Turkish Delight?

aksu, turkey – The multi-colored onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral tower over a foaming Mediterranean shoreline … sated Russian-speaking vacationers amble past the Bolshoi Theatre and sink into poolside chairs after the latest gastric blow-out. Welcome to the Kremlin Palace theme hotel, located outside the Turkish resort of Antalya. It is a staggering bricks-and-mortar testament to the meeting of big business, package tourism, architectural extravagance and Russophilia.

Built by Turkey’s giant MNG Holding, the 110,000- square-meter complex comprises copies of Moscow’s most famous buildings, reproduced in such painstaking detail that arriving visitors may well need a stiff vodka.

“My aim was to create a living postcard of Russia,” said Mehmet Gunal, the man behind it all. “I was so shaken when I saw the perfection of the Moscow Kremlin that I decided to build it here.”

Judging from the reactions of the first, mainly Russian, guests this year (“incredible”, “utterly surreal” and even “hair-raising”), one thing is sure: one can be awed or aghast – but never indifferent.

Just as visitors to Gunal’s adjacent Topkapi Palace, a copy of the 15th century palace in Istanbul, should “feel like a Sultan,” Kremlin Palace guests are invited to a package-tour taste of Tsarist luxury. The premises fuse stately Russian decor – marble halls, chandeliers, gilded chairs and sofas, copies of Aivazovsky paintings – with the facilities of a modern holiday resort.

“It’s a bit kitschy but you can’t fail to be impressed,” a bemused German tourist says as he surveys the lobby. A Russian guest simply asks: “How can the owner have so little taste?”

But dissenting voices are water off a tycoon’s back. With six billion dollars worth of infrastructural projects under his belt, Gunal has even more fanciful ideas in store for the neighboring plot of land.

By September 2004, Gunal intends to open a golfing hotel with golf course which will include a 1:1 scale replica of the U.S. White House in Washington, followed by copies of all Seven Wonders of the World.

It’s all part of his nascent World of Wonders (WOW), a touristic undertaking of such scope and extravagance that visitors are simply expected to say “Wow!” as they clap eyes on it.

As for the faithfulness of the Kremlin reproduction, it’s hard to find fault.

The Historical Museum, a vast, ornamental edifice containing the lobby and reception, shops, dining areas, bars and a 3,000-seat conference hall, could pass for the original at Red Square if it weren’t for the fresh look of the red brickwork.

The Bolshoi Theatre is actually just a pint-sized replica that houses a cafe, but the builders still tried 20 shades of pink before they found the right match. The round dome of the Kremlin Palace building in the heart of the Moscow complex is also reduced in size, but still large enough to house a bar and spacious dance floor. Visiting wags quickly dub it the “Putin disco.”

Only the Red Square mausoleum of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was deliberately omitted from the line-up in a bid to avoid macabre overtones in a place of leisure, says Gunal.

The jewel in the crown is St. Basil’s, 10% smaller than the real thing, but painstakingly reproduced to the minutest detail. At night, even hardened skeptics are seen gazing in wonderment at the illuminated spectacle as it glitters on the surface of nearby swimming pools.

“I went to Moscow three times to study books and photos; I even measured the gap between the bricks to ensure an exact copy,” said Galip Boyacioglu, the project’s chief engineer. When told that Ivan the Terrible reputedly had the architect’s eyes gouged out on completion of the 16th century original, so he could never surpass his masterpiece, Boyacioglu’s own eyes open wide. “Mr Gunal won’t do that, I still have to build the White House,” he laughs.

The cathedral – which in deference to its Moslem location omits the Orthodox crosses on the spires – houses Mexican, Turkish and Russian restaurants and a sushi bar. No disrespect here, the builders argue, since the original is no longer a working church but a listed historical site.

Coming across as the classic likeable rogue, Gunal goes one step further. “Allah said to take care of yourself, and the first thing is to feed yourself. That’s why the restaurants are there.”

He sidesteps the question how much everything cost, except that it was less than the reported $60 million: “You can’t put a price on the Kremlin,” he adds with a flourish.

The 874-room hotel, with its self-awarded “Five Star Royal Class” rating, has been taking guests since April. But Gunal is biding his time to hold the grand opening, which he promises will include a galaxy of Russian music stars and, he hopes, a brief appearance by President Vladimir Putin himself. The Russian leader was supposedly intrigued by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s description of the hotel during their talks in Moscow last December.

The premier, who Gunal says is an old friend, has promised to ask Putin to drop into the hotel and give his verdict when he comes to Turkey later in the year for the inauguration of the Russian-Turkish Blue Stream gas pipeline project. In the long term, the Kremlin Palace hotel aims to attract all the nationalities that frequent the region in large numbers, including Germans, Belgians, Dutch and Britons.

But for now, developers and locals alike have their crosshairs set on Russian tourists, with their renowned habit for big-spending and their penchant for the bizarre. At just under one million visitors, Russians were Turkey’s third most numerous foreign contingent last year.

In ramshackle villages across tomato and cotton fields from the hotel, astute locals are starting to put up shop signs in Russian and are busy learning the rudiments of the language.

“May Allah now bring the rich Russian tourists here in large numbers,” grins a salesman at a leather shop on the road to Antalya.   RL