Bayram: Diyarbakir

So I left off after Van in my previous post, which was really just the beginning of our epic journey. After we felt we'd given Van a good go-through, we hopped a bus to Diyarbakir, by way of Tatvan and Batman, which took most of the day. Aside from the hideous yellow bus decor, the ride wasn't anything to complain about; the first part was along the shore of Lake Van, which was beautiful. We got in to Diyarbakir just in time for the breaking of the fast for the last day of Ramazan--the streets were full of hungry people in a celebratory mood.
We checked in to our hotel (it was bright orange and silver outside, with flamingo-pink rooms, pretty darn fun), where they gave us the top floor room with city views from 2 sides. They were pretty excited to have us stay there, the front desk staff also brought us tea to our room and called to ask if we needed anything else. I think at least some of it had to do with the fact that they were like 20-year-old guys who clearly did not spend much time around girls of a similar age...
Anyway, we set out to find dinner, which is surprisingly difficult in places that really celebrate Ramazan if you're trying to eat after Iftar: restaurants open for the Iftar meal, everyone eats exactly at sundown, and if you get there later, there is no food. We ran into this problem in Diyarbakir, but finally found this back-alley 3-storey restaurant with an open table on their roof, and had a great meal of kebaps and roasted vegetables while watching cats fight in the ruined house below our rooftop seats. On our way back from dinner, we stopped at a han (old caravansary) and spent some time looking at/learning about carpets and chatting with a very nice shop owner. Protip: the cheapest carpets (and they were beautiful) I've seen in Turkey are in Diyarbakir.


The next day we got up bright and early to explore the city. Diyarbakir, like Van, has breakfast salons, which are a fantastic idea: they have full breakfast menus, but will generally just bring you a full Turkish breakfast: boiled egg, honey, thick cream, several kinds of cheeses, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lots of bread to eat everything with. It's a good start to the day, especially if (like me) one is not a morning person.
From breakfast, we checked out bus prices to Urfa and climbed the city walls for a bit, getting increasingly perturbed by the Incredibly Loud Explosions we kept hearing. The packs of small children running around with guns also were a little disconcerting. We finally figured it out: the kids had all been given toy (...mostly toy) guns for Seker Bayram, and were out in the streets having epic gun battles with their friends, shooting up the town with pop-cap guns, BB guns, and fireworks for added effect. They also were smoking up a storm, but that's more normal for the area than gun-toting child gangs.

This is, on a micro level, what we found in Diyarbakir; I took this in the old Armenian Church, where these kids live with their families. These kids are pretty young--the older ones were out in the streets having more intense mock battles.


So we explored the walls, which are really fun to clamber over, and have stunning views of the Tigris River Valley (...and the poor section of Old Diyarbakir on the other side).


After that, we headed over to the Chaldean Church, which I'd not seen the last time I'd been in town. It was beautiful, and still in use, albeit by like 4 families (not a lot of religious minorities in Diyarbakir, really). We got a tour by the very nice caretaker, who also gave us Bayram candy (Seker Bayram is a little like Halloween in that kids go around to all their neighbors and relatives to get candy and money). We then headed to the old Armenian Catholic Church, which is not functioning as it has no roof or interior contents. It is beautiful though. From there, we dodged the rain on our way over to the Syrian Orthodox Church, which is designed a bit more like Byzantine churches, and still in use. At each church, families lived in the courtyards; I can't imagine what it must be like to grow up living in a church, they all seemed pretty proud of where they lived though. And the courtyards were pretty cute.

The Chaldean Catholic Church


The Armenian Catholic Church


The Syrian Orthodox Church

After seeing the churches, we wound our way through several back alleys to find Taranci'nin Evi, or the poet Cahit Sitki Taranci's house, which is now a museum. It was pretty simple, with models of late Ottoman daily life and samples of Taranci's work and correspondence. I really enjoyed it, because Taranci is one of my favorite Turkish poets, and I spent a lot of time translating him for my directed study a few years ago. While at Taranci'nin Evi, we ran into some teenage girls in Diyarbakir with family for Bayram. They were really nice, and we chatted for a while about school, what we were doing in the region, and such. After we left the poet's house, we ran into them in another part of the city; they were so bubbly and eager to talk with us, and we were more than happy to speak more Turkish.

