Ankara scribbler: July 2013

07/15/2013 (= July 15, 2013)

Time out: Istanbul

Since my Humanities / Social Sciences / Administration building is being renovated, with jackhammers attacking the flooring, electric cables dangling and draped every which way, and dust penetrating lungs, pores, and books, it was time to get out of Ankara.

Bilkent Stairs: demolished

I flew to Istanbul’s Asian airport, named for Sabiha Gökçen (1913-2001), Turkey’s first female combat pilot – a much calmer airport than the Atatürk airport on the European side – and took the airport bus to Taksim square.

Taksim, that early afternoon, was perfectly tranquil, even if the now-famous Gezi Park was still closed.

After reaching my hotel, I visited Hagia Sophia, not far away. The great nave of Hagia Sophia is once again dominated by scaffolding. Maintenance, conservation, and restoration of this almost 1500-year-old building must be a never-ending task.

Afterwards, while strolling around the building, I found the separate entrance that leads to a cluster of beautiful türbe (mausolea) of late 16th and 17th century sultans built along the south side of Hagia Sophia. In addition to admiring the buildings, I was curious to check evidence for an ongoing incident of international cultural conflict. The tile panel left of the entrance to the türbe of Selim II is pale in comparison to that on the right. Explanations in Turkish, English, and (unusual in this day and age) French tell us with indignation that the original tiles are in the Louvre, taken long ago for restoration but never returned, with French-made copies supplied instead. The Louvre denies that they hold the tiles illegally, so the dispute continues.

Mausoleum of Selim II: entrance (photo taken from the internet)

Above me, the call to prayer resounded. I was surprised, for the Hagia Sophia has been administered as a (secular) museum since 1935. But sure enough, powerful loudspeakers are mounted on at least one of the eastern minarets. “Ah, yes,” said a friend when I told her this, “but that’s not new; there’s a prayer room now, somewhere.” Surely it’s strange that a museum should be equipped with a prayer room and an amplified call to prayer – and provocative, if the building is the Hagia Sophia, whose symbolic importance as the leading church and then mosque of two empires still make emotions run high.

A Friday afternoon in early July along the Bosporus (at Emirgan)

That evening I had dinner at a rooftop restaurant with Laurel, my writing mentor from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, her sister and brother-in-law, and two friends. I presented Laurel with a copy of my historical mystery novel, Escape from Smyrna, just published (to be described in my next blog post!). A great moment for both of us, for I had begun work on this book when taking the fiction writing workshop she leads, many years ago. From the terrace, we could see the Sea of Marmara in one direction, the minarets of the Blue Mosque in another. A seagull missing a foot inspected us benignly from the railing where he (or she) was perched.

SALT: left of the Türkcell banner

The next day included visits to SALT – Beyoğlu and the Sakip Sabancı Museum. SALT is a research center devoted to contemporary art, architecture, and urbanism, located in the opulent neo-Baroque late 19th century building that once housed the headquarters of the Ottoman Bank. Had I been an account holder 100 years ago, I would have been duly reassured – and intimidated – by the grandeur. After a peek in the library, I went down to the first basement level for the temporary exhibit about architecture from the Soviet Union during the 1960s. Not for me, I quickly decided. Also not for me the permanent exhibit about the history of the Ottoman Bank – or so I thought until I started reading the panels and examining the photos and documents. In an instant I was hooked and, no longer aware of passing time, I made my way through this well organized, superbly displayed, and instructive exhibit about the financial history of the Bank, of Istanbul, indeed of the Ottoman Empire from 1850 on. Some of the bank’s massive vaults could be entered. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I had the place to myself – a total contrast with tourist-saturated Hagia Sophia.

Camondo Stairs (Kamondo Merdivenleri): still intact

Across from SALT are the Camondo Stairs, an undulating Baroque design that ascends to the parallel street uphill. These were built by Abraham Camondo, a wealthy Sephardic Jewish businessman, in the mid 19th century. Two of Abraham’s two grandsons, Abraham and Nissim, shifted operations to Paris. Although it made good business sense, the move would have tragic consequences. Nissim’s grandson, also named Nissim, died as a (French) fighter pilot in World War I. His father Moise converted the luxurious family town house into a museum in Nissim’s memory: the Nissim de Camondo Museum, which features Moise’s collection of 18th century French decorative arts. Next to the Parc Monceau, this museum is still today a highlight of northwest Paris. Moise died in 1935, and thus was spared the final act of the tragedy. During World War II, his daughter, Beatrice Reinach, pilot Nissim’s sister, would be deported to Auschwitz and murdered there, together with her husband and their two children.

