Visiting Turkey

On this trip each stop was its own WOW moment that was completely different from the last one. I’m trying to process them and sew them together into a full picture of Turkey. It’s hard though. There was intense natural beauty with gorgeous hikes and exotic rock formations. There was the sparkling turquoise Mediterranean, with boat rides and dips in the clear blue waters. There were ruins sprinkled all over to constantly remind me of the depth of history. Then there was a modern day fashionable society. The clothes stores were filled with all the NY Fashion Week trends. Bars and restaurants pulsed with life. Cafes lined every sidewalk with Turks spending lots of time sipping tea. Though in theory Islam forbids drinking alcohol, the Turkish are big wine producers and there are cold Efes, Tuborgs and Bomonti beers at almost every stop. 

Centuries of history with civilizations from as far back as 4000 BC blend into each other on a canvass that makes up Turkey today. We jumped from ancient times to the Greek and Roman empires to the Ottomans and their fall through world and regional wars to the founding of modern Turkey 99 years ago. We were in a 99% Muslim country where the early roots of Christianity played out. All I can say is I wish I had done this trip when I was young to bring all those history classes to life. I leave realizing again how interconnected everything is and that one can’t just focus on today to understand what is going on. All the layers of experience make a place and Turkey's history makes it complicated and so interesting at the same time. 

I leave wanting to know more about modern Turkey. On the surface it looks like a very well functioning place. My urban planning hat had me watching their innovations on trash and recycling collections and use of porous pavers on roads to absorb the increasing volatile weather. There were plenty of bike lanes and well paved roads and sidewalks and a great clean interconnected transit system of buses, trams and trains. The regional bus stations and highway rest stops were huge, clean and architecturally aspiring. 

Their soil looked rich. Milder temps in the valleys along the southern Mediterranean coast, with the help of lots of greenhouses, allow multiple plantings of agriculture output to fill European shelves with items like tomatoes year around. Fruit trees speckle lower elevations. Olive trees cover ever other hillside. I saw no signs of homelessness, drug addiction or obvious poverty that are so familiar on Western streets. Although Turkey has been a major crossroads for refugees from the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, I saw no signs of refugees aside from those being absorbed into a diverse regular life. Housing is being built in huge numbers along all the hillsides. It gives the impression of a modern, growing, prosperous country on the rise. 

I realize this might be a very idealistic perspective and maybe the life under increasingly authoritarian President Erdogan might be hiding problems from plain sight. Our guide didn’t want to talk politics, but like many Turks, he is not happy about the current state of affairs and hoping for big change in the elections in the spring. I’m going to keep reading up, since my curiosity is peaked. 

All in all it was a wonderful trip, with a wonderful group of people. I had fun. I learned. I challenged myself. I countered personal held stereotypes and broadened my perspective of the world. What more could i ask for? Travel is a blessing. Travel is my happy place. 

Photos from Turkey

 Click HERE to see pictures from my trip to Turkey

Touring Turkey

My Itinerary

Istanbul

ISTANBUL: First day in Istanbul. It’s my second trip here. The last time I came was in 2007. This time I’m in Turkey for a longer trip, heading out on a tour to see more of the country. I decided to focus my first day on the seeing how locals live in Kadikoy on the Asian side of the City. For those that don’t know Turkey and Istanbul straddle Europe and Asia. Most of the tourist sites are on the European side, but there is plenty of nice living on the Asian side. Parts of Kadikoy certainly seem trendy and you all know me… I’m a trend hunter. I enjoyed a day of walking and people watching. Sundays are the main day off so the streets and stores were packed! Travel is awesome and eye opening.

Grand Mosque: Bursa

BURSA: We stopped for an overnight in Bursa on our way down to the southern Turkish coast. It was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage site in 2014 for its importance in the silk trade. It’s a lovely city with two impressive historic mosques, lots of shopping and most unusual, what seemed like a giant wedding dress business that were prominently displaced in second floor windows for blocks. It’s a big city spread down a mountain side. It had a very nice vibe.

