In the wild, male camels fight to the death over a female, but in the sport there are ropers on hand to separate the camels if things get out of hand. There are ancient rules that govern the fighting styles and judges watch over the matches to make sure camels are using acceptable techniques. Biting isn't allowed and camels must use their necks to either force their opponent from the ring or knock them down.
The biggest camel wrestling festival takes place in Selçuk at the end of January, but it happened the week before my semester holiday so I got over the disappointment and planned my vacation without camel wrestling. Mike and I were in Bodrum having tea with our CouchSurfing host and the topic came up. He called around and found out that there was a festival in Bodrum the same weekend, so Mike and I were overjoyed at getting a chance to see the festival after all.
The day of the festival we found a mini-bus headed to the festival and soon discovered that it was a hugely popular local gathering. Many people wore orange checkered scarves with the name of a specific camel they supported on it, and men were selling similar scarves for 5 lira. Some men had brought instruments and were performing Turkish songs and stands were set up selling camel sausages, sandwiches, raki, beer and drinks. People had brought chairs and were picnicing on the hill around the outdoor arena. I'm not sure the camels enjoyed walking by the racks of their slaughtered brothers, but DAMN do camel sausages taste good.
There were dozens of camels walking around with their owners leading them. There was an open field near the arena and the camels were stationed here waiting for their turn to wrestle. Since everything was in Turkish we didn't follow anything that was going on, but it seemed like the camels were going to the ring one at a time to be checked. Then after many camels had walked back and forth, a match finally began. There were men in green shirts who were Asian-crouching a distance away from the camels but ready to jump in if necessary and separate them with ropes. There was no whistle or anything to begin the match, the camels were simply brought close to each other and began fighting. They each used their neck to try to pin the other camel's head to the ground and then used their body weight to try to flip them over. A lot of the time it looked more like dancing than wrestling, but I caught a bit of this exciting match on video.
Camels foam at the mouth like rabid dogs. They also drool everywhere and we saw one unfortunate man catch a giant gob of camel saliva right in the face.
When camels are stood in place they use a strange-looking stance that always looks like they're going to pee (imagine a bunch of men lined up at the urinals). I don't know if this is a natural camel stance or the way wrestling camels are trained to stand.
Mike and I were the only tourists there and it was a really lively local atmosphere. Camel wrestling is an exciting spectacle to see as a tourist and is what Kyrgyzstan should turn its eagle festival into (see my blog post for more about that).
It started pouring so we left the camel festival after just a few hours but we were happy with what we'd seen. If you're ever in Turkey in winter, make deve güreşi top of your list of things to see!
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