‘Turkish bellboy inherits $275,000 left by British holidaymaker’

ISTANBUL

The relatives of Charles George Courtney, an English holidaymaker who left a part of his inheritance to Turkish hotel staff in the Aegean tourism hotspot Kuşadası, have said in their interviews with the British media that the bellboy received $275,000 for his part.

“The Turkish man does not have to work again,” the Daily Mail reported on Sept. 1.

Turkish media recently revealed that Courtney, who died on July 15, 2014, at the age of 87, handed down “some money” to Turkish workers of a hotel in the Kuşadası district of the western province of Aydın. Hotel staff, talking to Turkish journalists, admitted that “money was transmitted to them” but declined to voice the amounts.

“Courtney gave the Turkish bellboy, Taşkın Daştan an undisclosed sum, believed to be in the range of 200,000 pounds ($275,000],” the daily wrote, based on data from the man’s friends and relatives.

“He greatly regretted not having children with his wife Miriam, who died of cancer 10 years ago after 50 years of marriage,” Courtney’s 87-year-old friend Terry Aplin said.“He saw the bellboy like a son he never had.”

Courtney met Daştan at his first visit to the hotel in 1990 and stuck up a friendship with him as the bellboy acted gently to him.

“The hotel staff loved him so much. They would call him ‘Godfather.’ The hotel was like a second home for him,” Aplin noted. “Sometimes he would go three times a year because he loved the place and the people.”

The hotel management announced that Courtney had made 52 vacations in the hotel in three decades.

According to Aplin, the place of Daştan in Courtney’s life was a bit different. “He was like a son. Daştan had invited him to dinner at his house to meet his wife and children.”

For Daştan, Courtney was special, too. “I am sorry that he died but to tell the truth, I’m surprised to have inherited such amount. We had no idea that we were in line to get anything,” he told daily Hürriyet on Aug. 31.

When asked what he will do with the money, he underlined, “I will use it for my children’s education.”

“Money won’t change me. I will go on working as a bellboy,” he stated.

The wealth of Courtney, who was a manager at a brewery company in London, is not announced but his friends thought he had “a few hundred thousand pounds.”

“He always stayed in the same room. That’s why, years ago, the hotel management named the room 401 ‘Room Charlie.’” Daştan noted.

Just before his death, Courtney wanted his nephew to conduct his will, asking him to sell all properties.

After years of legal work, Courtney’s nephew allocated the inheritance money when he came to visit Turkey recently. Apart from the bellboy, some other members of the hotel’s staff also received smaller amounts of money, which has not been announced yet.