BULLWRESTLING - bullfighting IN TURKEY

"No one in his right mind would do it; it is an addiction like alcohol, and it has tradition"-so an Artvin farmer tries to make sense of the irrational when asked to describe the all-consuming and expensive hobby of bullfighting. The setting is the annual games at Kafkasör. Unlike his Spanish cousins, the Artvin bull stands a fair chance here: the encounter is nearly-bloodless and the gladiator is not doomed to die on the arena, for his match is a bull of his own caliber.

The passage to summer pastures has always been a special occasion in the Black Sea, a feast of summer when man and beast are decked out in their best and there is music and dancing and rejoicing. Since before anyone can remember, people gathered on the way to the pastures to watch the bulls fight each other to establish the year's bovine hierarchy. A formal tournament has been held in Artvin since 1980. It is essentially an affair of pride and honor: the top prize-the equivalent of $750 and a ton of straw-does not even offset the annual expenses of at least $1500 in fodder alone. A multiple loser who meets his ignominous end under the butcher's knife earns his owner $750; a star fighter can find buyers for as much as $2500.
As a rule, the fighters are cared for by women. It is a strenuous year-round training program: jogging in the morning, then a supercharged meal of raisins and oats, a daily beauty bath, massage of the head and testicles with a potion against flies, a light lunch of hay, then an evening meal of more kraft-feed. The stalls are padded against the draft and a cat is kept in to stop rodents from nibbling the all-important horns.
In June, a few days before the fight, trucks begin to haul the champs to Kafkasor, an alpine meadow 500 meters above Artvin-town. As soon as they touch down, the bulls charge straight against the embankment, drive their horns into the earth wall, raise a storm of dust and bellow threateningly at rivals in sight-signs of a
declaration that they regard this territory as their own. Unfortunately there are some 50 contenders who hold the same claim. Owners scramble around to prevent premature scraps: sticks are raised to keep the bullies in line; caressing the mighty blobs dangling between the hind legs also has a calming effect.
The festivities begin on Friday. Tens of thousands from around the province arrive with their tents and rainshelters and gas stoves and enough rakı to last everybody for three days. Families cut down the venerable pines to build themselves temporary shacks. Provisional tea stands are set up: kebab-sellers move into position. At first there are singers, bagpipe players, traveling minstrels, oil wrestlers: folk dancers from Soviet Georgia are a novel fixture thanks to glasnost.

On Sunday the bulls are called in. Women move out of the line of action: men scramble to get into a safe position near a tree or an outcropping of rock. The duellists emerge from their tethers at opposite ends of the field; they strut to the center, hoofing up clumps of soil, eyes shot red and nostrils foaming. For several endless minutes they stand frozen side by side, their heads pointing in the opposite direction, sizing up the opponent. A hush descends on the crowd. Then, with lightning suddenness, they charge each other, locking horns with a staggering headlong crash. The horns part and clash again, the massive frames of belligerent muscle and bone pushing, thrusting, stabbing each other with mad fury in a cloud of dust. Suddenly, with no warning. one of the gladiators disengages himself, stampeding at full tilt through the circle of spectators which breaks apart in wild panic, dashing straight across the far end of the field and beyond the edge of the hillock, abandoning the territory to its rightful winner.
Apart from momentary glory all that the victor gets for his pains is corn fodder: the cows are kept away from him as they would undermine his fighting spirit...