All in a life: holiday, murder, dislocation, death, and commemoration

        

        

          Last weekend, Friday through Sunday, we enjoyed the Ramazan Bayramı, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan (Ramazan, in Turkish).  Although I am not Muslim, I happily greet Muslim holidays in the spirit they are celebrated, with joy, peace, and renewed solidarity with friends and family, and rejoicing in the divine. Friday our university campus was totally quiet, not a soul in sight. Midday I went out for an hour’s walk, from the main campus beyond the Music Faculty to the east campus and back.  I delighted in the trees, bushes, and flowers, flourishing thanks to an exceptionally rainy June; the clear view on this sunny day toward the heart of Ankara and the mountains beyond; and the wonderful silence.

 Mmmm -- Ramazan bread (pide) -- but now we'll have to wait til next year

        Friday our university campus was totally quiet, not a soul in sight. Midday I went out for an hour’s walk, from the main campus beyond the Music Faculty to the east campus and back.  I delighted in the trees, bushes, and flowers, flourishing thanks to an exceptionally rainy June; the clear view on this sunny day toward the heart of Ankara and the mountains beyond; and the wonderful silence. 

         The calm was shattered Monday, July 20, with an explosion in Suruç, a town near the Syrian border, in which over 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured.  The dead included Turkish university students heading across the border to help reconstruction efforts in Kobane, a Kurdish-held Syrian town severely damaged in an attack from ISIL.  The perpetrator has been identified as a suicide bomber, a young Turkish man, perhaps a recruit from ISIL.  This tragic event has shocked the country, and perturbed the political discourse at a time when the AK Party, the largest in Parliament, is seeking to form a coalition government.  How could this happen?  Security lapses?  Who is responsible?  Have the government’s policies toward Syria and toward the Kurds been as wise, far-sighted, and effective as the government has been telling us?  Is the country being adequately protected?  What next??  Accusations are flying back and forth, and the public is concerned. 

 Westward Ho!  

View from the ancient city of Assos (Turkey) toward the island of 

Lesbos / Mytilini (Greece)

 

         At the same time, hundreds, thousands of Syrian, Afghani, and other refugees are crossing Turkey aiming for Europe.  Greece is the first destination, for the islands offshore from the Anatolian coast are so close.  Friends with a summer house near Behramkale, ancient Assos, recount how every day men, women, and children set off in rubber boats from their nearby beach to cross to Lesbos (Mytilini), the large Greek island only 5.5 km distant. Turkish, Greek, and German boats watch but don’t intervene.  People smugglers are making lots of money. 

Link to a short video from the New York Times: 

http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000003757489/migrants-overwhelm-island-of-lesbos.html 

Roman aqueduct on Lesbos

 

Once on Lesbos, the ordeal only continues.  Locals resent their presence.  The refugees must make their way (even on foot) to the island’s main city, be registered, then take a ship for Athens for the next step in their journey.   

 Tranquil harbor, Lesbos (north shore)

Most wish to end up in Germany, thinking the economy will absorb them.  Why don’t they try to make a go of it in Turkey, where the culture is similar, the religion the same?  Germany and France are not large melting pots like the US; in these countries, outsiders have trouble integrating.  The more newcomers that arrive, the greater the tensions. Peace in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa would be an answer, but who has solutions for that?  It’s a cruel, sad dilemma.

 

         

          Another death came earlier, but this was not a surprise. Süleyman Demirel (above) passed away on  June 17th, age 90, and was laid to rest after a state funeral.  Six times prime minister of Turkey, then president (1993-2000), Demirel was a dominant politician from the mid-1960s on.  For all that, I can’t say his legacy was extraordinary.  He was trained as a hydraulic engineer, and it is in dams and other big public construction projects that he made his mark.  For larger political concerns, such as human rights, international relations, Turkey in the European Union, he was more reactive than proactive.  His great strength, as far as I can tell, was his ability to relate to people.  His nickname was “Baba” (“father”) and he made a virtue of his small-town origins near Isparta.  He made people feel comfortable, whether addressing crowds (waving his trademark fedora hat) or in one-on-one meetings.  I met him only once, at a reception at the Çankaya Palace, during his term as president, at which İhsan Doğramacı, the founder of Bilkent University, was presented with a medal.  I went through the receiving line; as we shook hands, Demirel gave me a piercing look.  With total concentration on me as an individual, he was surely asking himself, “Who is this man?  Should I know him?”  Others would have perfunctorily greeted me, but I now understand this focused interest in everyone, absolutely everyone, was his great talent.  Whether it led to great things for the country, that’s another matter.  

Guests gather in the Lydian garden (Sardis)

The same week, Marie-Henriette and I went to Sardis for a commemoration of the late excavation director, Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr.  Some 30 members of Greenie’s family and numerous archaeologist friends came for the unveiling of a monument in his honor, a small stele in the ancient Athenian manner, in the informal “Lydian garden” adjacent to the excavation house.   

The next day, excursions.  Family and friends climbed the acropolis, a sharp, eroded peak that dominates the hilly landscape. 

Although I had visited Sardis several times, I had never had the opportunity to do this, so up I, too, climbed.  The top is occupied by a ruined fortress of early Byzantine times. Much spolia was used in the construction, pieces from earlier Roman buildings that were recycled here. The effort to carry up the blocks and other materials and to construct the fort in this dizzying setting must have been considerable. 

Nicholas Cahill, the current Sardis excavations director, told me that this fort has never been fully studied. What a great research project this would be!  But you would need solid thighs for the lengthy walk up and down each day, not to mention nerves of steel and complete immunity from acrophobia in order to record the precariously positioned walls. 

 Temple of Artemis with platform set up for the musicians 

         That evening family, archaeologists, and the public at large were treated to a concert at the edge of the ruined Temple of Artemis. The featured works were the “Sardis Symphony” and arias from an opera, “The Judgment of Midas,” both composed by Kamran İnce, a Turkish-American based in the US.  The Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, from my university, performed, with Kamran İnce himself as conductor.   

 Musicians wait before the concert

The setting was magical, with the temple’s two standing columns and the acropolis as the backdrop. 

 The audience, too, waits for the concert

In the balmy evening air, as sunlight gradually gave way to night, listening to Handel and Bach (arranged by Respighi) in addition to İnce’s pieces, the audience was transported. Afterward, as I walked back to the excavation house together with two of the musicians, one said to me, “I have seen the great temple at Didyma, but this place is truly enchanting (“büyülücü).”  I wholeheartedly agreed.