Near SALT, across the street from the Camondo Stairs

After a quick lunch at a café along the Karaköy docks – to eat a local specialty of which I am very fond, kıymalı kol böreği (börek with ground meat, onions, raisins, and pine nuts) – I took a tramway then a bus up the Bosporus to Emirgan, to the Sakip Sabancı Museum, for I was keen to see the exhibit “1001 Faces of Orientalism.”

“Orientalism” refers to a 19th-20th century western European approach to the Ottoman Empire and the Near East: the exotic and the picturesque are emphasized. The late literary critic Edward Said, in an influential book, Orientalism (1978), saw this as a tool of European imperialistic domination. Said’s analysis, however pathbreaking, was too binary, too black & white. The reality is much more complex, as this exhibit aims to show. Ottomans were not just victims of western Orientalism; they also contributed to the movement and partook of it. Osman Hamdi Bey’s great Orientalist painting, “The Arms Merchant” (“Silah Taciri”), was on loan from the Ankara State Painting and Sculpture Museum. I was fascinated to learn that certain Ottoman buildings were influenced by the Alhambra, the 13th-14th c. palace in Granada, when the Alhambra became fashionable in the 19th century.

Visitors to the Sakip Sabancı Museum admire the gardens

After a dinner with friends, I returned to Ankara the next day, comfortably settled in a seat in the middle of the back row of a Kâmil Koç bus.

Posted at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/23/2013

Resistance, Turkish style

Last week, an American friend asked a Turkish colleague how a short-term consultancy project was going.

“Don’t you know what’s happening in this country?” she replied. “I’ve been demonstrating every night!”

And three weeks after pro-park activists in Istanbul were first blasted with tear gas and water cannons, the protests continue. Even the recent Bilkent University graduation ceremony was not immune.

Bilkent students get ready

Preserving the park is now secondary. The main target of demonstrations is the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, specifically his harsh, uncompromising, accusatory rhetoric. He could easily have ended the crisis if he had responded with a modicum of humility (even the generic “Mistakes were made” type), as President Abdullah Gül and Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç did while he himself was away in North Africa, both conceding that the police had overreacted. An immediate offer to reconsider the park development plans would also have worked; he could even have assumed an ecologically-minded, pro-environmental position, potentially politically beneficial. But it is not in his nature to admit mistakes or even to accept that opposing viewpoints are worth taking into account. He has labeled the protestors as looters (çapulcu) and invoked plots, domestic and foreign, designed to destabilize the country. He is not interested in dialogue or compromise. Such intransigeance stiffens the opposition.

As journalist Andrew Finkel has just written: “At the end of May, something snapped, and the campaign to save Taksim’s trees became a campaign to change the country. And now the near-universal consensus about that mess is that, with their reckless brutality, the authorities stoked the very unrest they were hoping to quell.” [“The Civics of Civility.” Blog, in the New York Times, June 21, 2013] [http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/the-civics-of-civility/#more-10644]

Graduates from a very important Faculty (Humanities & Letters) prepare to enter the Odeon

Paternalistic, patriarchal traditions are still strong here, in the family and in institutions of all sorts. Political parties have typically coalesced around a charismatic man. He plays the role of a father; all should obey him. Wise leaders will seek the counsel of respected advisors, whereas others, trusting their own opinions more and more, prefer to be surrounded by yes-men.

But paternalistic, patriarchal patterns are breaking down. In the big cities, smaller, nuclear families are replacing the larger extended families. Children are independently minded; they no longer obey blindly, but seek dialogue with their elders. Such changes within the family are affecting relationships within professional and public institutions.

Into the Odeon for the graduation

The prime minister’s character was certainly formed long ago. But as a public personality, I think he became derailed with the Gaza crisis. Until December, 2008, relations between Turkey and Israel had been cordial and mutually beneficial. Ehud Olmert even visited Ankara in late December. Three days after he left, Israel attacked the Gaza strip (“Operation Cast Lead”). Olmert hadn’t breathed a word to Erdoğan. Erdoğan was furious. Did he (= Turkey) not deserve Olmert’s (= Israel’s) confidence? This perceived slight resulted in Erdoğan’s public outburst at Shimon Peres at Davos in late January – a denunciation that played well in conservative circles, where Israel has always been cast as the aggressor. Anger is seductive, and the prime minister, who expresses anger well, began to incorporate anger and insult more and more into his public addresses. In the parliamentary election campaign of 2011, Alevis were targeted. Bashar Assad, who had been treated warmly until he refused to take Erdoğan’s advice after the Syrian uprising began, became a reviled foe. And today the demonstrators are slandered, because by daring to question the government’s programs, they have revealed themselves as insolent, ungrateful, and seditious. They need to be put in their place, like rebellious children.

