| We arrived in Turkey from Rhodes, Greece. The largest and best-restored "Greek-style" ruins in Turkey are at Ephesus. This is the Library of Celsus (Caesar). |
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| The long-distance buses in Turkey were new and air-conditioned. The bus stations usually had a couple of eateries, a grocery, and, occasionally, lots and lots of pink detergent. |
| Konya is a conservative Muslim town. Almost all women had their heads covered and the men were also dressed conservatively. It is full of mosques and old Ottoman buildings and home to the whirling Dervishes. One reason I liked Konya so much was that it was a great place to watch ordinary people. The tourists were mostly confined to the area around the Mevlâna Museum, and the town was dense with local businesses. There is a wonderful restaurant called "Kösk", which serves Anatolian cuisine in an old mansion. There is also a decent non-touristy hamam where I had a massage and cleaning for less than $5. Another fun thing to do is to get a haircut at one of the numerous barbershops. For less than $5, you can get a haircut, shoulder massage, and a straight-razor shave. |
The landscape of Cappadochia is truly fantastic. The prime feature is the soft, crumbly rock they call "tufa". It erodes into ridges, then upright cones or even more bizarre shapes. The material is pretty crumbly, but when exposed to air, it hardens. This makes it the perfect material for digging caves, or chapels. Most of the larger cones and hillsides have niches, homes, or chapels carved into them. The soil is very rich, making Cappadochia the breadbasket of Turkey. They also make lots of awful wine.
| Göreme is the tourist center of Cappadochia. It is a small town immersed in odd rock formations. You can find reasonably-priced rooms in the cones or hillside caves. Even though this is the tourist center, only the large numbers of guest houses and carpet shops give it away. Your neighbors may still be feeding their goats and chickens, and riding in horsecarts. | 
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| The area around the town is all farmland. The fields are only interrupted by the rock formations and the occasional road. There is a nearby "open air" museum that houses fascinating rock churches. Some are quite elaborate, containing high-quality frescos. Cappadochia was the center of the early Christians in Turkey. They kept their churches hidden in the landscape. After the Greeks and Turks traded Muslims for Christians, these, like all churches in Turkey, were not cared for. Vandals threw pebbles at the frescos, leaving them heavily pockmarked, and the eyes of saints were usually scratched out. Recently, Turkey has decided to try to preserve these old remnants of Christianity, so much work is being done to restore the old churches. |
| The light at sunrise and sunset do amazing things to the stone faces of Göreme and the surrounding countryside. You start seeing contours and edges that are invisible in the heat of the day. And the color of the low sun brings warmth to the rock. | 
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| The nearby area of Zelve features "fairy chimneys". This one apparently has an inhabitant. |
| A little river has cut a lush, green gash in the landscape of Cappadochia. You can descend into the valley and hike through it. |
| Turkey has this odd ice cream that is elastic, possibly due to the orchid powder. It is often served in the streets by vendors who constantly stretch the stuff like taffy. Sometimes, they just have too much fun with it. I think it doesn't melt as fast as regular ice cream. |
| The origin of this stretchy ice cream is Maras. The best place to try it is Yasar Pastanesi, which is full of celebrity pictures. You are given a knife and fork to eat your dish of ice cream. |
| The produce was always excellent. Tomatoes and cucumbers were common and often served for breakfast with bread, honey, and eggs. There are fantastic melons in the summer. Diyarbakir is famous for its watermelons for good reason. Honey is also good in various parts of the country. I bought an inexpensive tin of Nur Bal honey in Marmaris. |
| There is also delicious fish. A good place to get a fresh fish sandwich (balik ekmek) is near the Galata Bridge in Istanbul. There are many little boats along the banks that grill fish and serve it with a little tomato as a sandwich. |
And don't even get me started on the pistachio-based desserts.
