“BUY one drink, get me free,” a hot barman says with a wink as I stroll down the party strip on a Friday night.
It’s a standard line here, and from what I’ve seen, it certainly rings true.
In the UK female dancers and bar staff are the norm.
But in Marmaris, Turkey, every beach bar showcases buff, young male staff who are topless, oiled up and putting on sexy performances for pleasure-seekers, including thousands of Brits.
The holiday hotspot has surged in popularity among British women, many from the younger crowd, with throngs jetting out each summer in search of a steamy beach romance.
Yet some getting involved with local men have found themselves being shamed online.
“It’s Thailand for women,” says a laughing Katie Rees. “I’ve had a one- night stand with Omar. I know he’s got about ten different women on the go but I’m just here for fun.
“We love Turkish guys because they’re tall, dark and handsome and they’re better in bed. Sorry to all the Welsh boys back home.”
Katie, a 22-year-old support worker from South Wales, is enjoying a holiday with her friend Ffion Cooper, 23, a hairdresser from Cardiff.
Omar is a good-looking barman at Tiger Tavern, one of the hottest spots on the strip. He laughs as he recounts leaving a “giant bite mark” on Katie’s bum.
When I ask him if he has broken many hearts this summer, a smirk tugs at the corners of his mouth.
Katie playfully chimes in: “I might break his heart.” Omar replies: “I haven’t got a heart to break.”
Serial love rats
With female tourists clamouring for the attention of the local beach boys, a Facebook group has emerged naming and shaming them.
The group, with more than 16,000 members, operates without any official admin, making it a chaotic “wild west”.
The page is inundated every day with defamatory posts about British women accused of “stealing” Turkish men, accompanied by warnings and photos of alleged serial love rats.
Some of the content is so explicit and controversial that we cannot repeat it here.
Cheryl Farnan-Jones, 39, who moved from Saddleworth, Greater Manchester, to Marmaris in 2018, told me she had been posted in the group.
“I felt sick to my stomach,” she recalls. “There was a picture of me captioned, ‘About time this vile old cow was outed for the scheming tart she is buying Turks’, accompanied by several sick emojis.
The former nurse and mother of one, who works for a UK-based market research company, began dating Imam Sakaroğlu, 36, two years ago.
Over the past six weeks the pair have been horrendously trolled on the Facebook group, which we are not naming.
Imam, who runs popular bar Salt N Pepper, had a “couple of one-night stands” with a British woman he believes is behind the posts.
Cheryl says: “It makes me angry, because how dare she speak about me like that. She doesn’t even know me, it’s pure jealousy.
“I’ve asked her to message me if she wants to speak to me like an adult, rather than post on there. She replied, ‘How dare you get into my inbox, you slag’.”
The false accusations include that Cheryl is “addicted” to Imam, she pays him for sex and has slept ‘with the whole of Marmaris’.
But if Cheryl thought things couldn’t get any worse, she was wrong. “They posted a picture of me, my daughter and my mum saying we were fleecing old grannies through our Turkish lovers,” she explains.
“It’s one thing trolling me, but leave my daughter and my mum out of it. How sick do you have to be to do that?”
Imam said: “It is a big problem. She is jealous and she wants to cause problems and drama.
“And you can’t stop her. She goes crazy.”
The pair have contacted Facebook in an effort to try to get the woman to stop.
Cheryl added: “Despite her efforts to tear us apart, the abuse has actually made us stronger. But I think the page should be closed down. It’s ruining lives.”
Outside Tiger Tavern — frequently mentioned in the Facebook group for its notorious “Tiger Boys” workers — I meet the owner, Mehmet Can Korkmaz, 27, and ask if he is familiar with the group and his staff breaking hearts.
He says with a laugh: “When people come here we are nice to them, we give them attention, when they want something more we say, ‘No, we have a girlfriend’.
“Some women take it well and say OK and others will try to make you leave (your girlfriend).”
He has featured in the page and adds: “I know who’s sharing my picture in the group, it’s not an English girl, it’s a Turkish girl who’s bitter about my relationship with Lauren (Harvey, his British girlfriend).
