Where middle-aged Irish women seek young Turks

TURKEY:An RTÉ documentary entitled The Turkish Wives' Club, broadcast last month, hit Kusadasi like a bombshell. Almost every conversation comes round to the film, about middle-aged Irish women coming here to have affairs with young Turkish men, writes Lara Marlowe.

"Did you see the programme?" Doreen Kennedy, a carpenter's wife from Walkinstown, asked me when we met at Liam O'Sullivan's birthday party. Kennedy was upset that women in the film were about her age, and feared Turkish people might think she was like them. "I don't think it did Turkey any justice; let alone Ireland," she said.

Irish women meet Turkish men in Bar Street, a 200m (655ft) stretch of bars and cafes in downtown Kusadasi, which one Irish tourist couple referred to as "Sodom and Gomorrah".

Seamus Glynn, a hotel-owner, calls the street "Temple Bar 10 times worse".

Foreigners in Kusadasi complain about the film, DVDs of which are on sale here. "Actually, it's a reality," says Glynn.

"In the early 1990s, 75 per cent of the passengers on flights from Ireland to Izmir were single women. Kusadasi was to females what Thailand was to males. Kusadasi has moved on. We have a very large number of families, lots of couples."

Glynn does not tolerate affairs between waiters and clients in his hotels. Yet he admits a grudging admiration for the women: "they know what they want; they're not making any secret of it."

Cora Brosnan, an estate agent in Kusadasi, notes that she is "not romantically involved and never was".

Her Irish friends predict the film will "ruin Kusadasi", but Brosnan thinks it is "more of a reflection on Irish society than on Turkey or Kusadasi". "Here, if you are eager to meet someone, it's not difficult at any age. Here, people talk to you," she explains.