Students descend to get their diplomas

Gone, thus, is the early promise of the AKP rule, when foreign policy was to be “zero problems with neighbors,” thanks to which Turkey would be an important mediating force in regional conflicts, and when membership in the EU was sought, its qualifying criteria eagerly to be adopted. We’re back to “Fortress Turkey,” a deeply rooted outlook with a long history: we’ll go it alone, the world is against us.

Graduation cap: Diren! = Resist!

But the protestors won’t accept this. This is not the Turkey they want. Why not try for “zero problems with the neighbors?” Why not seek membership in the EU? Most importantly, why not encourage dialogue, in which the many viewpoints prevalent in this large, diverse country of 75 million can be expressed and debated? Surely the society is mature enough to allow this without the danger of fragmenting.

Certain members of the AKP may realize that this is possible, that Erdoğan’s authoritarian streak is not the best way. If so, how they will influence the political discourse in the years ahead, before the important elections of 2014 (municipal and presidential) and 2015 (parliamentary), will be keenly watched. Until the wind starts to blow in a different direction, though, protests of one sort or another will surely continue.

Resistors' wine of choice

Posted at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/01/2013

Gateway to summer

Yesterday afternoon, one hour before the deadline, I submitted grades for the spring semester. The adrenaline that had been sustaining me for days suddently vanished, and I began to melt in my chair. I had no energy to put even a tiny bit of order in the papers strewn over my desk. All was quiet: students had disappeared, colleagues were scarce, staff was about to leave. Even Fiero, the snack bar in the atrium of my Faculty building, was packing up early.

Room 133-A, freed

A few hours later, a treat: dinner at the Kumsal, a Black Sea fish restaurant in Kızılay. I hadn’t been there for a long time. The older waiters are still the same, veterans of the much regretted Körfez just around the block, now closed for a decade. What a pleasure to sit on the terrace, in balmy temperature, with like-minded pleasure seekers at closely packed tables, enjoying the meze, the fish, the rakı (whatever the prime minister might think of us), and conversation with friends!

The coming of summer was heralded first by the May Fest, or Spring Festival. My colleagues and I dread this annual event. The sound stage is set up close by, and the afternoon music, highly amplified, booms and blasts into our classrooms and offices.

Treats at the May Fest

One year our men’s WC was vandalized, the marble partitions between urinals ripped out and tossed out the window. A colleague once surprised in the ladies washroom a couple in flagrante delicto. And the adminstrators’ fear of alcohol consumption continues to be huge. A veritable army of security guards (female as well as male) was guarding access to the festival area. Nothing would be left to chance. And indeed, this year, things stayed tranquil.

Archers step forward

A concert is always provided at the large semi-outdoor theater, the Odeon. Murat Boz performed this year. A 9-year-old daughter of a colleague said to a friend of mine, “He’s very pop, but I can’t afford to miss this opportunity.”

From our apartment, not far from the Odeon, we could hear the concert, the swells of music and the roar of the crowd. A few weeks later, Candan Erçetin performed for the Bilkent alumni. Again, the crowd sang along. As someone who is incapable of remembering the words of Beatles’ songs which I have heard 1,000 times, I am always amazed at the capacity of Turkish audiences to sing along with accuracy and gusto.

May Fest thrills

Amidst the push to give exams, read papers, and assign grades, we in the Archaeology Department at Bilkent University were astounded to learn, according to a blog in Radikal, a leading daily newspaper, that a graduate student in our department, one Mustafa Marangoz, had, after nine months of survey, determined it likely that Solomon’s temple stood on the shores of the Sakarya River in central Anatolia. This would be a sensational find. But we have never had a student named Mustafa Marangoz, either graduate or undergraduate, and the possibility that Solomon built his great temple not in Jerusalem but in Anatolia is virtually nil.

The mysteries of journalism are infinite.

Posted at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

05/01/2013

Glorious Boğazköy

How better for an Ankara person to celebrate springtime than to head off to Boğazköy for the day? With a busload of nearly 30 students, Marie-Henriette as our expert guide, and Anne, a high school English teacher ready to film with her iPad, we set off last Saturday morning, early.

Boğazköy is the modern name for Hattusa, the capital of the Hittites, ca. 1600-1200 BC. The ruins, under excavation for over a century now by German archaeologists, extend over a vast and varied terrain, with hills, rocky outcroppings, and a deep gorge with a rushing stream.

With the sun out, not a cloud in the sky, a beautiful day was in store. Indeed, Hattusa was carpeted in green.

The Great Temple and the reconstructed section of city wall

Apart from four or five groups German, Japanese, and American seniors, with whom we jostled elbows at the rock-cut sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, the restaurant of the Aşıkoğlu Hotel, and the Sphinx Gate, no one else was around. The souvenir vendors must have been disappointed.

Selling souvenirs at Yazılıkaya

The light was brilliant, crisp, clear, evident at our first stop, Yazılıkaya, the 13th c. BC shrine dedicated to a New Year’s festival in honor of the storm god and the sun goddess.

