[The Old Groaner] Lords of the land

Yesterday Die Frau and I were discussing the pros and cons of renting versus buying property in Turkey. Her nationality and her introduction as German is relevant because in Germany it is far more usual to rent property than to buy it, and the opposite is true in England, from whence yours truly.

Turkey of course falls between the two camps; many of our neighbors here are the owners of their own houses sat in large areas of land, but they are cash and income poor, whilst many Turks with very substantial earnings still prefer to rent their homes. Renting of course is comparatively cheap and buying property, particularly on the Aegean coast, is very expensive for the natives thanks largely to the recent influx of European settlers.

We well and truly thrashed the subject, and as is often the case, we arrived at no conclusion. Now I will explain what it was that brought the subject up.

A lady friend rents a very nice house a few miles away from us. Within the last week, the Turkish owner came to see her and asked that she remove the table and its four accompanying chairs from under the vine bearing pergola. Asked why, he replied that it made the house look like a restaurant! The fact that she, like ourselves, has many friends who visit now and then seems to reinforce that impression to some. “So?” you ask, “What’s it got to do with the landlord?” Exactly, what has it to do with him? Well you see things are not quite the same here as in Europe.

I think it may start with the solidity of the Turkish family. We meet many young European women who marry Turkish men and very soon learn that they have virtually married the family. As far as I can glean from the movies the same may be true in countries like Italy and with Jewish families. That scenario provides wonderful material for comedy, the overbearing mother being the most fruitful source of laughs. I imagine, though, that for us of the European persuasion living in that unfamiliar way could be very difficult.

It seems to me that just as a bride marries the whole family, then similarly when a person rents a property from a Turk he or she is virtually adopted by the family. The tenant becomes an honorary member of the family and their behavior reflects on the family. So it is that a perfectly respectable young lady who lives alone must be jolly careful not to have too many male visitors. We know of several cases where very decent friends have been reputed to be of easy virtue because they have been unaware of the danger, and more than once, I have been nudged and winked at for having visited one of those ladies. After learning of that stupidity a few years ago, I now make a point of always turning up at those lone ladies’ houses with a hammer, saw and a screwdriver in plain view.

Now, having perhaps established the social mores behind the issue, let’s look at more manifestations. Wasn’t Helen pleased to rent a house with a plum tree in the garden? Poor girl, after the landlord plucked his 40 kilos of plums, he gifted about one kilo to Helen but of course sat with her for an hour drinking expensive Dutch coffee. It is never in writing, but the garden, in the mind of the landlord, seems excluded from the rental. We had another friend who found his garden ploughed up one day and watched in astonishment when the landlord’s brother planted potatoes the following day.

That first lady I mentioned has a very nice garden with sea frontage and frequently finds her “family” fishing from it. I doubt that the poor woman will ever sit in her deckchair reading a novel and sipping a cool drink in her garden. I have advised her of a ploy adopted by our friends Eva and Heinz. They were so fed up of finding the landlord’s family picnicking in their garden that they erected a warning sign signifying the presence of snakes therein. The family took no notice of the warning until Heinz found the dead body of a very long, fat snake on the road.

He borrowed it and artfully coiled it up in his garden where it stayed for just a few days until he heard the screaming and witnessed the hurried departure of Mrs. Landlord and her two children.

We actually bought our house so in theory should not have the problems told here, but we were a little naive in thinking that we had bought the entire house! When we moved in there was a very rickety lean-to which had been home to the previous owner’s cow. After a week or two planning things I demolished that shed. I then sorted out the good wood from the bad and piled up the stones for further use elsewhere. Within a week all the stones and all the good wood had disappeared, and we heard from neighbors that the previous owner had come whilst we were out and removed those materials with the help of his brother’s tractor and trailer.

All in all, I’m very pleased that we bought rather than rented, and I’m even gladder that the mulberry tree which gives great shade in the summer was very well rooted when we moved in.