The evil eye is basically an age-old stigma and superstition in this region (it's actually a fairly prolific element found globally in many religions and popular cultures). Here, if people complement a person too much, or are jealous of them, the common perception is that some evil will befall that person. So, prosperous and beautiful people keep the eye close by in order to deflect the negative energy.
This is the same reason why you'll see elderly Greek, Arab, Turk, and other ladies spitting, or pretending to spit, at babies (since they get so much attention and cooing, grandmas may spit to deflect all the positivity, in case any bad spirits [djinns, in Islam] are nearby, or the evil eye has been transmitted). It's one of those things that has carried over for years and years and, now, is just completely assimilated. It's also a pretty neat (and colorful) tourist trap.
The blue, glass eye (note that it's a blue eye - often associated with Europeans and colonialism, an even thicker dynamic..) is often a big deal in Turkish families. Turkish bus drivers, who just about push their luck with their insane driving tactics (on tiny mountain roads), have also adapted it as a sort of good luck charm
(the seat of a bus driver whose bus we had the lucky chance to ride all the way from Ephasus to Cappadoccia - look closely, those are little pins with blue eyes on 'em!)
(some more excellent good luck charms, ever so popular with Turkish bus drivers...the little clown dolls and hearts with "i love you" in various languages are really common for some reason)
Also, during the severe inflation of the early 2000s, people started giving little blue eye beads as small change, since the coins were so worthless anyway.
(scenic look-out in Cappadoccia.. kneeling at the good-luck tree! tourists dig the eye.)
It's a symbol to ward off the "eye," but applied to anyone fortunate with anything to be jealous of. For example, a Turkish friend of mine told me a story about his experience with it. Apparently, he's admired by much of his town because he's this smart guy who got to go to high school in Istanbul and then study in America, and he has brooding long hair, etc, and everybody complements him and asks for him, but whenever he's home, he says he's so bored that it always puts him in a slump (I mean people would be convinced that I had the eye when I came home from school vacations, too, as I'm basically sleepy and useless the whole time). So his Mom, being very afraid that her son "had the eye," decided to put it to the test by hiring a reader who can read whether or not people have this unfortunate affliction. So she read some specific Koranic verses, and if he had the eye, it would make her yawn while she read. Poor guy, he apparently had it so bad that the reader barfed right there!!
Hope I have convinced you to invest in one of these purdy window-hangers....
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