Taranci'nin Evi

By this time it was getting to be about time for our bus to Sanliurfa, so we looked around for a restaurant, decided we weren't that hungry, and then found...an egg sandwich stand! Those of you who were in Niger with me might remember that I'm quite a big fan of the humble egg sandwich; it's pretty much the perfect meal, and not too big. This one sadly had no onions or Maggi, and had Turkish ketchup instead, but was really good. We enjoyed our sandwiches and then ambled over to find the bus to the otogar, where we headed out of town to Sanliurfa, arriving late that night.
I find it odd that I've been to Diyarbakir twice now and both times seen guns in the streets and heard explosions in the air, but both times were not normal days for Diyarbakirlis. There's something about that city though, I really love it, and I think it might be my favorite city in Turkey. I certainly will be back.

Alright, that's more than enough for now; as the pics above suggest, I've loads of new photos up on Flickr; the ones of Diyarbakir's Armenian Church are particularly good, for my usual photography standards (if I do say so myself). Hopefully I can get the rest of Bayram up here soon and then move on to more recent things, finally...

And I'm back (at least for now)!

Hey folks!

Apparently the Turkish judicial system figured that banning all of Blogger and Blogspot in reaction to one or two blogs it found offensive was not a good deal. At least for the moment, Blogger is back up and running.
The latest news on what caused the banning is that a television channel pushed for the ban because there were a few blogs, hosted by blogger, that detailed how a sports-loving Turk could watch their soccer/football matches of choice online for free, instead of paying for this channel's premium sports service. Yeah. A bit of an overreaction, no? A pretty detailed (and in English!) article can be found here.
One thing that was news to me is that Turkey has blocked over 1100 websites; I've come across a few, but definitely nowhere near 1100. I would love to see a list.
As a short update on life-at-the-moment before I return to the rest of my Bayram trip, my days have been getting more and more full here, as I've started up Turkish lessons again with a vengeance. One of my tutors is based out at Bilkent University, which takes me over an hour and a half to get to, so for every 3-hour lesson, I'm gone for over 6 hours. Not so easy to get things done.
This weekend, a friend of mine stopped in Ankara on his trip round the world; I hadn't seen him since he graduated BU 3 years ago, so it was great to catch up and do a little gossiping about our mutual acquaintances (that'd be you, Boyd House residents...). I took his to Anitkabir for some good old Turkish nationalism and personality cult fun, and we explored my neighborhood. I made the discovery that the bakery across the street from my building is gourmet and goooood; also spendy, but not ridiculous, so this may be a bad discovery for me in the long run. After Kevin left for the bus station and Goreme Sunday morning, I went running with my running club and headed to the expat-ish meet-up at Minna's in the evening. Apparently, I have become a regular at Minna's, which is a bit odd, because I'm not normally a regular at anything.
Monday I went to the Ambassador's residence, as one of my friends and fellow Fulbrighters was giving a speech there. It was on Ataturk in the Turkish War of Independence, so all the military guys with the Embassy were there, as well as pretty much the entire Turkish military leadership (I don't know exactly who they all were, they stuck to themselves a bit). That was a bit overwhelming, I don't normally hobnob with military brass, but the speech was really interesting, the food was great, I met up with a lot of friends there, and I met a military attache from the Embassy and am now going to the Marine Ball in November. Now I've got to find a dress...somehow I neglected to bring a formal to Turkey...
The rest of the week is far less highbrow for me: I had class today, where we discussed how Turkey was totally in the right to take Alexandretta, no doubt about it, what there are no Arabs there. We did get to more neutral ground, but it is fun to study Turkish foreign policy inside Turkey itself, that's for sure. I have more Turkish tutoring sessions throughout the week, and am starting with a new tutor on Friday who's supposed to be excellent, so I'm excited about that.
Today was damp and rainy, perfect soup weather, so I made a large pot of chicken vegetable stew. I still have yet to try out my oven, as it's under the sink and a little scary looking, but I hopefully will soon, as I've not made chocolate-chip cookies since arriving in Turkey, which is a bit of a travesty.
Ok, this is more than long enough, so on that note I'll leave off,
-R

