While passions are boiling in the resorts of the Mediterranean, heated by the heat, due to the battles for a place under the sun, paid beaches have reached Turkey. According to Turkish media, “many applications in this field are aimed at preparing tourists for the fact that the beaches will become paid.” These are not hotel beaches, but “public” beaches, which in Turkey are open to the public as a constitutional right under the Coastal Zone Law.
“Even public beaches opened by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in different parts of the country charge a small fee. But recently there are private beaches, and to use these beaches, a certain fee is required,” complains in Turkey. As noted in the media, a signature campaign called “Coasts belong to the people” was even launched on the Change.org platform.
We will remind you that in Greece, the fight against private beaches has already reached protest actions called the “towel war”. Protesters oppose the illegal seizure of coastal territories. The “Towel Movement” launched on the island of Paros is calling for the “cleaning” of public beaches occupied by greedy owners of beach bars and cafes, Greek media reported. The problem of illegal encroachment on beaches in Greece has reached such a scale that public activists have taken to the streets to support the fight to preserve access to the municipal coastal strip. As the activists noted, their main protest is related to the attempts of public catering outlets to grab the shorelines and line them up with sunbeds and umbrellas to get maximum profit from vacationers. However, according to Greek law, private beaches are illegal. Until recently, tourists put up with the state of affairs and arranged themselves on patches of beaches next to deckchairs. However, patience has come to an end. “On the coastline, only rocks remain from the accessible beaches. The rest are occupied by the sunbeds of companies,” says Panos Kekas, a member of the Tourism Movement of Citizens of the Island of Paros. Read details here.
By the way, the movement was also supported on other Greek islands – the “Save the Beaches of Naxos” movement collected more than 3,500 signatures within a few hours of its launch and continues to grow. Protest actions also reached Corfu, Halkidiki, and the Peloponnese coast. And they have already begun to act: administrative fines have been imposed on more than 450 workplaces on the tourist islands of the Aegean Sea and in coastal cities, and some businesses have been sealed and closed.
At the same time, Turkish experts assure that it is overcrowding on public beaches and paid sunbeds on many of them that have caused the same beach wars that “shudder” all Mediterranean resorts. According to the Turkish media, the situation has reached such a point that in Spain the problems reach the point of police intervention – in Fuerteventura-Corralejo, the police had to settle a dispute over sunbeds, which turned into a fight. In Malaz, the British tourists, who are one of the main participants in these battles, played sports excitement – at the Estival Torrequebrada hotel they seriously appointed a judge who whistled a signal to the tourists – after which they ran to grab the sunbeds.
We will remind you that from Spain to Portugal, from Greece to Turkey, the beaches and pools of the Mediterranean Sea have turned into battlefields in the last three months. The battle for sunbeds began in May — and continues to this day, with tourists devising increasingly sophisticated methods — some waking up at dawn to find themselves at the front of the line when hotel staff open the pool doors. Others line up towels for the night.
It comes to international conflicts fueled by the press – in particular, British and German tourists are trying to find out who among them is both the first and the “most mental” in the battle for sunbeds – and this “battle” was supported by the popular tabloids The Sun and Bild. A side effect of this “beach war” is the anti-advertising it does to the resorts. For example, a British tourist who was outraged by her compatriots, who staged another “war of aggression” for sunbeds in the resort of Benidorm, promised that she would never return to rest in Spain. Details here.