In the past, Sirince used to be a quiet village tucked away in the hinterland of Selcuk, populated with Muslim refugees expelled during the 1923 Population Exchange from the region of Kavala in northern Greece. Following their resettlement in Sirince, nothing much has been done on the part of the Turkish government to help the refugees find employment or cope with life in a new land, and for decades Sirince has suffered from net outward migration due to lack of job opportunities in the village. Following the successful eradication of malaria in the area of Selcuk in the 1930s, many residents of Sirince moved to Selcuk and set up business over there.
With the rise of tourism in nearby Selcuk and Ephesus in the 1980s and 90s, Sirince was 'discovered' by some travellers and private guides who were looking for a beauty spot off the beaten track. The historical background of the village, coupled with its scenic surroundings, contributed to the rise in fame of Sirince. If you look at the old photos, in the 1970s and early 80s, there was only one street in the centre of the village with a few shops selling necessities to local residents; but as the number of visitors to Sirince began to increase, the once impoverished villagers found a small but steady income in selling hand-knit tableclothes, jumpers and home-made jams, honey and fruit wines to tourists visiting the village. One or two simple pensions began to appear on the scene.
As tourism incomes began the mainstay of the economy in western Turkey by the 1990s, Sirince also experienced a reversal of fortune. Instead of the usual outward migration to Izmir and other major towns in the region, for the first time since 1923 the village witnessed an influx of population into Sirince, as many born outside of the village chose to move there and engage in the tourism sector. This development in turn pushes up property prices in Sirince to a new height, with new hotels, guesthouses and cafes springing up like mushrooms all over the village.
While tourism has provided valuable employment opportunities to locals and gives this aging village a much-needed new lease of life, it also threatens to undermine the very lifestyle that helps to Sirince such a popular tourist hotspot in the very first place. To be brutally honest, Sirince of now has already lost that 'off-the-beaten track' small village charm, and is fast turning into some kind of a tourist Disneyland. The entire village centre now consists of endless rows of shops, cafes, wine tasting places, all selling more or less than same stuffs. Granted, the locals are still very friendly and welcoming, but I could not sense much of those rustic, serene charm which characterise many of these formerly Greek settlements in Turkey's Aegean coast.
As the current residents of Sirince are mostly descendents of Muslim immigrants from Greece, the cultures and traditions of their ancestral homelands in the Balkans play an important role in the daily life of the village. One of the most notable features of this Balkan heritage is the art of wine-making. Viticulture is an integral part of life in Sirince, evident from the well-tended vineyards in the immediate countryside and the omnipresence of shops selling fruit wines produced by local farmers. In the past, each household used to manufacture their own wines for sale, but nowadays all wines available in Sirince are products of the communal wine press and factory that is located just a few hundred meters outside of the village entrance.
It was mid-March when I visited the village and the streets were already fairly busy with tourist traffics. I wonder how things would have looked like in the summer, when the tourist season is in full swing. Within two hours of arriving at Sirince, I had seen more Asian and European tourists put together than my whole week in the Aegean metropole of Izmir.
While many of the houses in Sirince have been restored and put to good use, there are still plenty of buildings that look dilapidated and in need of urgent renovation. In 1923, when the village's original residents were forced to resettle in Greece, the numbers of Muslim refugees arriving from Greece to settle in Sirince were far smaller than the Greek-Orthodox refugees heading the other way. As a result, many houses in Sirince remained unoccupied ever since and were left to decay in the open. It was not until the start of the tourism boom that local authorities began to take more pro-active actions in the conservation and restoration of these old houses.
Frequent minibuses connect Selcuk with Sirince. For a 20 minutes ride, the fare of 3.5TL is actually quite pricy. Although the short dolmus ride passes through some very picturesque countrysides, I was not impressed at all by this touristy little village, especially as I have already seen a dozen other far more attractive and scenic former Greek villages in Turkey's Aegean provinces before.
On the other hand, I do not blame the village residents in turning their village into some kind of kitschy miniature Disneyland for the tourists, as that is the way things have come to become in most of Turkey's well-known tourist sights, from Cappadocia to Pamukkale to Antalya. It seems many people engaging in the tourism sector in Turkey still have a long way to go before they are able to strike that delicate balance between revenue generation and conservation. Afterall, given the considerable revenues brought about by tourism and the hardship experienced by the villagers in the previous decades, it is not easy for anyone to keep their head above the water when opportunity comes calling. The thing is, perhaps it is time for the villagers to think about finding the real balance between tourism development and maintaining the village's traditional aesthetic appeal. After all, it is this sense of an original Greek 'off the beaten track' rural paradise that makes Sirince famous amongst visitors in the first place. If the village begins to lose the plot, would it, in the long-run, still be able to continue to attract the huge number of visitors that appear at the village carpark everyday?
Copyrights@2012. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.
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