I went with a tiny tour group to see Nemrut Dagi at sunrise. We left around 3 in the morning for the long drive up the mountain. Normally, I would not bother going anywhere this early, but I didn't think I had a choice. With the Oçalan trial going on, there were so few tourists that I had to take what I could get in the way of transport to tourist sites. Almost all of the people there at sunrise were Turkish university students. Some had guitars, and there were huge outbursts of Kurdish song. I checked my Turkish guide for his reaction, but he seemed nonplussed. The crowds left right after the sun had risen, and we had the mountaintop nearly to ourselves.
| Nemrut Dagi is a mountain on which an enormous Commagen monument is erected. The whole top of a mountain was broken into little pebbles and left as a mound, which serves as a backdrop for statues of the Commagen pantheon. |
| Nemrut Dagi, Western Terrace |
Southeastern Turkey is predominantly Kurdish. Many identify more closely with the Kurds in the neighboring countries of Iran, Iraq, and Syria than with Turks. Until recently, Turkey had tried to assimilate the Kurds by banning the use of the Kurdish language and other cultural displays. Nowadays you will hear Kurdish pop in the east. However, some of the old fears of persecution remain. I learned how to greet people in Kurdish, which is usually warmly received, but some people nervously looked over their shoulders before smiling and answering back in Kurdish. I certainly wouldn't use Kurdish in front of the police.
There is certainly less tourism in the Kurdish east than in the Turkish west and south. Many people go to Turkey for the beach, but the east has so much history. The other thing that deters tourists is the PKK. The threat of the PKK to tourists might be overestimated, and I asked around to find out where the dangerous spots were. The only two were in Tunceli and Hakkari. Too bad, as many of the best traditional Kurdish textiles come from Hakkari, where violence broke out when Oçalan was sentenced.
I was traveling in a small tour van with a blonde woman and her parents. At the Ataturk Dam, a bunch of young Turks wanted to get this woman into their photographs. I figured that blondes were novel enough around here that she'd get bugged a lot. I offered to take their picture with her, then they waved me into the photo, then her parents. One of the young Turks finally took it.
| Harran has been inhabited for 6000 years, making it one of the oldest continuously-inhabited places in the world. It features beehive-shaped houses that seem to do a good job of maintaining a bearable temperature. They are suprisingly well-ventilated despite the lack of obvious vents. | 
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| You may get invited into one of the houses. This one has a gift shop and is sort of touristic, but I think it is a reasonable representative. |
| Sanliurfa is very close to the Syrian border. It is really hot, and it is amazing to see women in full black chador, like in Iran or Saudi Arabia, while the men are wearing the billowy white cotton. It has a large market, which is a good place to get spices and some handicrafts. |
The city of Diyarbakir was mentioned in the World's Most Dangerous Places travel guide, so I stopped by. It is an old city on the banks of the Tigris. The architecture is distinct, featuring alternating bands of black basalt and white stone. The city was once very heavily fortified, surrounded by concentric massive walls. The outermost one is pretty much intact.
The city receives few foreign visitors. When I arrived, I took a local bus and asked (in bad Turkish) to be dropped off at a particular intersection in the town center. Instead, I was dropped off somewhere nearby, and a small boy led me to a bank. Puzzled, I asked the person at the front desk if anyone spoke English. A suprised-looking man stood up behind him and told me that he did. He recently arrived from Western Turkey, having just started his job at this bank a month or so ago. He was startled to see a tourist in Diyarbakir, and told me that tourists come to Turkey for "sun and sex". He said that you go south and west for the beaches, and the center and east for history. Perhaps this is all the tourist information one can get in English in this town. He then gave me his phone number in case I needed help and directions to a nearby hotel.
There were many students in town. I was talking to a couple of med students on the top of the outermost city wall, when they abruptly said, "if he asks, tell him you don't know us," and wandered off a couple of paces looking nonchalant. A policeman walked by, and the med students returned and we continued talking.
I don't have photos of any tourist sites in Van. It is only a few kilometers from Iran, and I bumped into a couple of Iranian refugees there. I was actually kind of disappointed. I was hoping that by travelling as far east as I could, I'd see a totally different place. But Van is just a quiet college town with lots of patroling soldiers. I intended to visit the nearby Akdamar Kilisesi (castle), which is on an island in a lake, but it would have been prohibitively expensive. If there were more tourists, there would have been a regular minibus service to Akdamar, but threats of PKK violence kept visitors away, and the only way to get there is to hire a car (approximately $100). And there's the matter of figuring out how to get from the lakeshore to the island. The other postcard-worthy target is the Van cat, which is a fluffy white cat with one green eye and one blue. Didn't see a single one. Someone explained to me that people often keep them indoors so they don't get stolen.
