dominated the headlines. However, only days later an elderly lady here in Göreme stepped out into the road and became the latest unsung victim of a motor accident.Over the last eight years the roll call of deaths on local roads has been relentless. There was my neighbor’s 12-year-old nephew, knocked off his bicycle and killed in Uçhisar. There was the Japanese tourist killed when a minibus collided with a tractor. There was the sister of a carpet-shop owner, killed in broad daylight. And there was Sarı Ali (Blond Ali), killed in a motorcycle accident.
Sarı Ali had been one of the first villagers to get involved in tourism, back in the 1970s when most visitors were “strays” from the hippy trail. Like many of those first-generation turizmcis (workers in tourism) he never quite managed to find his way and by the time I arrived in Göreme was earning a precarious living as an on/off night watchman for those who had fared better. Ali lived in an idyllic cave-house just off the road to the Open-air Museum. It was a low-lying property, carved inside with benches and tables and would have made an excellent wine house except that Ali could never get the right permissions. Then one day he rode his bike out onto the long, straight road to the museum at just the same time as another motorcyclist was hurtling up from the village. Their handlebars locked and that was that.
So why are Turkish roads so lethal? Of course that famous belief in kısmet (destiny) must have something to do with it. How else to account for the man who once drove me at high speed from İstanbul to Ankara while using one hand for his mobile and the other for gesticulating, or for the taxi driver who, when asked to do something about the irritating beep of the seat-belt signal, simply ran the belt behind his back and clipped it into place. Questions also hover over the driving test. When a friend took hers recently she was unable to put her foot on the clutch to change gears because the examiner was holding it down for her. Understandably, that quite shook her faith that everyone in possession of a driving license really does know what they’re doing.
Some years ago road signs used to warn drivers to guard against the “trafik canavarı” (traffic monster) within. Maybe it’s time they were rolled out countrywide all over again.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