Access to the site denied

Hey folks,

I'm more than due for a much longer update, but just wanted to get this post up quickly. As of this morning, Blogger has been blocked in Turkey. When I attempt to access any Blogger site/blogspot address, all I get is large red letters notifying me that "Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir."
I'm still working out what I can do for posting; I'm currently using a proxy but inshallah can find a better solution. Stay tuned.
I feel like such a rebel now, posting on my banned blog ...
Kendine iyi bak,
-R

In the SouthEast, photo by the fabulous Cat

Starting Point: Van

For Seker Bayram, I headed to the Southeast with two good friends, Cat and Corey. We flew to Van, and made our way over to Gaziantep, by way of Nemrut and a few more places.
This is our second day, on top of Van's castle, which is right on the shore of Lake Van. The area is ringed with mountains, and it's just beautiful. It's also pretty large as old fortifications go, so we spent a good long while clambering the length and breadth of it. Van (pronounced "von", like the von Trapp family) is not so south, but very east; it's near the Iranian border. We were there for the last few days of Ramazan, so we were able to have the Iftar (sunset fast-breaking meal) with what seemed like half the town's population; it was quite an experience, and delicious food as well. We took a day trip out to Hosap to see a medieval Kurdish castle, only to be told by helpful primary school children that the castle was locked for the day. Whoops. No minibusses would stop and pick us up for the 60 km ride back to Van, so we ended up driving back with a very nice Kurdish businessman from Van and his 10-ish-year-old son. We were stopped by 3 checkpoints, and while the driver's credentials were scrupulously checked, and the vehicle pored over, the soldiers really didn't seem to give two hoots about us. It was really interesting to see though. When we got back to town, we got a little lost on our way to Van Kale, got directions to the dolmus stop by this really nice woman who invited us to her family's Iftar (we sadly already had reservations, but it's very representative of Vanlis, that she'd invite the 3 of us home less than 5 minutes after meeting us). We made it to Van Kale just before sunset, and got some great exploring and sightseeing in before the storm on the neighboring mountains got uncomfortably close and started lightening. At that point, we skedaddled down the citadel and grabbed a cab back downtown and to our Iftar. At least during Ramazan, there is really just one place that you should eat at in Van: Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi.
Oh, except for breakfast: Van has a Breakfast Street, literally a street filled with breakfast salons. I'm not a breakfast person, but I can get behind the idea of Breakfast Street. It was gooood stuff.
Alright, more stories later, I'm going to bed. Most of my Van photos are up on Flickr already, check them out! Quality-wise, they're much better than my Antakya pics...

In Van, Southeast Turkey

Last Sunday, atop Van Kale overlooking Lake Van at sunset. First stop on our whirlwind Southeast highlights tour.

