How fantasy fans are keeping a Turkish blacksmithing tradition alive

Omer has spent most of his life here. He describes a chain of blacksmiths stretching back generations.

“My father’s master’s master was an apprentice here during the Greek occupation,” he says, referring to the Greek occupation of Izmir between 1919 and 1922. “Then came my father’s master, my father, myself, and now my son.”

The workshop’s history predates the Akdemir family. According to Omer, a man named Sabri Alim was an apprentice there during the Greek occupation, and later took over from his own master, Suleyman Acarlar. In 1955, Omer’s father, Suleyman Akdemir, arrived from Konya and began working under Sabri as an apprentice. He eventually took over the workshop himself, before passing the craft to his son Omer.

The family cannot establish that every generation worked in this exact room; what has endured is the blacksmithing tradition within Kemeralti.

Suleyman Akdemir, the family patriarch, at work in the family’s blacksmith workshop in Kemeralti, circa 1990s [Courtesy of Akdemir family]

Omer studied blacksmithing at vocational high school and later trained in lathe operation, but says the workshop was his real education.

When he began, the workshop produced shoe-sole cutting blades, tobacco needles, and agricultural tools. Laser cutting eventually displaced the blades they made for shoemakers. Tobacco farming declined. Other products simply stopped being ordered.

If that disappearance bothers Omer, he shows little nostalgia for it.

“I am open to progress of any kind,” he says, continuing to work as he talks. “If you stay fixed in one place, you cannot grow. The work we used to do disappeared. What were we supposed to do, insist on making things no one needed?”

Nor does he see anything particularly radical in his son’s use of the internet. To Omer, it has simply changed who can find them.

“Suppose someone in a village in Kastamonu wants something custom,” he says, referring to the province in northern Turkiye. “Under normal circumstances, that person could never reach me. But through the internet, they do.”

He gestures towards the workshop. “And since we have no shortage of craft skill, we can make whatever anyone asks for.”

Almost on cue, the automatic shutter opens. A man walks in carrying an old axe with a loose handle.

Omer takes it to his workbench and begins repairing it. The customer, meanwhile, looks around. His attention moves from the everyday tools towards the swords and oversized axes.

“Did you really make these here?” he asks.

A few minutes later, his axe repaired, he disappears back into Kemeralti.

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