Yazılıkaya: the main chamber. The storm god is visible on the rear wall, but the sun goddess is still in darkness (at the right)

I’ve been here so many times that it’s difficult to sense the sacred. Yet, as the sun shifted in the sky, slowly revealing the relief image of the Sun Goddess of Arinna on the rear wall of the sanctuary, as if a curtain were slowly pulled aside, I felt a certain excitement.

The storm god and the sun goddess greet each other

How did the Hittites experience these images? Was mid-day the high point, when the sun shines down on the sculptures? Or were they venerated at night, with torch light?

Students inspecting Yazılıkaya, Chamber B

After lunch, we visited the main site, our bus climbing the hill, then circling around and down, stopping frequently so we could get out and inspect the highlights: the Lion Gate; Yerkapı (the postern gate) & the Sphinx Gate above; the King’s Gate; the chambers to the underworld & nearby Nişantaş; Büyükkale (the hilltop where the administration and the royal palace were located); the Great Temple (Temple I); and the reconstructed section of the city wall.

The Lion Gate, with recently altered lion head (left side)

The reconstructed lion head on the north side of the Lion Gate still looks atrociously artificial. (See the detailed photo in my blog post of June 4, 2012). We’ll have to live with it, I guess.

A new surprise greeted us at the Sphinx Gate, where a copy of the Berlin Sphinx has been installed. It’s nice to have a copy there, to understand how the gate originally appeared. But the copy looked small to me (for a photo of the original, now in the local Boğazköy Museum, see my blog post of June 20, 2012). And I don’t think the average tourist would realize this is not the original.

Japanese photographers agog at the Sphinx Gate

Since Marie-Henriette was guiding the group, not me, I felt free to explore. For the first time ever, I ascended the Yerkapı / Sphinx Gate rampart by the west side, not the usual east staircase, just to see what it was like. Well, there’s a reason why we always ascend by the dramatic east staircase: the west stairs are irregular, not nearly so well preserved, and access at the top is blocked. Climbing them is a chore. Climbing the east staircase is an aerobic challenge, too, but as one goes up the steep steps, one is exalted by the grandness of this architectural marvel.

Time for a rest

At the end of the day, we returned to the Aşıkoğlu Hotel for refreshment before our 3-hour drive back to Ankara. Despite drinking a large glass of tea with some sugar, like most of the others, soon after we got going I fell asleep.

Posted at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/12/2013

What happened to the Istanbul Roma (Gypsies)?

Thanks to Eric Schneider who spotted this article in The Guardian, Ankara Scribbler has learned what happened to those Roma (Gypsies) who lived by the Byzantine Land Walls in Istanbul's Sulukule district ...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sulukule 'urban regeneration' programme sees new townhouses advertised at 10 times the price paid to evictees

Constanze Letsch in Istanbul

Wednesday 9 November 2011

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/09/sulukule-roma-housing-row-istanbul

----

As property deals go, it leaves a lot to be desired. But then the hundreds of Roma families living in the heart of Istanbul don't have a lot of choice in the matter.

An "urban regeneration" scheme that turfed thousands of Roma out of their historic settlement in Sulukule is now advertising new townhouses in the district at almost 10 times the price paid to the evictees. The Turkish authorities are being accused of deliberately driving out the Roma in the name of town planning.

The saga began in 2005 when the ruling AKP authorities decided that Sulukule, one of the oldest permanent Roma settlements in the world, and situated in the Istanbul district of Fatih, was to become an Urban Renewal Zone. It was part of a drive to expropriate property in dilapidated areas to boost modernisation – in part for safety reasons, in what is an earthquake-prone part of the world.

The 3,400 Roma living in Sulukule were forced to sell their homes for 500 Turkish Lira (£175) per sq metre to private investors and the Fatih municipality. Despite worldwide protests, a Unesco warning and court cases to halt the project, forced evictions and demolitions started in 2008. Now surrounded by construction fences, 640 "Ottoman-style" townhouses and offices are springing up on the 22-acre (nine-hectare) site that had housed the local Roma population for over a millennium. The price of the new properties? From TL 3,500 to TL 4,500 per sq metre.

"It is clear that none of the former residents will be able to afford a flat here," said Sükrü Pündük, President of the Sulukule Roma Cultural Development and Solidarity Association, adding that one in four Sulukule residents lives on TL 300 per month. "Most people do not have a fixed income, and live from day to day. This was never meant to be a regeneration project, but a project to generate profit, and to force Roma away from the city centre."

Just outside the construction area Sami Zogun, a former Sulukule resident of more than 40 years, waits for the bus to take him on the one-and-a-half-hour trip to a new development in Tasogluk, a high-rise satellite city constructed on behalf of the public housing development administration, TOKI, roughly 30 miles from the city centre. A single ticket costs TL 2.40.

