ABSTRACT
This extract from an interview with a local man explains how the men in Göreme are being drawn into relationships with tourist women that contrast with the kinds of relations they have with local women. Placed against the context of local gender roles and relations in this way, this type of tourism relationship – the local men’s relationships with tourist women – is presented almost as an inevitability, as an opportunity difficult to miss: ‘she is free and I am free, but the Turkish one is not free.’ This type of tourism relation is becoming extremely prominent in Göreme, with an ever-increasing number of short-term ‘romances’, as well as long-lasting relationships and marriages taking place between local men and tourist women. A triangular set of relations thus unfolds between tourist women, local men and local women, giving rise to many important issues concerning not only the interaction between global and local, but also the links between gender and power. The ‘romantic developments’ in the title of this chapter are two-fold. First, this refers to the growing presence of romance, or at least an ideal of romance, in the local setting through and because of these romantic liaisons.1 Second, there is a development of tourism business taking place in Göreme that is generated specifically from these relationships.
