Döşemealtı is among the little-known districts of Antalya, a Mediterranean Turkish province whose beaches and resort towns draw millions of tourists every year. Every summer, however, it hosts a unique practice. Hand-woven carpets and rugs sent everywhere from across the country are laid on vast fields, to expose them to sunlight, something done to soften their colors and eliminate any germs they might contain.
Carpets and rugs of every color and motif are then exported abroad, where they are more popular than in Turkey.
The district itself is a hub of hand-woven small carpets colored with natural dyes derived from plants. The vast fields of farmers turn into a place for carpets moving to the final stage before their sale, after summer harvest renders the fields empty.
As the temperatures go up, carpets and rugs from around the country pour into the district. Each is a continuation of a legacy of generations who weaved carpets adorned with motifs reflecting distant memories, joys and pains of life, as well as symbols of unity, love and family. They are washed, dried and repaired by skilled craftsmen before they are spread across vast fields. Except during rainy weather, they remain in the fields until autumn.
Local carpetry businesses oversee the process with workers checking carpets every day, occasionally wiping the dust off them or putting them back on their spots when winds turn them over. Each model of carpet and rug require specific care, based on their quality. Some need more sunlight and others need to be regularly flipped on each side. Day and night, workers keep watch on the fields, also against thefts.
Once the process is completed, carpets and rugs are sold abroad for high prices. Until then, they have visitors, tourists seeking to take selfies across these colorful stretches of fields, as well as crews shooting music videos against the backdrop of fields.
Melih Topkara runs a family business of carpet drying in Döşemealtı, across a field of about 100 acres. This year, Topkara and his workers laid some 20,000 carpets on the field. “We have to flip them at certain times so they can have the right tones of color,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA). “Each type of carpet has a different process but we usually lay them down in June and collect them in October,” he explained. Topkara said Döşemealtı has the perfect climate for the process.
Halil Börekçi, a carpet trader, said hand-woven carpets and rugs were popular in the past in Turkey but not so much nowadays. Börekçi tours Turkey to bring carpets to Döşemealtı every year. “People think these carpets look old and (are worthless) but there is a huge interest from abroad, particularly from the United States. Sometimes, we even find very valuable carpets dumped in dumpsters,” he told AA. Prices sometime go up to $6,000.
Turkey is known as one of the largest carpet exporters in the world. Famous for their quality, Turkish carpets decorate homes around the globe. Having sold their products to dozens of countries between January and June this year, carpet exporters have earned more than $1.3 billion.