Orientation, Ankara-style

So I figured before I started regaling you all with my adventures in the East, I should back up and get around to writing about Fulbright Orientation, which was a week and a half ago, right before we left for vacation. It was held in Ankara, literally 3 blocks from my apartment, which was pretty darn handy for me, at the Turkish American Association.
The Istanbullus all came to Ankara together the day before orientation, so I met up with them when they got in for lunch. Afterwards, they wanted to see a bit of the city, so I took them up to the citadel and we watched the sun set as the call to prayer echoed around us from mosques surrounding the hill. It was really beautiful, and I think the call to prayer from citadels is one of my favorite experiences here in Turkey. We got a lot of chatting in on the way to and from the citadel, so I got to know more of the Istanbullus (as well as an ETA from Balikesir, who we bumped into at the hotel). On the way back, we stopped at this great fish restaurant in Kizilay before strolling back to their hotel; I felt like quite the tour guide showing the whole group around my city, and hopefully dispelled some of Ankara's reputation as depressing and dull (it really isn't, folks; I like my city!).
The actual orientation lasted 2 days, and consisted mainly of various academics, Embassy personnel, and Fulbright folks giving informative sessions. While the sessions varied in their informativeness, I couldn't help but note that a lot of the information they presented would've been useful for me 3 months ago when I arrived, but was pretty much useless now that I'd moved in and took care of bureaucracy myself. Oh well, this seems to be the way Fulbright works. It was a great chance to meet the whole Fulbright staff though, as well as the other Fulbrighters. I'd known about most of the other Student Researchers and English Teaching Assistants, as we'd been exchanging introductory emails over the summer, but it was a surprise to meet several Lecturers, Senior Researchers, and Teacher Exchange Fulbrighters. They all were really nice, and quite a bit older than most of the student researchers and ETAs. As a bonus, almost all of them are based in Ankara, and at least 2 (and their significant others) are in my neighborhood. So that was good to find out. I also got in touch with my professor from 2 years ago at our welcome reception at the Ambassador's residence; she's the wife of the head of the Turkish Fulbright Commission, and I took Communications in IR from her when I studied abroad here before, small world (the class turned out to be primarily an English class, but it was awesome, and I learned quite a bit). On the second day, we toured the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, which is a really nice museum, but it was my 4th time there, and my 3rd time had been just about a month ago, so I wasn't quite as thrilled as I could have been.
The Museum does have a great collection, and does have material written in English, but, as with most Turkish museums, really has a dearth of explication, which could've added so much to the experience. Maybe in my next life I'll design museum exhibits...
After the museum, the plan was to let us explore Ulus, and wander back towards Cankaya, but the weather was not exactly conducive for such things. It started pouring, so after a bit I grabbed a cab back to Cankaya along with George and Joan, a couple who were staying at the same research hostel I'd stayed at when I first arrived in Ankara. On our way home it started hailing, so I'm thinking it was a good idea to abandon the Ulus plan.
We ended orientation with an informal get-together at Corey's; it was really nice, as at first it was only the Ankaralis, so we had a good chance to bond before the other folks showed up. It's really interesting to see what other people are doing, and what their connection to Turkey is--some of the older folks have been coming here for over 30 years, while many of the ETAs have not had any Turkish experience, and are going to be located in disparate cities with less of an English-speaking infrastructure. I'm really so impressed at how well they've managed, living on cities with very little English when they speak no Turkish. Lord knows I've had days when I've wanted to throw in the towel, and I'm surrounded by expats and speak Turkish.
It looks as though it's going to be a good year, Fulbright-people-wise, and I think I'll be doing quite a bit of travelling to visit the non-Ankaralis (actually, I already have, but that's a story for my next post, on my vacation).
On that note,
-R
(P.S. I'm uploading new photos as I type, check them out :) )