Zogun says that when his friend and landlord sold the 30 sq metre three-storey listed house that he and his wife had inhabited at a modest rent, they moved to Tasogluk, where they must pay TL 550 to cover the rent, bills and the commute. His son had to sell his own apartment for the family to afford it.

"If I would have owned that house, I would not have sold them a single needle in it," he says. "To me, our little wooden house was paradise. The new TOKI houses feel like a golden cage. There is no life there; nothing to do."

Lorry driver Metin Ates says that he and his family moved back from Tasogluk a year after they left Sulukule. "It was too expensive for us. We just couldn't make ends meet there." Once a house owner, Ates was unable to buy another property in the area with the money he received for selling his Sulukule house and now lives in a small flat in a neighbouring district with his wife and three children, paying TL 500 a month. "They ruined us. They destroyed our community."

Like Ates, all but six of the 300 families that moved to Tasogluk in 2008 came back to Sulukule because they were unable to pay the monthly rates, the bills for gas, water and electricity, and the fares for the journey back to Istanbul in order to secure what is a very modest income – Tasogluk did not offer any jobs at all.

Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International's Turkey researcher, told the Guardian: "Although on paper there is provision for alternative housing in the form of these TOKI houses, we see that the houses which are – on paper – are available to the people displaced from Sulukule are not appropriate, they're not affordable."

He added: "The right to housing does not preclude urban regeneration. But it has to be done respecting [the rights] and wishes of the people living in these areas."

Mücella Yapici of the Istanbul Chamber of Architects says all of Turkey's urban regeneration schemes are centred on house ownership. "Tenants are never even taken into account, despite them being the most vulnerable," she said. While the Istanbul average for renting stands between 20% and 30% of households, the number of tenants in Sulukule topped 50%; many residents were simply too poor to afford their own property.

"Homelessness never used to be a serious issue in Istanbul. But the demolitions and evictions led to a dramatic increase of people with nowhere to go. They are not safer, but more vulnerable in the case of a natural disaster," says Yapici.

"In a way these urban renewal projects which were presented as a remedy to earthquakes cause the same economic and social damage: the forced loss of a person's home, work, and social ties in a neighbourhood."

guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2013 Registered in England and Wales No. 908396 Registered office: PO Box 68164, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1P 2AP

Posted at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/03/2013

Mor Yakub & Mor Gabriel [Road trip: Mardin, Day 2 -- afternoon]

After leaving Hasankeyf, we headed south to visit two Syriac churches. Our first stop was the church of Mor Yakub Hbishoyo (St. Jacob the Recluse), on the outskirts of the village of Salah. Recently restored, this impressive medium-sized church was in good condition, surely thanks to remittances from Suryani living elsewhere, for the priest told us the local village had very few Christians these days.

Church of Mor Yakub, on a rainy November afternoon
The prayer hall is covered lengthwise by a huge barrel vault with three sections of concentric squares made of bricks. Off the prayer hall are niches for the altars. This plan, a rectangle with the altar off the long side, not at the short end, recalls ancient Babylonian temples. A coincidence? Or can a continuous thread be traced through antiquity, despite changes in religion?

Inside the church of Mor Yakub

The surrounding complex, built in the same attractive local yellow stone used for the church, houses a small ecclesiastical school (for boarders), guest quarters, and offices. A stone carving tradition continues in these new buildings, both for plain blocks and for decorative motifs, for we saw several examples of this, even at a gas station on the road from Mardin to Midyat. This stone is vastly more appealing than cement, so it’s nice to see it is still being used.

Gas station in Tur Abdin
Then, lunch in Midyat, in a restored han. From my Hungarian companions at the lunch table I learned that some 10% of Hungarians are Romani or Roma (= Gypsies). I’m teaching introductory Cultural Anthropology this semester, and oddly, Gypsies did not come up when I asked the students about ethnic groups in Turkey. Kurds, Laz, Armenians, Jews, and Greeks yes, but not Gypsies. I remember Gypsies used to live by the Theodosian Land Walls (as seen in the early James Bond film, “From Russia with Love”) until the Istanbul municipality decided to upgrade the neighborhood. Where the Gypsies were resettled I don’t know. (Readers, can you help me?) Apart from music – I received as a birthday present this year a CD of Selim Sesler, a Roma clarinetist from Turkish Thrace – I know very little about Gypsies in Turkey but writing these sentences has piqued my curiosity to learn more.

