Ever since the medieval times, Antep has been famous for its hand-crafted copperwares, hand-made colourful Ottoman-style leather slippers known as 'yemeni', and its sweet-till-your-drop dessert filled with syrup and pistachios nuts known as the baklava.
While baklava can be found everywhere in Turkey and the art of its making is in no fear of becoming obsoleted, the same cannot be said of the handcrafted copperwares and hand-sewn yemeni. The art of traditional shoe-making is fast disappearing in Turkey, as modern designs replaced traditional Ottoman footwears, and with dwindling sales of traditional yemeni, fewer and fewer younger people are willing to enter into this sunset industry. The art of copper-ware making is facing a similar challenge: with so many pots and pans of different shapes, colours and sizes now readily available in supermarkets and stores all over Turkey at reasonable prices, the once highly-coveted hand-crafted copper kitchen wares are on the losing side, becoming limited to the kitchen shelves of some gourment restaurants, or even collector items displayed on the walls of posh boutique hotels and traditional culinary establishments.
In recent years, in order to stem the tide of decline of this fading trade, the city of Antep has invested quite a lot of money and effort into the restoration of Antep's old towns and its traditional bazaar quarters, including the Bakircilar Carsisi, the city's traditional copper market, in a bid to preserve the art of traditional copperware making. Nowadays the Bakircilar Carsisi features predominantly on the agenda of any tourists visiting Antep, and the whole quarter has been turned into some kind of tourist bazaar. The good thing is, as Antep has not yet established itself on the tourism map of foreign package tours, the Bakircilar Carsisi still has a down-to-earth, rustic charm, without that frivolous superficiality so often associated with the so-called 'traditional bazaars' popular with foreign tourists.
With the relative absence of foreign tourists to Antep, I notice that many of the visitors to Bakircilar Carsisi are in fact local residents and Turkish tourists from other parts of the country. To be honest, I found Antep so much more interesting and congenial a place to visit than nearby Urfa. And prices are more reasonable in Antep as well.
Although there are a few stores with coppersmith workshops attached, and one can see here and there the way those skilled craftsmen hammered the copper pots and pans into shape, I somehow seriously doubt that all the items on sale in Bakircilar Carsisi are truly hand-made in Antep, because most shops actually sell fairly similar items. Given that I had bought exactly the same items at a shop in Kilis, a border town right next to the Syrian border, about an hour's drive south of Antep, there is indeed a very high possibility that the merchandise available in Bakircilar Carsisi are also mass-produced by the same factories.
Adjoining the Bakircilar Carsisi are the spice and fresh produce bazaars of Antep, which sell everything from everyday household items to soaps, perfumes, grains, pistachio nuts, fruits and vegetables to chopping board and spatula made of wood. These bazaars are just as colourful, if not more interesting and authentic, than the coppersmith bazaar itself. All these bazaars are connected by interwining passage ways and small lanes between the shops, with several beautiful traditional tea houses, some even with a small garden, situated in between the bazaars to enable weary shoppers to sit down and have a rest and some freshly brewed Turkish tea after a hectic day of shopping. Granted, the bazaars of Antep are not as well-known as the Grand Bazaar of Istabul, but it is definitely worthwhile to spend one whole afternoon exploring this part of Antep's old town and discover the real charm of this lively ancient city.
Copyrights@2012. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.
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