In which Cat's Turkish family saves the day

I am just back in Ankara after my whirlwind tour of the Southeast with my intrepid travelling companions Corey and Cat. Stories, photos, videos, and details will of course be forthcoming later, but I just had to tell you-all about our incredible trip home last night.
We'd arrived in Gaziantep on Friday, and before leaving the otogar went to buy tickets home on a Saturday overnight bus. We started at the better companies, feeling that a splurge at the end of our trip would be pretty nice, but quickly found out that it might be a problem getting home. The first 4 or 5 companies we talked to only had tickets available for Tuesday night, a full 3 days after we wanted/needed to return. So we went round every single company, asking even the sketchiest of places whether they had 3 tickets on Saturday evening to Ankara. It looked like we'd have to send 2 people home Sunday midday and one person home immediately Friday afternoon for a bit, until finally, at the last place, the ticket sellers said that yes, they had 3 tickets, and could even seat 2 of us together. We were obviously happy and relieved, paid for the tickets, and left to see Gaziantep and visit our friends there.
All this was well and good until last night. We got to the otogar in plenty of time, double-checked with the guys that sold us our tickets that we were in the right place and at the right gate, and pretty much chilled until our bus arrived. When it did, it looked a little sketchy: it had no company name on the side of it, and didn't even enter the otogar, we had to walk out to the street to get on. So we get on, and there's someone in one of our seats. And their ticket says they have that seat. At this point, we start to freak out a little that the company double-sold our seats, and immediately grab our other seats right before another group of people gets on and tries to take them. The bus attendant comes up, is very confused, looks at everyone's tickets, and gets on his cell phone and starts yelling at someone on the other end about how they sold seats twice. This went on for quite awhile before another guy came out from the ticket office, looked at everyone's tickets, and then told us that our tickets were for Sunday night. At that point, we got kicked off the bus, and off it went to Ankara.
So there we were, at 10:30 pm, in the Antep otogar with no transportation for another 23 hours, tired and really wanting to be on our way home. We were also really frustrated, as we'd asked for Cumartesi (Saturday) tickets, been told we were getting Saturday tickets, and been given Sunday tickets. And, of course, this being the end of Bayram, all the busses were full that night, as were all the flights the next morning. To say we were disheartened would probably be a bit of an understatement.
This is where Cat's Turkish family came to the rescue. For a tiny amount of backstory, Cat's boyfriend is Turkish, and his family kind of looks after her in Istanbul; they're very cute and very maternal. They also are the kind of people who can get things done. So, Cat called them, explained the situation, and put them on the phone with the bus company officials. It was very interesting listening to the bus official's side of that conversation; he started out with a lot of "the yabancis are lying, they're wrong, they asked for Sunday tickets" and ended suitably chastened. Cat's Turkish mom then spoke via phone with a second bus company, and got them to find us spots on an 11:30 bus later Saturday night. This was after every single bus company had told us there was absolutely no room. So we switched our tickets to the real Saturday night bus with the second company and waited. The bus finally got in at about 12:30, 1am, and we had to wait for everyone to get on, because although we had tickets, we had no seat assignments: we were told there would be 2 empty seats, and that the 3rd one of us could take the bus attendant's jumpseat next to the driver. It wasn't ideal, but it got us home.
So we wait, and the attendant finally gestured us on the bus, and there are no seats. None. Not only that, there are 3 other guys also standing in the aisle, also seatless. Fantastic. At this point, we're thinking we'll have to stand in the aisle for the entire 10 hour bus ride.
Luckily, even though being 3 young female yabancis couldn't entice anyone to give up their seats for us, it did apparently entitle us to the front stair area, whereas the other seatless guys were relegated to the back stairwell, all together. Corey and I shared the jumpseat, while Cat sat on the stair leading to the aisle, next to the driver. The jumpseat was definitely not made for 2 people, and neither Corey nor I slept for more than about 10 minutes. I also was on the side closer to the bus driver, which was enjoyable at first when we chatted about what we were doing in Turkey, but less enjoyable when he kept trying to pick me up and get my phone number. Internally, I was cringing of the thought of 10 whole hours of politely deflecting repeated requests for "senin cep numarasin" in Turkish while trying not to fall off my half-chair in my exhaustion. That's when I noticed the stairwell underneath the jumpseat looked low enough to sit in. So, at the first rest stop, I crawled under to the stairwell and slept there. Glamorous it was not. I did at least luck out and get a real seat for the last hour or so when a guy got off the bus early; that was pretty blissful. The other 2 were able to grab some sleep as well, but we rolled in to town pretty darn exhausted. I think the rest of my day will be pretty much napping and showering, and maybe uploading some photos; thank goodness we were able to get in today instead of tomorrow morning, or I'd've been a zombie for my classes.
I think the moral of the story is that if one ever, ever travels during Bayram, one should get one's tickets back to civilization well, well in advance. Or, at the very least, not try to get back to Ankara/Istanbul on the weekend. Well, I suppose I'll know next time...

The rest of my trip was really great; I have lots of experiences to relate. We climbed 5 castles or castle-type constructions, got shot with bb guns by little kids in Diyarbakir (something about that city is just crazy, but I really do like it for some reason), and had baklava in the Baklava Capitol of the World, Gaziantep. They'll have to wait until I have a little more sleep in me though :P
-R