Midyat is known for ornate silver filigree jewelry, so after lunch, shoppers among us went in search of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.
Mor Gabriel (St. Gabriel) is the major church and monastery of the region, founded in 397 (official date). Off by itself, 2 km from Kartmin village, it seems remote. Surprising, then, to hear that local (non-Christian) villagers have made claims on the land that the monastery says has belonged to it forever. If this were Aegean or Mediterranean coastal land, or property in Istanbul, such a battle would be normal. As we drove closer all I could see was scrub vegetation across the gently undulating landscape. The claims would seem to come from greed or spite – or both.

The main church at Mor Gabriel monastery
It was raining and chilly, so we didn’t linger at the monastery. I did note the fragment of an early medieval mosaic (early 5th c.?) in one of the altar niches off the main barrel-vaulted prayer hall. These churches are surely of great age, even if much remodeled. Curiously, they have not been much studied; specialists in medieval and early modern architecture have preferred Byzantine and Islamic.

Mosaic at Mor Gabriel: early 5th century?
Before we left, I took advantage of the magnificently large and well appointed restrooms, built since my one previous visit some 12 or 13 years ago.
For security reasons, the official Americans among us could not be on the country roads after dark, so we didn’t linger. To warm ourselves on the way back to Mardin, we broke out the wine (a Friends of ARIT custom), one bottle of white, one of red. Dinner at the Hilton Garden Inn was sober: köfte, rice, and salad. Upstairs, our corridor remained quiet through the night, for the battling couple of the previous evening had made peace ... or been thrown out of the hotel.

Book recommendation: For more on Syriac Christianity in Tur Abdin, with great illustrations --
Hollerweger, Hans. 1999. Turabdin, Living Cultural Heritage. Linz, Austria: Freunde des Tur Abdin. (text in English, German, and Turkish). ISBN: 3-9501039-0-2

Posted at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

02/19/2013

Condemned to die: Hasankeyf [Road trip: Mardin. Day 2]

The following morning, after sampling the lavish breakfast offerings at the Hilton Garden Inn, we left Mardin and drove north to Hasankeyf.

Traffic jam, Mardin to Hasankeyf
Hasankeyf is a town strikingly located by a cliff rising up from the Tigris River. Important in the later Middle Ages, when Artukid and then Ayyubid families maintained it as a key stop on the trade route from central Anatolia to Syria, the town contains many buildings from this period. On top are ruined palaces, today inaccessible because of large and menacing cracks in the rock. Lower down, on sloping ground, are remains of the medieval town, confined in a protected archaeological site, and mosques with elegant inscriptions in Arabic.

Inscription on a minaret
The modern town, in contrast, is small and, I have to say, not particularly distinguished.

Gourmet dining
Across the river on flat ground stands a türbe, or mausoleum, of Zeynel Bey, a local prince who died in battle in 1473, with much of its intricate tile decoration still in place. Nearby, more excavation areas. Farm fields stretch into the distance.

Julian and friends at Zeynel Bey's mausoleum
Hasankeyf is scheduled to disappear within the next few years, when the waters behind the Ilısu Dam (now under construction, after many delays) rise nearly to the palace on top of the cliffs. The town has become a center for Kurdish identity, in this region of southeastern Turkey in which Kurds form an important ethnic component. Kurdish or not, the visitor cannot fail to regret the destruction of such an evocative historical site.
“For 50 years of electricity, they are destroying 5,000 years of civilization,” the guard at the Zeynel Bey mausoleum said sadly.

View from Hasankeyf across the Tigris to the Mausoleum of Zeynel Bey (far right)
            Dams are contentious constructions. Although they bring much good – electricity, regulated water supplies for farmlands – dams alter the ecosystem (humidity rises, which mosquitoes like), force locals to uproot themselves and resettle elsewhere, and destroy cultural and natural features. Their lifetime is limited, as silt accumulates behind them.
            One suspects that technology has developed less invasive ways of producing energy, but the state’s investment in such monster projects, often conceived decades ago, is huge. They are Goliaths that modern-day Davids can rarely fell. Exceptions are rare. Zeugma, a Roman city on the Euphrates, richly endowed with beautiful floor mosaics, benefitted from a chorus of international howls that arose when dam waters were rising. More typical is the fate of Allianoi, the unique Roman thermal center near Pergamon, which thousands of Turkish signatures couldn’t save from death by drowning.

Overcome by emotion ... (don't worry; a few minutes after I took this picture the old man woke up, got up, and strolled off)

Saying farewell to Hasankeyf, we climbed into our minibus and headed south to Midyat and the monastery of Mor Gabriel.

