Category: Talking Turkey 2013 On My Own

Turkish Delight: or how I paid homage to Jules Verne

I’ll get to the explanation for the title if you’ll read to the end, but since this is the last day of my adventure, I tried to do a lot.

One thing I wanted to do was “trek” in one of the many valleys here.  There are trails, and I started on one of them when I arrived, but mid-day heat, and the 5 am departure from Istanbul made that one pretty short.  As part of our tour today, I walked a very pleasant 2.5 miles today in a narrow canyon that contained walnut and apricot trees, grape vines—and old stone houses, churches, in the old caves still used for storage and pigeon raising even today.  Pigeons get locked in one room for a month (phew!) and get the idea they need to return; their manure is harvested (phew!), though our guide noted that since the area became a UNESCO site in the 1980s, chemical fertilizers had replaced the pigeons to a large degree.

Second, I had a chance to see an old Greek village.  There is a poster here touting the “first declaration of human rights,” a 1463 announcement from Mehmet the Conqueror that his newly-acquired subjects in Bosnia were free to practice their religion.  Though it was honored on and off in Ottoman history (people of the Book—as they referred to Jews and Christians—were usually tolerated, but I think paid extra taxes and could not serve in the military.  Captured Christian children, however, were frequently raised Muslim, and became the shock troops of the janissaries, the infantry of the Ottomans), the 20^th century relations with Greeks (perhaps beginning with the war for Greek independence in the 1820s), Armenians, and Kurds was and is troubled.  When Turkey was carved (that was the pun in the 20s) into spheres of influence after World War I (the French, for example, wanted a mandate over the Levant, the area close to Lebanon), the Greek government went to war (backed by the British and the French) to create a protectorate over the Greek cities in Asia Minor, particularly Smyrna.  Ataturk mustered Turkish forces to fight for a Turkish state that has the boundaries Turkey now has.  There was, however, a massive exchange of Muslim Turks in Greece for Orthodox Greeks in Turkey.  One result was the city in the area that still has the abandoned Greek area on a hill.  Word is that the Greeks were offered compensation, but have refused, hoping they could return “home” and that was 1923!

Third, I had a chance to test my claustrophobia. There are 36 “underground cities” in the area—which says something about the neighborhood!  I expected people to be living in cities underground, but these were, in effect, defensive bunkers.  The one we visited had 8 layers that went down about 90 feet, but only  two of those were open.  Populations (4000 could be housed in this one; the biggest “city” accommodated 10,000) could simply hide underground when enemies approached.  The defensive mechanics were ingenious. Huge stone doors could block entry to a tunnel, but could only be shut or opened from the inside; air shafts made ventilation possible, and residents could fully function, with a church (the area, as I said, was Christian, even after the Muslim conquest).  Tunnels connected everything, and some were pretty narrow, though living quarters were “duplex”, and any case at least three times the size of a room in London.  Many of the tunnels were pretty narrow and not very high—which tested my claustrophobia, but the peek holes where the locals could attack the invaders reminded me of the Viet Cong area called Cu Chi tunnels.

Fourth, I wanted to climb a peak, and while the 13,000 foot volcano that caused this landscape was out of reach, the 4300 Uchisar fortress, right behind my guest house (I didn’t realize I was living in the expensive real estate—the fortress commands views, and views command room rates), was convenient.  At the top, there were shallow graves for the Byzantines, but apparently the fortress had tunnels that connected with the underground cities.  After 7 or 800 years of being attacked, I suppose the Byzantines got pretty good at defensive strategies.

Finally—and this was the Turkish delight—at 5 am, a van picked me up to take me to a field strewn with hot air balloons.

The Lonely Planet suggestion was, “If you’re ever going to do a hot air balloon, Cappadocia is the place.”  I took that to heart.  There were about 70 that took off today, taking advantage of the relative calm in the morning, with the light wind.  The captain was hilarious (which was helpful since I was nervous), and took us close up and up and over.   What a great view from the air, and what a smooth ride.  We landed on the trailer, and celebrated with champagne.  It was 7 am.

That was my homage to Jules Verne.  When I was younger (notice that!), a picture that really moved me was Around the World in 80 days.  That may well have been inspiration realized, not just in the hot air balloon trip, but in the wanderlust that’s captivated me the last 20 years.

I hope you find a book, a movie, a friend, who will inspire a similar quest for adventure and self understanding.  Bring on the next adventure.

Note: I did not realize it at the time, but this was to be my last trip with students.  As you’ll see from the timeline, that enabled trips to places I would never have gone with students–Cuba, Latin America, and Africa. But what a wonderful way to close out almost twenty years of opening minds to the world.

