Panayırs, or fairs, played an important role in small-town life in early Republican Turkey, and yet these fairs have been very little studied. There have been a few studies of fairs as economic activities, and even fewer of them as folklore, but little else. The social importance of fairs, in particular, deserves much more consideration than it has received. Fairs provided a reason for people to travel from their own small villages, to see a larger town and mingle with others from the region. Fairs were also very important venues for entertainment. This paper focuses on the cultural value of those entertainments. Drawing on memoirs, newspapers, and magazines, and on the limited secondary work, I discuss what types of entertainment were provided, and what were most highly touted. I argue that these fairs were one of the important points of continuity in a rapidly changing society. Even by the 1960s and 1970s, in spite of a number of changes, the fairs still showed essential similarities to those of the late Ottoman period. I further argue that an important fact about the fairs was the gendered nature of the entertainments. Entertainments largely focused on sports, such as traditional oil wrestling and horse racing. Musical performances were also an important staple of panayırs, and generally featured scantily clad dancing girls. Prostitution likewise has been associated with fairs, and it has been a concern of governments, including local officials, to prevent or at least minimize that activity. As my primary example I use the Pehlivanköy panayırı. Pehlivanköy is a small town in Turkish Thrace whose fair was created in 1895 by order of Sultan Abdülhamid II, and still operates today. I examine its representations in memoirs and newspapers for the 1930s and 1940s. For comparisons, I include examples from around Turkey, and from the 1890s to the present. This paper contributes specifically to our understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of the panyır tradition. More generally, it adds to our understanding of broader issues of gender, class, and social and cultural change in post-Ottoman Turkey through the institution of the panyır, and hopes to encourage further scholarly study of the panyır by pointing to some of the rich possibilities it offers.