Posted at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

01/22/2013

That mighty seductress, Snow

            Snow is wonderful if you don't have to go anywhere. A favorite moment in Ankara: heavy snowfall some morning from Monday through Friday during the semester; the university closes; by lunchtime staff and students have left. All is quiet and still and the snow continues to fall. The afternoon is mine, and I am free.
            Last Thursday Marie-Henriette and I were heading to Paris for a short between-semesters change of scene. Until we arrived, snow would not be welcome, but snow has a mind of its own. Heavy snowfall in Munich, our transit point, delayed our flight from Ankara. In Munich we waited two hours in the plane for Paris until the pilot announced the flight was cancelled. It was midnight. We had to appear at 5 am to obtain new seats for Paris. All airport services shut down; Lufthansa personnel vanished. Munich hotels were full. There we stood, in a daze, along with hundreds of others.
            We stretched out on some seats, made makeshift pillows, secured our valuables, and draped our overcoats over ourselves. At 2 am we were awakened by a tremendous din. A rescue squad in uniform had arrived with a big supply of folding cots with metal frames. As people set about assembling their cots, the separate end pieces invariably dropped to the ground, making a banging sound. Multiply that by 50, 100, 500 times and you will understand how that atonal symphony wrecked our sleep.

Stranded passengers asleep in the Munich airport
            The next afternoon we made it to Paris. On our first leg, from Munich to Frankfurt, two Turkish people talking calmly across the aisle from us were soon overwhelmed by four youngish and exuberant Englishmen, not Cambridge or Oxford, whose minds were fixed on loud fun (laughing, shouting) and alcohol. During the 35-minute flight they downed a first drink, beer or red wine (vodka not being available), then nabbed a second when the hostess passed by on her return to the galley.
            Our suitcases didn't make it, though. Today, four days later, delivery looks possible. At first I mistakenly dialed the wrong number. A certain Mr. DaCosta will no doubt be surprised to hear on his answering machine a question about delivery of lost bags.
            In Paris it was snowing, too. Saturday midday we went to the Louvre to meet a friend. I felt I was in an Impressionist painting.

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel
We traversed the Grand Gallery. The Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings are infinite.

Artist paints the Grand Gallery
I passed a familiar face: Trajan, the Roman emperor who died on Turkey's south coast, captured in marble, his bust placed in front of a mirror between classicizing columns.

Trajan (2nd c.)
Jean, our friend, took us to spacious rooms devoted to art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (north and south). The sculptures were exquisite or startling -- or both -- and no one was there. We had the art all to ourselves.

Kuka'ilimoku, a Hawaiian god (18th c.) -- originally decorated with red feathers
After lunch, I returned to visit the newly opened Islamic art exhibits. As I rode up the escalator, I heard someone call my name. It was Rana, a student of ours from the mid 1990s, visiting Paris with her husband Sabri, a helicopter pilot. I'm sure we hadn't seen each other since Marie-Henriette and I attended their wedding in Ankara long ago. We exchanged news; it was a pleasure to reconnect.
As I continued on, I had to smile. Wherever one may be, Turkey is not far away.

Posted at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

12/31/2012

Happy New Year 2013!

Ankara Scribbler wishes his Faithful Readers a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!
Some advice for 2013:
1) Whatever the ups and downs of life, be sure to keep up your curiosity.

Turkish tourists marvel at the famous amphora by the Polyphemus Painter, ca. 670-650 BC (Eleusis Museum, Greece)

2) Enjoy the simple things of life.

Children playing amidst Roman ruins at Dara (southeast Turkey)

3) If stress overcomes you, either sit back and enjoy the view:

Modern town of Delphi (Greece)

or just ROAR!

Recently recreated Hittite lion at the Lion Gate, Hattusa / Boğazköy

Posted at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

12/09/2012

Road trip: Mardin

Nine Americans and two Hungarians – we set off one Saturday morning in mid-November with our English guide, my colleague Julian Bennett, for a 3-day trip to Mardin and vicinity. After arrival at the Diyarbakır airport, we met our Turkish guide, Müslim, and headed off in a minibus for Mardin. I had visited Mardin only once before, in 2000, in a tour led by my late and much regretted colleague, Norbert Karg, a German from Bavaria, an extraordinarily knowledgeable specialist in the Ancient Near East with a great fondness for southeast Turkey. I once sat in on one of his MA seminars, which he began by asking, “What happened in 1531 BC?” The answer is: the Hittites, led by their king Mursili I, sacked Babylon (this date according to the Low Chronology). None of the students could answer the question, and one, severely intimidated, promptly dropped the course. A pity, for Norbert was generous toward all those who were interested and were ready to make an effort, however minimal their background might be. But there were limits to his generosity. He loved maps, as I do, and always included a map question on his tests. For students who located Troy in southern Iraq or Babylon in the Mediterranean Sea, he had nothing but scorn. But he would then have the joy of uttering his favorite English expression: “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” -- followed by a big laugh.

