Peaches & grapes, the "Reading Woman," and

Tunalı Hilmi Street: an August day in Ankara

When I cut open a peach the other evening, I wasn’t disturbed when a tiny worm hopped out and began to inch across the plate.  August is the prime month for peaches, like May for strawberries and June-into July for cherries, and because they are so good, one is bound to eat them regularly.  This was not my first encounter with wildlife in peaches, or in lettuce, for that matter.  I take the worm as a sign that whatever pesticides are used, they’re not THAT dangerous.

August – and September – are prime months for grapes, too.  On August 15th, important for many Christians  (Orthodox and Catholic, but not Protestant) as the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (her death and ascending body & soul to heaven), local Turkish Christians bring grapes to church for a blessing at the end of the service.  Afterwards, they offer the grapes to all who are present.  This is a cheerful mid-summer harvest ritual and if the service takes place in the middle of a hot day, eating a handful of grapes is wonderfully cooling.

Swan swims in Swan Park

Duly refreshed, I head for Kızılay, the commercial district in central Ankara, to arrange for some digital photos to be printed.  Fırat Color, the photo shop I have been going to for years, has somehow survived the change from traditional film to digital.  Although we are now devoted to our digital cameras, Marie-Henriette and I agree that holding a large, glossy photograph gives a satisfaction that looking at a computer screen cannot match.

Kızılay's "Reading Woman"

On the way to Fırat Color, I stop to greet my favorite lady in Kızılay.  She is not a living person but a bronze statue of a woman, her hair pulled back in a bun, seated, bent over as she intently reads a book.  Turkey is not known as a country of readers (other than newspapers), but I hope this “Reading Woman” (“Okuyan Kadın ”) has inspired some to take up this pleasure.  She is one of a handful of life-sized statues of men and women in ordinary poses in this section of town.  They were put up some time ago, but by whom, I don’t know (can any Ankara readers help?). 

The "Reading Woman" (center)

The “Reading Woman” sits and reads across from the long-established Turhan Bookstore at a pedestrian intersection  favored by leftist groups.  Indeed, a table was set up, posters displayed, and flyers were being handed out. 

In addition, a young man, a hunchback, was holding a sign that read: Kahve + Fal 5 TL (= Turkish coffee + Fortune, 5 liras).  Fortunetelling from the dregs of a cup of Turkish coffee is a skill, or talent, or pastime, that is appreciated,  but this is the first time I have seen this commercialized.  After placing my order at Fırat Color, I head in another direction and soon see the following sign: Şok!  Fal + Kahve 7.5 TL (= Shock price!  Fortune + Turkish coffee 7.5 liras).  Clearly, this is becoming an established line of business, and competitive, too.

After a snack of kaşarlı simit and ayran (a sesame bread circle and melted yellow cheese + a slightly salty but very refreshing yogurt drink), I make my way to my favorite street in Ankara, Tunalı Hilmi Street.  I have been walking on this street for 40 years and love it for its vitality, its constantly changing mix of elegant and tacky.  I should specify  I like only a certain section of Tunalı Hilmi, between Bülten Street and Kuğulu Park (Swan Park).  North of Bülten, the street has always lacked character, I’m not sure why.

Chicken döner on Tunalı Hilmi Street

Located here for ages is Flamingo, a pastry shop with tables for those who wish.  I go in rarely, and anonymously, but Marie-Henriette is greeted rapturously every time she enters.  Other pastry shops, Milka and Meram, have disappeared, but Mado, with ice cream, opened a few years ago near the park.  Pizza Pino, a pizza  restaurant long before chains like Pizza Hut and Domino’s came in, was a long-lasting stalwart until it moved away.  Aslıhan, Marie-Henriette, and I trudged through the snow to eat there one winter in the later 1970s.  Either then or on another occasion I bit down on ground glass – remnants from a defective jar of anchovies, no doubt – to no ill effect other than a certain mistrust and caution on all future visits.

Souvenir favorites

Two of my key sources for birthday and Christmas presents are here: Altın Tuğra, a jewelry store, and the incomparable Çeşni, for traditional ceramics and other handicrafts, with every year new takes on old themes.  The owner, Alper Bey, studied archaeology as an undergraduate, which must have something to do with the high level of creativity. 

