Carpet Salesmen

We were having dinner with an Aussie and a Mexican girl that we met at our hotel when this clean cut, cool Turkish guy approached our table and with very good english established a conversation with us.
"You are Enis' brother!" said Steve, after recognizing the guy's face from a business card that was given to us the day before.
"Please come to my store for Turkish tea after you are done with your meal. It is next door. My name is Marco".
So we did.

Enis, his brother, had given us a ride to Ephesus in his cool Fiat Uno that had traveled through most of Eastern Europe. Marco is a super cool guy. Him and his brother Enis are Kurdish and are originally from Lake Van (Southeast of the country). Through them we learned a lot about the Kurdish minority group. About 15 million Kurdish are part of the 70 million inhabitants in Turkey. They were recently recognized by the Turkish government as a minority group (only because the EU demands its countries to recognize minority groups!). Kurdish was finally recognized as a language and now they are able to teach it to younger generations at school and they even have a TV channel that broadcasts in Kurdish.

These two brothers have a carpet shop in downtown Selçuk. They also travel often to the US where they do home shows and they ship a container of rugs to themselves beforehand.

They have the whole thing nailed down! They get you into their shop, chit chat about anything and serve you tea (too hot to be drunk right away). One thing leads to another and next thing you know, you are staring at the beautiful carpets they sell. "Here you pay 200 or 300 dollars ... in US you would pay 1500".

We had some good and honest talks about their culture, politics, government, traditions and religion. We got to know a lot about Turkey by talking to them. We even discussed about Marketing and Customer Service tactics and we have to say that their "laid back - non pushy" sales tactics are pretty advanced in comparison to what else we had seen in Turkey. When they realized we were coming from Napa Valley and the wealth that lays around us, boy where they ready to do business!!! So if someone in Napa is wanting to buy traditional kilims or is wanting to host a show... just let us know!

Something interesting that we saw in their shop was the cats that they have, which are in danger of extinction, and these guys have them for sale. These cats are originally from Lake Van and they have one blue eye and one yellow. They claim that these cats love to swim in the lake!

The interesting thing about the Kurdish people is that they have been living in northern Irak for centuries and, like Basques, are wanting their independence. While the southern part of Irak is at war, the north has a booming economy and even a small tourism industry.

Three hours and many cups of tea later, we left their store with promises of staying in touch and meeting somewhere in the world.

And before you ask, no, we didn't buy any carpets.

Gaby