Approximately 10 years ago, when I was living in Bodrum, a fellow expat and I decided to go on a three-day holiday to Assos, an ancient site and village with beautiful beaches just west of Mount Ida (Kaz) in the Ayvacık district of Turkey's northwestern Çanakkale province.
The area, starting from Küçükkuyu and spanning all the way to Babakale, is filled with tiny little villages nestled in the woods that at that time had yet to be discovered. These days, especially since the pandemic, urbanites and foreigners make up the majority in most of those villages, but back then they were mostly empty.
One of the most well-known expats to date, and rightly so, is the founder of the Buğday Ecological Living Association Victor Ananias. While his is a story for another day, I will say that he was a visionary who was taken from us way before his time and whose ideas still guide a wide community of people today. Thus, he remains a legend whose legacy includes founding many of the organic farmers' markets held in Turkey to this day. Nevertheless, he lived in the Mount Ida region and designed and built a magnificent circular self-sustaining stone building called Çamtepe, where workshops are still held throughout the year. I made that building and its village our first destination. Suddenly, and literally at a gas station, I ended up meeting a Turk who was from the area but lived in Alaçatı where he worked as an English-language professor. Anyway, as our cars were filling with gas, he offered us his house. Now, when I say offered, I am holding back. The truth is, before we had even seen it, he had agreed to rent us his father’s two-story home in Bahçedere for 10 years for nothing. He literally gave it away!
Now, before you rejoice, there is a sad reason behind this man’s generosity, as his father had taken his own life in the building a few months prior. They had other homes that the rest of the family had moved into and he didn’t want their beloved village home to become decrepit in the absence of residents. He also couldn’t bring himself to charge someone money to live in his family home. He wanted someone to love and appreciate the home and change its negative energy, which is why no one in the family had entered it again after their father's death.
So anyway, the next day, we continued on our journey, except now we were driving off with a signed 10-year contract for nothing after having decided to continue to make our way to Assos for the hell of it. Now Assos is tied to Çanakkale’s Ayvacık, which actually has upwards of 100 different villages connected to it. Since we were on a roll, we thought we would try our luck to see if there were any other areas we might want to relocate to. We didn’t know where to start, but we did know the “muhtars” would know.
You see, “Muhtars” are locally elected officials for villages and neighborhoods that have their own assistants referred to as "Aza.” In both practical terms and for their similarity in character, for English-speakers, I would describe them as kind of like “sheriffs.” You have to be highly respected by your village to be elected and when you are, you sort of have the lay of the land. Meanwhile, in Ayvacık, which is a municipality, there is a Muhtars' Association that serves the 100 muhtars in the region. One muhtar amongst them is also elected to represent all of the muhtars in Ayvacık. That muhtar then becomes the head of the Muhtar Association for 100 other sub-regions. If you were to ask me what my top piece of advice would be for people wanting to live in Turkey. I would always unwaveringly answer: Meet your “muhtar” before you do anything else. Everybody has one.
Therefore, I had the brilliant idea to track down the main muhtars’ association in Ayvacık and pay it a little visit. Since Ayvacık is a town with possibly the most villages connected to it in Turkey, or certainly one of them, their muhtar association was understandably impressive. The association is housed in a two-story building within a complex that contains a vast courtyard with fountains and children's play areas, with dozens of tables set up throughout the grounds serving as the muhtars' tea garden.
Nonetheless, we went upstairs and asked the head of the muhtars’ association if there were any cute houses available for rent in any of the surrounding villages. His answer was: “Would you like to run this tea garden?” And, my reply was “Yes!” The next few minutes were spent deciding which of the empty houses in the closest villages would suit me best and yet another free 10-year housing agreement was signed with no payment passing hands. So, if you do the math, at this point in a matter of just two days, I had two 10-year rental contracts on really adorable houses completely free. Plus, I had a tea garden to run that served nearly 100 muhtars and all of their assistants and families. Meanwhile, I was also a journalist at this very newspaper group. All I had set out for was a three-day vacation.
My friend decided to take the first contract for the house in Bahçedere and he lived there for years, caring for it and renovating it, while I decided to go for the house and tea garden combo closer to Assos.
Within a week I made the move all whilst buying tablecloths and cutlery, new tea and coffee cups from Paşabahçe and copper pans for all of the eggs I thought I was going to serve. Since I was on my own, I knew I would start small with just tea and Turkish coffee since that’s all they were drinking there anyway. The rental agreement we came to meant I would serve the muhtars tea all month, which they paid for with colored beads, then once they were all counted, the association would take about a quarter of the earnings and the rest of the profit was given to me. So I never really handed over any rent money, but somehow, I also didn't really earn anything.
Nonetheless, there were lots of locals to serve tea to and many became regulars. However, from the very first day, fellow expats and other urbanites who had moved to the region would also visit me there, having heard about the new American in town running Ayvacık’s main tea garden. From the very moment they walked into the vast courtyard they could see my plight trying to balance trays and dainty teacups while looking after dozens and at times hundreds of people. Many times, before even being introduced, they would just start waiting on the customers themselves. Many of the muhtars' wives would also volunteer to wash dishes. After the rush of customers had passed (market days were insanely busy), the people that had helped me would all sit down together and finally have the chance to really get to know each other. The tea garden became a gathering spot and for months’ this routine repeated every day. I would say within a week of my opening the tea garden, I was no longer running it alone.
So much so, that there were a few couples, one in particular that were journalists and writers like me, that came to take the reins of the tea garden completely, allowing me to do my real work on the computer in the back of the shop. I would secretly steam artichokes for them on the spare tea stove in the back and prepare a sauce to dip the leaves in that we would share in the afternoon as a treat.
Sadly, however, the venture never really made money. We only really served tea and at a discounted “muhtar” rate, plus it was exhausting work constantly brewing and pouring tea into tiny cups all day. When my entire newspaper salary was starting to go towards restocking, I decided then and there to call it quits.
One day the ice cream man came and I couldn’t even pay him. At that moment, I asked my friends if they wanted to take over the entire operation or at least be partners, but they said no. In fact, even though these generous souls had voluntarily worked for me for months, when it came to actually trying to make money from it, they had no interest. In fact, many times they would take me out for dinner after a hard day’s work because they knew just how broke I was from trying to keep it going. Most nights we ate for free, however, because when you know 100 muhtars, you get a lot of invites to weddings, circumcisions and parties to send soldiers off that come with outdoor feasts for the whole community.
The muhtars were very understanding when I had to decline their kind offer. After all, they all knew I was a writer at Sabah newspaper and that was much more important to me. They were all amazed I had even agreed to the adventure to begin with. I did keep the house and lived there for many years to follow until even better opportunities in the region arose and I handed back the free contract that was still valid for many more years. I didn’t need to hold on to it, there ended up being so many other great homes I lived in throughout the region. Because the thing is, when you serve tea to muhtars and their families daily for months, you become their “çaycı” for life. Thus, they always embraced me and offered me homes, land and all sorts of other opportunities. I remain very much in contact with a number of them to this day.
In fact, the first customer to try my freshly squeezed orange juice was Hasan the muhtar of Güzelköy, a special person who oversaw a beautiful village. Hasan ended up buying my last batch of ice cream, when he knew I couldn’t pay for it, and took it to his village. In the years to follow, he would go on to open his own cafe in town called Ayvacık Kahvaltı Dünyası, which translates to Ayvacık’s Breakfast World, where he is doing more than I could have ever envisioned in Ayvacık. If you are ever in town, I highly recommend trying their spread of entirely locally sourced products and drinking a cup of tea in what has now become the new muhtars’ second home!
