But this time whoever had decided that such a statue would make an improvement to their premises had at least had the good grace to personalize it. So this little shepherdess had a colorful scarf tied round her waist and a matching yemeni (the local name for the type of painted headscarf known elsewhere as a yazma) on her head, making her look surprisingly fetching.Sometime last year it occurred to me that if I'd taken pictures of plaster shepherdesses in all the locations where I'd seen them, they might have made quite an interesting photographic collage. Now I'm wondering if I should start snapping the giant Turkish flags that have started to take root all over the landscape.
Don't get me wrong. As flags go, the Turkish one is a beauty, and I'm more than happy to see buildings countrywide festooned in red and white on each and every public holiday. But recently, that celebratory short-term running up of the flags has started to give way to a proliferation of giant permanent flags on giant permanent flagpoles that are cropping up with the same monotony as the shepherdesses.
I first started to notice them in April when on a tulip-peeping stroll through Emirgan Woods in İstanbul. Suddenly, I became aware of a strange rattling and whooshing noise at odds with the serenity of the setting. Eventually, I tracked it down to a stupendous flag flapping in the wind against an equally stupendous flagpole. Then suddenly the flags were everywhere: in front of public buildings, in front of large businesses, on every dominant landmark.
One might think that Cappadocia would be far enough away from the metropolis to be immune to such a fashion, but one would be mistaken. At the most recent count there were half a dozen huge flags flying just along the short stretch of road between Göreme and Uçhisar. This is something that is a mystery to me. Do people really think that if there's no flag flying we might all drop off to sleep one night and wake up unsure what country we're living in it? Do they feel that such an overt statement of nationalism is necessary to prove themselves good citizens? Or is it just that the company selling the flagpoles is employing just as good and persuasive a sales team as the one that was so successful with the shepherdesses?
In my wildest moments, it even crosses my mind to wonder if they're one and the same, and now that the market for shepherdesses is saturated, the same team that used to be driving round the country in vans loaded up with figurines is trundling from place to place weighed down with flagpoles. But what, I wonder, will happen on Aug. 31 (Victory Day) now that we already have so many flags flying permanently? How will we be able to tell that it's a special occasion when increasingly every day looks like a bayram (holiday)?
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia. 