Bursa tility.

Back in the day, Bursa was an important city, linking up with Chang’an and the Tang dynasty on the Silk Road. Back in the day, it was the gathering ground for the Ottomans to begin to tighten the noose; it was where Osman’s dream of being Sultan started taking shape, and he and son are buried in the city. Osman died shortly after he conquered the city of Bursa and moved his capital there. That was in the early 15^th century.  Those two reasons were why I wanted to visit Bursa.

Today, it’s better known as the fourth largest city in Turkey, and a major center of industry. Most of the automobile plants are located there.  In addition, although only 60 miles from Istanbul (straight line!) the ferry across the Sea of Marmara adds time and leisure, though the road to Bursa (which continues down the coast and passes Ephesus/Pergamon, where I’ve take it) is a first class highway. It also has a 7500 foot mountain, called “Great”, and ski runs—near a market of over 15 million people.  There was still snow on top.

The only major sites we saw was an unusual Green Mosque and a Green Tomb, both belonging to Sultan Mehmed I, 1421 or so, which confirmed the shift from the more traditional Seljuk style to the more showy Ottoman.

I got back from that trip around midnight—and had to be ready to catch the plane for Cappadocia at 5 am, which made me glad I had nothing else scheduled today when I got to Ushidar, one of the “cities” in the area.  The gateway to Cappadocia is Kayseri, a town the Romans called Caesarea.  Yes, the empire stretched from London through Asia minor, and through much of north Africa.  One of the prominent early Christians in the biography of Constantine I’m reading was Bishop Eusebius, and tomorrow I guess I’ll get to see remains of the old Churches.  What’s interesting is the landscape, sort of like being in the Badlands—except that people carved homes and churches and hid from authority, especially for about 700 years.

Today, though, I wandered around dazzled by the scenery.  There are a lot of trails through the valleys and I walked about 2 hours on the Pigeon Valley trail—so named because locals used to cultivate pigeons for their manure, which they then used for agriculture.  The region is known for grapes, and my hike took me through vineyards.

As I said, I have two days of tours of the scenery and the history over the weekend.  I’m looking forward to it.  After yesterday, I’m very Bursa-tile.

My day began at 3 am, when I woke up to wish our students a pleasant flight home.  They’re probably in Chicago by now.

Here’s what I did on my own:

My touring began at 8: 15, when I headed for the tram to finish at least three more checklist items in the morning. The first was at the Archaeology Museum of Istanbul.  The guidebooks said it’s a good museum partly because it doesn’t attract the throngs who flock to the big attractions the way crowds do to the Forbidden City—or the ball games of some teams in Chicago.  The information was accurate about the lack of crowds, but the articles on display had some world class items.  The most important (bear in mind the museum has artifacts primarily from within the Ottoman Empire, which included the “Orient”—the near East) items were sarcophagi from Sidon, which were the reason the Ottomans built the neoclassical museum in the first place.  Huge burial boxes, well preserved, the tomb with the sculptures of Alexander the Great drawing the most attention; the King buried in it had battled on the side of Alexander, and the frieze commemorates their relationship.

The other outstanding area was a look at Greco-Roman statues, arranged chronologically—all from places that had been either Byzantine or Ottoman, and I’m happy to say that not all the Pergamon relics are in Berlin (and yes, there are some in Pergamon; Turkish antiquities required even in the 19^th century that some of the Sidon sarcophagi had to stay where they were.  The exhibit on Troy did note part of an ongoing archeological battle over ownership we’d seen elsewhere: that materials in one museum “ought” to be somewhere else—in this case not the New Museum in Berlin!  And one exhibit righteously noted that the mosaic, pictured in Istanbul, had been given back to its rightful ruler.

The other part of the museum I especially enjoyed was “Istanbul through the Ages,” an exhibit that featured what was and what is, with some wonderful explanations of what happened.  I learned, for example, that Bosphorus means “ox ford,” and it came to prominence when Darius and the Persians used a series of boats as a bridge to advance to battle the Greeks; I think one of the monuments to the Greek victory eventually wound up in Istanbul.  (Is it time for Greece to get indignant?) Unfortunately, part of the museum with Byzantine relics was closed—for earthquake proofing (I keep forgetting the Mediterranean is a ring of fire), and perhaps as part of Turkey’s bid for the 2020 Olympics.  Actually, it was fortunate, because if the Byzantine materials had been there, I would not have gotten to the other “must sees” on my checklist.

