Original subtitles

ASPECTS OF TURKEY, PAST AND PRESENT

The announcer calls the men to the fight, "Pehlivan! Pehlivan!"

Wrestler, paladin, knight. It's the same word.

The battle will last for three days.

It's the "yagli gures" championship,

which literally means "grease wrestling".

In summer in the Ottoman Empire,

in the days when Edirne was the capital 600 years ago,

when troops got together for recreation,

soldiers started fighting in the confines of the camp.

Yagli gures is an ancient tradition a thousand years old.

Nomadic ancestors, Turks from Mongolia,

used to floor each other the way today's pehlivans do,

but in front of a yurt in short grass on a high plateau in Asia.

The name inscribed in the leather of their trousers

is "pehlivan" meaning wrestler or knight.

Like the remains of a suit of armour,

these black leather trousers are stiff and shiny.

The pehlivans come from all over Turkey,

from Kars, from the borders, from the vaunted plateaux,

from dark Konya or green Bursa,

the cold banks of the Black Sea or the scorching banks of the Aegean,

from closer by in Istanbul,

or from here, Edirne in Thrace.

The ritual warm-up to the fight.

A military parade.

Pagan moves.

Incantations to the earth and the sun.

Peasant offerings and religious genuflections.

There are ten rounds of fighting.

A hundred strangleholds on these oiled-up bodies.

No holds are barred, but the hands slip all over the place.

The only really effective holds are to the backs of the knees

and between the legs.

That's why the fingers cling on to the bottom of the trousers

and the arm is plunged below the belly and the thighs.

The wrestler has taken care to dampen and oil the inside of his trousers

to stop his opponent's hands from getting a grip there.

You just need to get him belly-up.

More often than not, it happens quick as a flash,

the loser's back barely brushing the grass.

The fights last three days.

One can grow weary of male exhibitionism.

A complementary show is laid on at the entrance to the stadium.

These young Gypsy girls dance for twelve hours in the overheated tent.

The most remarkable thing about their show

is that they manage to avoid the rusty nails sticking out of the stage.

These silent, discreet Turkish women contradict all the fuss.

Their strength lies in their self-effacement.