EPHESUS: Turkey is covered with ruins of past civilizations. Ephesus was an ancient port city. The city was once considered the most important Greek city and the most important trading center in the Mediterranean region. Throughout history, Ephesus survived multiple attacks and changed hands many times between conquerors. It was also a hotbed of early Christian evangelism and remains an important archaeological site and Christian pilgrimage destination. Jesus is said to have asked John the Apostle to bring Mary to live the last years of her life in the area and he was buried there too (or at least parts of him, since other places claim he was buried in their locales.)

Ephesus is Anatolia’s largest ancient city in terms of areas that can be visited. It is estimated that only 15-20% to have been uncovered so far and workers continue to painstakingly dig in the area.

Personally, I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I didn’t expect to be seeing such important Christian historical sites as we pass along the route here. Growing up Christian these people and stories are so familiar, but passing places where they actually lived and prayed in real life makes the myths of Christianity so much more real vs stories created to organize people to gain power and money, as I cynically sometimes look at religion. It’s what makes Israel and Palestine magical and it was a wonderful surprise for this trip. Travel is magic. The world is small and overlapping. Every place I go helps me understand history better.

PAMUKKALE the “cotton castle": The Turkish name refers to the surface of the shimmering, snow-white limestone, shaped over millennia by calcite-rich springs. Dripping slowly down the mountainside, mineral-rich waters collect in and cascade down the mineral terraces, into pools below, creating a magical landscape. Legend has it that the formations are solidified cotton (the area's principal crop) that giants left out to dry.

These thermal springs have been drawing visitors forever so in addition to the natural beauty, visitors come see the ancient Greek city of Hierapolis (Holy City) which was built on top of the formation. It can be seen from the hills above.

Keeping on the Christians came here, why didn’t I expect that theme???

Phillip the Apostle is buried here. Mind you, I also don’t remember an Apostle named Phillip.

Apparently he is only briefly mentioned in the Bible, but him being mentioned here made me attempt and totally fail to name all the Apostles. I apologize to all the religious teachers I have had who I apparently didn’t listen to. But now I’ll always know Philip. Travel is so educational.

KADAKOY: One of the reasons I travel is to bring history to life in my mind. On this trip I’m realizing that I have not spent a lot of time thinking about the geo political shifts that happened at the end of World War 1. Here in Turkey the end of the Ottoman Empire meant massive change. One visit has really sparked my curiosity. We visited the curious deserted town of Kayakoy in Turkey which bears witness to an early 20th century upheaval that saw hundreds of thousands of people uprooted in a population swap between Greece and Turkey which followed the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).

While I have spent a lot of time learning about Partition, where arbitrary borders were created as the Brits left and Pakistan and India were created which led Muslims and Hindus fled their homes after terrible violence, I’ve never thought about how this must have happened the same way in Greece and Turkey. (And so many other places!) Well, the empty crumbling town of Kayakoy, leaves a chilling reminder of broken lives caused by political changes beyond people’s control.

Originally built in the 1700s, the town, called Karmylassos in Greek, was home to as many as 20,000 Greek Orthodox residents by the early 20th century. The messy fallout of World War One and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to the land grabs of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). The resounding loss of the Greeks in this war ended with violence and retribution, which was often aimed at the remaining Greek Orthodox community within the new Turkish borders, and in turn, against the Muslim Turks in Greece.

Hundreds of thousands of Greeks fled the violence in Turkey, which led the governments to agree to a mutual compulsory population exchange starting in 1923 in order to staunch the bloodshed.

The residents of Kayakoy, who up to this point had lived peacefully with their Turkish neighbours, abandoned the town and went to Greece, which was struggling to find places for the nearly 200,000 refugees of the exchange, added to the more than a million former Turkish residents who had fled before the official exchange.

Abandoned and ignored for almost a hundred years, the site was saved from developers to now stand as an historic attraction which is beginning to draw visitors from across the globe.

