On a peninsula with its share of opulent villas and over-the-top resorts, Maçakızı (pronounced mahcha-kiz-uh) is a standout, the sexiest hotel in all of Bodrum. That it’s hardly a traditional hotel is one reason; it feels more like the shoreside estate of some globe-trotting Turkish family blessed with considerable wealth but also the good sense to keep things simple. The property unfolds along a hillside studded with olive trees, tangerine groves, and bursts of bougainvillea. Eighty-one guest rooms are minimally but tastefully furnished and swathed in creamy white, punctuated by the bold abstract canvases of Turkish painter Suat Akdemir. Balconies offer knockout views of Türkbükü Harbor.
In July and August that harbor fills up with yachts and impossibly tall sailing ships, their masts piercing the sky like minarets. All day and night, launches to glide to and fro across alight at Maçakızı, whose beach club is a landmark in Türkbükü: a series of wooden decks over the water, strewn with white cushions and pillows, shaded by sailcloth canopies and twig-roofed pavilions. The water is clear and generally calm, sheltered within a semiprivate cove. Most guests spend their daylight hours -and much of the evening- at the beach. Every so often the muezzin’s call the prayer drifts across the water from the town mosque, a trebly counterpoint to the languid jazz playing at the bar.
Maçakızı is, in fact, owned by a globe-trotting Turkish family. Ayla Emiroğlu, who moved here from Istanbul in 1977, runs the hotel with her son Sahir Erozan, a former restaurateur who spent two decades in the power-dining rooms of Washington, D.C. At Maçakızı, the guest list alone is intriguing: Caroline Kennedy, Chelsea Clinton, Antonin Scalia, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have all vacationed here, along with the requisite Turkish music and film stars. During the summer, paparazzi float in Zodiacs just offshore, training telephoto lenses on Maçakızı’s decks.
While it’s definitely a scene in high season, Erozan does his best to keep the atmosphere refined, the crowd just this side of raucous. Ant the food – served on a breezy terrace just above the beach – is fabulous, particularly the lunch buffet, with its tantalizing array of Turkish kebabs and meze: flaky spinach börek, stuffed peppers spiked with cloves, and a smoky patlıcan salatası (eggplant purée) that haunts me still.
So the heat and the maps put a damper on our explorations. By 3 p.m. we’d usually turn back, exhausted to Maçakızı, change into our swimsuits, and hit the decks. Here, people had more sense. None of them had broken a sweat. For the beautiful Maçakızians, sightseeing was limited to ogling their own cartoonish bodies: an all-day parade of gazelle-like women and the men who love them, or at least pay for their drinks. The women change bikinis after every dip in the water – seven, eight times in an afternoon, each swimsuit with a corresponding (and wholly ineffective) cover-up.