I may have been the only tourist in Van. When I went to dinner, lots of servers would stop by to say hi, and at one point, the cook stepped out to give me extra sauce. Lots of young kids wanted to practice their English on me. A few showed me a around town a bit, stopping by the stores of their relatives for a cup of tea (and happily not to buy things).
I visited Van Kalesi, just on the edge of town. It is a large structure on a hill, largely in ruins. The side of a sheer cliff under the castle was full of little burial caves surrounded by interesting cuneiform writing. These areas were completely enclosed in cyclone fencing with a catwalk underneath. I assume that these were open when there were tourists. I was the only one there, so I had to cling to these fences in order to see anything.
I took a minibus ride to the town of Dogubeyazit, which is a little north and east of Van. I was told that you can get consumer goods cheap, as it is on a popular trading and smuggling route with Iran. I came to see Ishak Pasa, an 18th- century castle on a hill. I stopped by the tourist office, where the guy wanted to sell me a tour of the Ishak Pasa, the Iranian border, and a few other sites. Unfortunately there were no other tourists around, making the tour prohibitively expensive. I told him that I'd just get a cab to the Ishak Pasa, and he plaintively asked if he could come along because he was so bored. We went together, and the castle was beautiful.
I was stuck in the remote town of Igdir for a few hours. It was the only town I could get to from Dogubeyazit. At the bus station, I talked to a couple of Turkish students waiting to catch the $25, 30+ hour bus back to Istanbul. They were reading a newspaper, and on the front page I recognized a scene from "Midnight Express", which is still much-hated in Turkey. A couple of days later, I saw that the TV news was running stories about how a Turkish police officer was offering evidence that the events of "Midnight Express" were lies. I stopped by the little food mart at the station, which was run by a curly-haired young boy. When he saw me, he asked (in Turkish) if I was Chinese. When I gold him that I was, his eyes lit up and he removed my glasses so he could stare at my face. I then noticed that his features were vaguely Asian. He put my glasses back on, then started ripping open little packs of chips and sodas and handing them to me. I could not understand him, but his pleasure was obvious. I have no idea why he was so excited to meet an Asian.
| The Black Sea is where many Turkish tourists go, as well as people from Eastern Europe. It is lush and green and is known for its seafood. The most famous local fish is hamsi, but I was unable to find any because they were out of season and they are disappearing from overfishing. Sumela Monastary, near Trabzon, is renowned for is setting. The frescos, damaged by neglect and rock-throwing, are under restoration. This area is known for the large number of Russian prostitutes, known as Natashas. There are lots of Russian bars and cafes. |
I ran into a couple of British tourists who claimed that the Turks along the Black Sea are the friendliest in Turkey. In small towns, they never had to pay for a hotel room. It was an honor to show hospitality to foreigners.
| Ottoman house, Istanbul |
| The architectural monuments are crowded on the European side of Istanbul. To the left is Hagia Sophia, an enormous church in the style of a mosque. |
| Sultanahmet, the "blue mosque", is the largest. There is no entry charge, but there is a dress code, as there is in all the mosques. No shorts, exposed shoulders (e.g. tank tops), or skirts above the knees. You will be issued a skirt if you need to cover your legs, even if you are a man with hairy legs. Women cover their heads with scarves, which are handy for women tourists to have on hand. Visitors are also required to take off your shoes, which you can carry around in a borrowed plastic bag. Typically, shoes are just left by the entrance, but the Sultanahmet is so large that you may leave the mosque far from the shoe racks at the entrance. |
| There are many beautiful buildings from the 1910's on the Asian side of Istanbul. They are the remnants from the properous European traders. Many of the owners had left long ago, and the ownership of the buildings is uncertain, which allows people to essentially squat in some of them. Along the main street, the lower floor would typically have a commercial storefront and the upper stories were residential or held tiny bars where people would sit in the balcony all day. |