Mardin: the old city
The historic center of Mardin occupies the south slope of a substantial mountain that marks the north end of the Syrian plain. At an elevation of 1000m, one gazes onto a flat plain that stretches into infinity. The old (18th-early 20th c.) houses are lovely, built of cream-colored limestone. Modern post-WW II construction consists of ugly, cheap concrete structures, whose only saving grace is that when seen from afar their faded coloring blends in with the traditional limestone. The main street was being dug up, so our minibus left us off at the west end and we trudged ahead, dodging excavated holes, piles of sand, and, because some rain had fallen, patches of slick mud. Awaiting us was an excellent lunch in an 18th c. mansion. I particularly liked the “irok” (known elsewhere in Turkey as “içli köfte,” a meatball embedded in a shell of deep-fried bulgur) and its cousin, the “ikbeybet,” a dumpling with a ground meat fill; the spicy and lemony stuffed grape leaves; and an amazing ginger and cinnamon-flavored pudding that reminded us Americans of the filling of the pumpkin pie we eat every year at Thanksgiving.
After lunch we continued our walk across the hillside. Our first stop was the archaeological museum, recently opened in what once served as the residence of the Syriac Orthodox patriarch. That was long ago, for the patriarch left Mardin for Syria in 1933. Made of limestone in the traditional manner, now light orange in color, with beautiful carved decoration, columns and capitals in a classical manner, terraces looking south toward the Syrian plain, with a children’s educational area at its foot, this grand building is surrounded today by rather shabby modern buildings around a medium-sized square. The display, although not extensive, had interesting things for us to see. The most notable, two bronze face masks from Roman cavalry helmets, a rare find in Turkey, were in the only niche where the lighting didn't work.

Archaeological Museum
From here we walked futher east and then climbed a flight of stairs to the Sultan İsa Medrese, originally a theological school, now an impressive historical monument with a section upstairs reserved for use by the Modern Languages department of Mardin’s Artukid University. Rainclouds, breaks of clear sky, and the late afternoon sunlight made the view spectacular. Down the steps we went, and by now it was getting dark, although well before 5 pm. Our last stop was the Church of the Forty Martyrs, a Syriac Orthodox church. The martyrs were Roman soldiers, followers of Jesus, who froze to death in a lake near today’s Sivas, in north central Anatolia, rather than renounce their faith. The church in very good condition, especially considering that the number of Christians now resident in Mardin is very few.

The Syriac Orthodox church broke away from mainstream Christianity in the mid-fifth century. Despite the use of the term “orthodox,” it has nothing to do with the Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, and other Orthodox churches grouped under the aegis of the patriarch in Istanbul. A priest kindly explained its liturgical practices, such as the antiphonal chanting of hymns by two groups, one standing at the front left of the nave, the other at the front right. The hymn books were in Aramaic, the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox church. Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke. Widespread in ancient times, today it survives only in a few remote spots.

Church of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste
The decorations here, and in the other Syriac Orthodox churches we would see the next two days, puzzled me. They are few, in contrast with the profusion of images seen in a Greek Orthodox church or many Roman Catholic churches, but familiar figures are shown: Jesus, Mary, saints, religious events. The style is neither Greek Orthodox nor western European, but instead often seems modern “primitive,” like Grandma Moses – an American folk artist who was talked about in my childhood in the 1950s, whom I haven’t heard mentioned for years but who has just now popped into my head as I write this, a self-taught artist who pursued her passion into an advanced old age.
Our minibus was close at hand and drove us to our hotel, the Garden Inn Hilton. We wondered how a small city (85,000 population) such as Mardin could support a lavish hotel such as a Hilton. Our tour guide explained: many tourists come in the spring and early fall. Maybe, too, the hotel was planned when relations between Turkey and Syria were warm, when visas were abolished and Syrians came frequently for shopping to this and other border cities, all with substantial Arabic-speaking populations, just as Turkish citizens headed for Aleppo and other north Syrian cities. All that cross-border interaction has now completely stopped because of the conflict in Syria.

View southward ... to Syria
After dinner, Marie-Henriette and I watched a bit of TV and were reading when we heard shouting. Louder and louder, a man and a woman. It sounded like violence, and when it seemed to come from the corridor in front of our room I couldn’t restrain myself, I had to look. I opened the door and peered out. There, in the corridor, a young woman, fully dressed in jeans fashionably torn (not recently ripped) and a young man only in boxer shorts (briefs, said Marie-Henriette) were screaming at each other. A man from the hotel reception (summoned, I learned the next morning, by some alarmed members of our group) was trying timidly to calm them down and herd them back to their room. I could hardly continue staring, much less learn the full story, so there was nothing to do but shut the door, return to the vast king-size bed, and, at the end of this very long day, fall asleep.

Posted at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (641)

Ankara scribbler

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

ESCAPE FROM SMYRNA: a mystery novel

Monday, July 15, 2013