Described by some as a ghost-town, this once-lively Greek settlement perched on a hill now consists of almost five hundred decaying houses along with the forlorn remains of two derelict churches, mostly dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Kayakoy Today

While the houses are run down and abandoned – with natural decay taking its toll on wooden doors, windows and upper coverings of buildings – the majority of the structures themselves are still intact, leaving an eerie atmosphere weaving through the ruins. (History.com)

KAS AND KEKOVA: we are making our way down and around the Turquoise Coast enjoying the perfect blue skies and Mediterranean Sea. In Kas, my hotel is perched up on a hillside with a wonderful view of Greek Islands, just a few kilometers away. Feels close to paradise, but meanwhile Turkey and Greece are saber rattling and using other nearby islands to escalate their long time conflict and making NATO nervous. Its always interesting how travel brings the headlines to life. My brain is exploding with new questions and curiosities. But that isn’t distracting me from enjoying the tourist standards. Our boat trip out of cute little Kekova, was perfect. Seeing a sunken city along the craggy rocks. Four chances to bob in the water. So relaxing!

OLUDENIZ AND FETHIYE: This stop combined an evening in a nice little seaside town, Fethiye, where I had time to shop for some fashionable clothing, meander through a fish market, and a small sense of daily life in Turkey. Tourism has a big place in the economy and was very wrapped into things here, since the coast line is a place to stop to join harbor cruises out of the little ideas and bays in the area.

Never far from history, we visited Lycian churches carved into stone mountainsides in 400 BC and wandered through the abandoned village of Karakoy that I posted about separately. The highlight though was taking a beautiful, rigorous hike through parklands over a hill to see the Blue Lagoon below on the Mediterranean coast.

The most notable thing about Oludeniz is that it’s a draw for paragliders. Apparently one of the IT places to glide in the world. I wish I had known ahead of time, because I certainly would have tried. Instead I spent the day floating in the clear turquoise waters looking up at the sky, mesmerized by the dozens and dozens of gliders constantly floating above. The day we were there was extra exciting because it was the last day of the 22nd International Ölüdeniz Air Games Festival with almost 1000 participants from 48 countries. The participants circled, swirled, and looped around the sky and then came in for landings right on the beach front strip which andded extra excitement.

Lastly, worth noting for my memories… there were A LOT of Russians in Oludeniz. These days Russians aren’t welcome in many places, but as Turkish President Erdogan tries to straddle between Europe and Russia, they are very welcome in Turkey. In this time of the Ukrainian conflict my feelings about Russians is even more complicated. I really wanted to stop and talk and see what they knew about the war. It could have been my own little world diplomacy moment. I didn’t. Bad me. But just sitting on the rocky beaches with them brought me back to my high school trip to the shores of the Black Sea in the USSR days, certainly a formative experience on my little American brain worth reflecting on.

KONYA, my favorite stop so far, combines historical significance, ornate old mosques and an interesting maze-like market district. It’s known for being one of the more religiously conservative metropolitan centers in Turkey, but also is an economic boom town, with lots of new building and great infrastructure.

Konya was the final home of Rumi. In 1273, Rumi's followers established the Mevlevi Sufi order of Islam and became known as the Whirling Dervishes. We visited his tomb, which has become a pilgrimage site.

It takes a while for me to get in my travel groove, but I found some here, wandering local streets are observing daily life. Walking off the beaten path to find unexpected small surprises and sweet interactions with locals.

CAPPADOCIA is a geological oddity of honeycombed hills and towering boulders of otherworldly beauty. The fantastical topography is matched by the human history here. People have long utilised the region's soft stone, seeking shelter underground and leaving the countryside scattered with fascinating cavern architecture. The fresco-adorned rock-cut churches from the early days of Christianity at the Göreme Open-Air Museum and the areas underground cities that people fled into to protect themselves from the constant marauding of rival empires, are the most famous sights, but long hikes through the majestic rippled red rock caverns were also pretty impressive.

Lastly, the well touristed scene had a great relaxed vibe that was perfect for the last few days with my new travel friends. It meant long meals discussing world issues from our different country perspectives and a really fun night watching Turkish dancers, where I felt my mom’s dancing spirit as I reveled with the crowd!! It’s great when silly FOMO goals lead to great experiences!