Second on my list for the morning were the Byzantine Cisterns, but on the way, I detoured when I passed Hagia Sophia and saw a sign that said the Sultan tombs were there, and “free.”  That’s one of my favorite trigger words, and you don’t see it much in Istanbul (not even special prices for seniors!) There are only a few, but one was designed by Sinan, quickly becoming my favorite Ottoman architect; whole families are usually buried together, but Murad (III, I think) had over 100 children; the family had a second tomb with a lot less decoration.  Interestingly, one of the tombs occupied the former baptistery. One of the tombs had an interesting art story. The Turks shipped the ceramics to France for restoration. The French copied the items and gave the copies to the Turks.  The originals are in the Louvre!  So much for honor!

The cool cistern (in more ways than one) was the result of an effort on behalf of the emperor Justinian to guarantee a water supply for the palace area, obtained from an area 18 miles away via a series aqueducts—another indication of the superior technical state of Byzantium over Western Europe at the time!  520 feet long, 100 feet wide, the “holding tank” is supported by a series of columns that would have done a temple proud.  Two pillars had wonderful heads of Medusa –on the bottom, not the top.

I also wanted to see what was left of the hippodrome, never having spent any time at what was the athletic complex of the Byzantines.  What’s left essentially are boundary markers—the Obelisk Theodosius brought from Egypt and the pillar Constantine brought from Delphi. An added treat was finding the “Million”—part of a triumphal arch from which all distances in the Eastern Roman empire were measured.

For the afternoon, I joined a Grey Line tour going through the former Pera area on the other side of the Golden Horn to the Dolmabahce Palace. I was not prepared for the 1850s neoclassical and rococo palace Abdulhamid built to replace the Topkapi Palace and indicate Turkey was a European power at a time when the Ottomans were desperately trying to modernize to keep the empire together. Greece had already sought its independence; I think Egypt had gotten its; Turkey, England and France were fighting Russia in the Crimea—and Abdulhamid had spent money building a palace that rivaled the big ones in Western Europe.  My favorite room reflects the efforts of German to woo the Ottomans—a vase from Kaiser Wilhelm, with his picture on it, and a statue and picture of Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor during the last half of the 19th century, as Germany and the Ottoman Empire forged the ties that helped bind them in a death dance in World War I based on their common enmity to Russia that would topple both the German and Ottoman Empires (as well as their Austro-Hungarian allies)

I treated myself to dinner in a restaurant I’d spotted last night in the Suleymaniye mosque area.  Adjacent to the mosque, the restaurant was built by noted court architect Mimar Sinan, and the menu featured “Sultan’s Delight,” a lamb and eggplant dish I don’t think I’ve seen at home—but then, we don’t have any Sultans in Bloomington-Normal.

I left the students at the Spice Market as they got ready to return home, and started to look for some sites that were not on my after-trip itinerary.

The first was the Archeology Museum of Turkey, but it was closed, so I wandered toward the Great Palace mosaic museum.  One of the problems Turkey finds with any building in the historic district is that the builders invariably find something they need to excavate before they build.  That was the case when they discovered the floor of the great palace which had housed the Byzantine rulers.  The mosaic covers about 200 feet, and is one of the largest in the world, as befits one of the largest empires in the world.

From there, I wandered the streets of Istanbul, going in the direction of a mosque I really wanted to see for two reasons: it contained the grave of Suleyman the Magnificent, the Sultan who brought Islam into central Europe, being turned back (by rain and snow, said our guide) only at the gates of Vienna, by a combined European force (that was a good application of the European Union!) when the Polish army under John Sobieski turned up in the nick of time.  Plus, the architect of the mosque was the famous Sinan, and I wanted to be sure to see one of his monumental buildings.  Both expectations were rewarded, and more.  To get there I had to pass one of the institutions that brings many people to Istanbul, and many Istanbul people into the streets—the Grand Bazaar, another post conquest institution, a covered market of 4,000 shops that would do China proud—everything from copperware to clothes, utensils to jewelry—low to high prices.  The streets were pretty crowded with shoppers and tourists (sometimes one and the same), but every so often would be a gem—the column Constantine brought to Constantinople that once stood in front of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi; Istanbul university, with its combination of classical/Islamic/modern buildings; and tombs of the former Sultans, including Bayazit, the second emperor, who sent his fleet to Barcelona in 1492 to bring Jewish refugees from the expulsion in Spain to the Ottoman Empire,and the late 19^th century sultan who courted (and was courted by) Kaiser Wilhelm, whose gift of a fountain is still on the tour routes—especially for German visitors. But not this year.  The fountain was being renovated.