August 1st, the
midpoint of summer. It has been hot here
in Ankara, and despite a cooler weekend, the result of a huge storm in Istanbul
last week, hot days are predicted to return.
A nap in Ulus
I was in Ulus last Wednesday, in
particular to pay the semi-annual car tax.
An electronic panel registered the noonday temperature as 38 C (= 100
F). As my last stop I headed for the
huge covered market, looking for vişne (sour cherries), to make vishnovka, a
Russian sour cherry vodka. Vişne are
hard to find at our local markets; they are not for eating like sweet cherries,
but are used in cooking, for jams and for fruit juice, all fabulous. I also bought one kilo of apricots from Iğdır
(impossible to explain in English how this name is pronounced), a province in
far eastern Turkey, famous for its apricots and for Mt. Ararat. The greengrocer gave me one to try: sweet,
succulent, sublime.
The Ulus district is entirely different
from Bilkent, where I live. It’s
traditional Turkey, for people with modest incomes and a conservative bent,
with little shops of all sorts and the city’s religious epicenter, the 15th-century
Hacı Bayram Mosque.
Sign: "This street goes to the Hacı Bayram Mosque"
But Ulus has an
interestingly complex texture. As the
heart of ancient, medieval, and pre-Republican Ankara, Ulus has Roman ruins
(the Temple of Augustus and Roma),
Temple of Augustus and Roma
Seljuk mosques (of which the Arslanhane Mosque is the
greatest),
Inside the Arslanhane Mosque
Ottoman buildings (the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is located
in a restored han, or commercial building, of the 15th century), imposing government and bank buildings of the late 19th-early 20th centuries, the much-treasured early
parliament buildings of the Republic, and now an impressive cluster of museums.
Sign: "History comes alive again in Ankara!"
I bring my Byzantine & Islamic Art &
Archaeology students here in November, for a half-day walking tour, in and
around the medieval citadel, but that route has been set for years. Only if I
am by myself can I see the city freshly.
Ankara citadel: Byzantine fortifications
Is Ankara a great city? I don’t usually think so, but walking around Ulus makes
me wonder. I’ll take up the issue with
you later, after I finish reading Alexander Garvin’s recent book, What Makes a Great City. Garvin doesn’t discuss examples from
Turkey, though, not even Istanbul.
Instead, he concentrates on public spaces in European and North American
cities. Nonetheless, his insights deserve the
attention of those interested in the pros and cons of Turkish cities.
So-called Column of Julian (later 4th century), in Ulus
Driving back from Kaman a few weeks ago,
we noted that the posted population of Ankara is now just short of 5 ½ million. That’s incredible. I remember the city from the 1970s, with a
population of a mere one and a half million.
The character of the city still seems to me pretty much the same, even
with intense traffic, sprawl in all directions, sporadic
clusters of high-rise office and apartment buildings, and a handsome airport.
Kaman, a city of some 30,000 a two-hour
drive southeast of Ankara, is notable in archaeological circles for the multi-period
site of Kalehöyük (under excavation since 1985) and, nearby, the Japanese Institute
of Anatolian Archaeology (founded in 1998), an archaeological museum, and a
Japanese garden. The museum and the garden
are open to the public.
Inside the Kaman-Kalehöyük Museum
Although Kaman is not far from Ankara, driving
there gives you the feeling of going to a very remote place. After turning east off the main north-south
Ankara-Adana highway, the countryside starts to empty. Towns, such as there are, are off the main
road. Indeed, our archaeobotanist
colleague whom we would see at the Japanese Institute told us the land is not
particularly fertile, accentuated by the deforestation of recent times (late
Ottoman into the Republic). For agriculture, government subsidies are
needed.
We did note a new feature as we drove
along: at least three mescit, or Muslim chapels, next to the road. In the old days, if someone wanted to pray in
a remote spot, he stopped his car on the side of the road, got out, and prayed,
using a little prayer rug if he happened to have one.
One of the new mescit / chapels bore a prominent
dedication to the martyrs of 15 July, those who died during the attempted coup
d’état last year. July 15, whose
anniversary was recently commemorated, is being held up as the heroic moment in
Turkey’s recent history. The Atatürk
Boulevard entrance to the Meclis in Ankara, the Parliament, is now marked by
one-meter high blood-red blocks that say: 15 Temmuz Destanı (the July 15th
Epic).
A commemorative poster,
which makes the art historian me think of:
We crossed the Kızılırmak, the longest
river in Central Anatolia, at a point used for centuries for fording the
river. Above a 13th-century Seljuk
bridge is a promontory which the Hittites used as a fortress. This is the site of Büklükale, under
excavation by the Japanese Institute.
View from Büklükale down toward the Kızılırmak River, with the
Seljuk (lower) and modern (upper) bridges
I had forgotten to buy water before
setting out from Ankara and before long I was getting thirsty. There was nowhere to stop, though, without
driving off the main road into one of the small towns in the area. Eventually I saw a sign, Büfe/Market, and we pulled
over. I went in, took three small
bottles of water from the refrigerator, and asked the older man on duty, “Ne
kadar?” (“How much?”). He look at me ... paused ... then said, “Two
liras.” I paid, thanked him, went
out. I thought, that’s not right. Two liras divided by three; what would the
price per bottle be? Normally, one pays
50 kuruş ( ½ lira) for a small bottle, or perhaps 75 kuruş or even one lira in
the city. But not two liras for
three. A tiny rip-off, but a rip-off
nonetheless. A suprise, for these days,
now that the taxi stand at AŞTİ, Ankara’s central bus station, has cleaned up
its act, the only place I might expect such behavior would be the top touristic
districts in Istanbul.
Eventually we reached Kaman, and soon
after, the road for the Japanese Institute.
You can find the Institute's web site at:
http://www.jiaa-kaman.org/en/index.html
The Institute is a magnificent facility, offering space for processing, conserving,
analyzing, and storing finds from the three excavations and a surface survey
that the Institute runs during the temperate months. The projects are run in sequence: Büklükale
first, Kaman-Kalehöyük second, third Yassıhöyük (located to the east, not far
away), and, fourth and last, the regional survey. Our visit fell between the first two projects,
so there weren’t many people around. But
we had come to visit an Australian archaeobotanist who studies plant specimens
from Kinet Höyük as well as from Kalehöyük, and we greeted Kimiyoshi Matsumura,
the director of the Büklükale excavations, and two Bilkent MA students
analyzing Iron Age ceramics from the excavations at Yassıhöyük.
Autumn at the Japanese garden, Kaman
We had tea, and we visited the flotation
machine (a series of large barrels with water and sieves, designed to recover
seeds and other plant remains from soil samples) in the shelter of trees a few
minutes’ walk away. The lively
conversation continued during a nice lunch.
After lunch, we were given a tour of the laboratories, study spaces,
library, the grand lecture hall, and the storerooms. It’s a place devoted to archaeology; clearly
there is no time to do anything else.
And it’s a great testimony to the vision of the Institute director,
Sachihiro Omura, and his wife and fellow archaeologist, Masako Omura. May the Institute long prosper!
I lived in Ankara 2004-2006. I loved the city and the people. I was and still am a huge Ankaragucu fan. Thanks for the post and the memories it brings back.
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