“British women are really into Turkish men. That’s why we have male dancers and staff here. If we had more male customers, we’d have female staff as well.
“If women choose to sleep with our barmen, that’s their business.
“We can’t control it. Some of these connections turn into long-lasting relationships, while others don’t and end up being labelled love rats.
“But look at us, we’re one of the most popular bars on the strip. If people didn’t like what we’re offering, we wouldn’t be so busy.”
I had just gone through an awful break-up and went away with my family on holiday
Ruby, 32
Lauren, 27, a nursery worker, from Leeds, added of the social media group: “It’s embarrassing, there’s a lot of jealous women on there who can’t handle being turned down. Mehmet has a very caring heart and doesn’t deserve it.”
I ask Mehmet why Turkish men are so appealing to British women.
With a cheeky grin, he replies, “Because we are good looking and good in bed.”
Marmaris is a sun-drenched resort sometimes dubbed “the Land of the Liars”.
At the Salt N Pepper bar, the night is getting into full swing. “Sex, sex, sex on the beach!” blares the music as a group of topless dancers shed their leather belts and start thrusting them between their legs.
Back home you would be shelling out a fortune for a Dreamboys show to witness this level of action. Here it is part of the nightly entertainment.
Nearby, a couple made up of an English woman and a Turkish man are celebrating their engagement.
“She’s 50, and he’s 23,” Imam explains with a grin. “They met two weeks ago and she bought him an iPhone, they used Google Translate to communicate their desire to have sex together.”
Sophie Smith, 26, a mum of one from Newcastle, goes to Marmaris four times a year.
With happy hour cocktails at £5 a pop, it is often cheaper to get drunk than it is to get laid.
She says hotels “ban” British women from taking Turkish men back to their rooms.
“Hotel managers are sick of it,” she explains. “They employ security guards to stop it. I was dating a 22-year-old Turkish man and I went back to his flat and a 60-year-old granny video called him on Zoom.
“He told me to be quiet and said he was ‘working her’, a term meaning he’s going to extort money from her in a romance scam.”
Sophie explains how she told him it was “wrong” but he became aggressive — so she ended it.
“Another guy wanted £150 for a cuddle,” she continued. “I laughed and said I can get a hug for free from anyone I want, I don’t need to pay for it.”
Ruby Oruc, 32, from Plymouth, a head receptionist at a vets, met her husband Furkan, 26, on holiday two years ago.
“I had just gone through an awful break-up and went away with my family on holiday,” Ruby explains. “I never thought I was going to meet the love of my life.
“We had to communicate through Google translate when we first met but despite not speaking each other’s language we had a connection.”
‘The real deal’
The pair were in a long distance relationship for about a year before Furkan popped the question.
“When I told my family we were getting married they weren’t happy,” Ruby recalls. “They said, ‘Don’t be so stupid, let it go now’. My dad told me he just wanted me for a visa.
“But now they know we are the real deal and are happy for us. But sadly relationships between Turkish men and British women have a bad name because of the stereotype of older women giving them money.
“My husband gets messages from older women offering to pay his rent upfront for a year. I know of a lot of horror stories where women have remortgaged their houses and bought businesses for their Turkish toyboy, put it in their name and they’ve lost everything.”
Ruby explains that many of these women are in their 60s and 70s, drawn to younger men who are often only interested in the financial benefits.
“It gives British women a bad reputation, but not all of us are like that,” she continues.
“My relationship with Furkan is genuine, and I know 12 other young British women in successful relationships with Turkish men.
“Don’t get me wrong, the men have a lot to answer for but these women need to have their wits about them too.”
In a bustling bar, an elderly man slumbers in his chair, exhausted from a day of sun and spirits.
His elderly wife, meanwhile, is flirting with a young male waiter. She leans in, whispers something suggestive in his ear and gives his bottom a squeeze.
A mischievous grin appears on his face as they both slip away towards the toilets.
As one easyJet flight leaves, another lands, and a neon sign in the bar flashes: “Catch flights, not feelings.”
Sound advice for a place like this.
The Sun contacted Facebook for a right of reply.