For Rent: yes, the Entire Building

Paşabahçe, a big glass store, another important shopping stop, is either remodelling or leaving.  Above it used to be TÖMER, the language school established by Ankara University in 1984, which, incredibly, was the first school where a foreigner could learn Turkish up to an advanced level in a systematic way.  I studied there once, 20 years ago, and found the course excellent. TÖMER has relocated this branch closer to the city center.

Tunalı Hilmi Bey, bedecked

 

Tunalı Hilmi Bey (1871-1928), the man for whom the street is named, is remembered by a statue at the edge of Kuğulu Park.  Hilmi is a traditional man’s name.  “Tuna” is Turkish for the “Danube,” the “-lı” suffix indicating that he, Hilmi, came from that region of the Ottoman Empire – today’s Bulgaria, in fact.  This past June, he (his statue, at least) must have been startled to witness the impassioned anti-government demonstrations that took place in this little park.  Or, having been something of a protester himself – a member of the first parliaments of the Turkish Republic, a promoter of the rights of women, workers, and villagers and the reforming of the Turkish language – he may well have approved. 

Swan Park: Corn on the cob in front of Tunalı Hilmi Bey

 

When I walked through, the park was its usual tranquil self, a few swans swimming in the ponds, people sitting on benches or strolling, enjoying the sunny afternoon.

In front of the Karum shopping center 

I continued uphill beyond the park to my last stop, Karum, a large shopping center in which my eye doctor has his office.  Karum is what the ancient Assyrian traders who settled on the outskirts of central Anatolian cities in the Middle Bronze Age (19th-17th c. BC) called their district, so it’s nice to have this connection between modern shopping and antiquity.  Karum is extremely well located in a well-to-do neighborhood, with a Sheraton, a Hilton, and, incongruously, the Iranian Embassy close by.  One of the first big shopping centers in the city, it eventually faced competition from a host of newcomers – the proliferation of shopping centers has been a feature of the AK Party era – and for a while it looked a bit down at the heels.  Today, though, it’s definitely livelier: more shops open, more people wandering around.  Before I take the elevator up to the doctor’s office to be inspected for new glasses, I go have a cup of tea at the tea stand in one of the side passages.  It’s the last cheap thing I’ll be having for a while.

Vision discombobulated: waiting to see the eye doctor

ETERNAL GORDION (on a Saturday in early August)

            The bell rings.  It is 1:00 pm, lunchtime at the Gordion excavations.  Marie-Henriette and I leave the balcony, where we have been chatting with Ken Sams, the Gordion Project director, and get in line for lunch.  Since I’m not on a rigorous excavation routine, my eyes are bigger than my stomach, but I can’t resist: ezo gelin soup (a spicy lentil, bulgur, and tomato soup); a casserole of eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, and ground beef; chopped tomato, cucumber, and onion salad; fresh yogurt from the village;  and melon, for dessert.  Turkish coffee follows. 

 

Gordion: the excavation house

            Gordion was the capital of the Phrygians, an Iron Age Anatolian people prominent in the 9th-7th c. BC.  They were not the first to live here, though, and after their heyday, settlement would continue for centuries more.  Excavations of the ancient city and of the tumulus burials in the surrounding area were first conducted by the Körte brothers, Alfred and Gustav, in 1900, and since 1950 by the University of Pennsylvania Museum.  For understanding the Phrygians, these excavations have been essential. 

            I first visited Gordion almost 40 years ago, when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.  Rodney Young, the chair of the Classical Archaeology program, had been excavating Gordion since 1950, and many department students had spent at least one summer here.  I had his agreement to take part in the 1975 season, but sadly, he was killed in a traffic accident in 1974 and excavations were, for the time being, stopped. Rodney Young was a gruff man; I wonder how I would have fared had that 1975 season taken place.  I have returned to Gordion off and on ever since, but always as a visitor, for other excavation opportunities took me elsewhere.  But Gordion has a special meaning, because many friends have worked here and because it is so close to Ankara, my home since 1990.

            Even so, I haven’t visited for several years, because the Gordion excavation season has largely overlapped with our summer work at Kinet Höyük.  Now that field work at Kinet Höyük has ended, we are at last free to make such visits.

 

Marie-Henriette and Ken on the balcony

Marie-Henriette and I drive west from Ankara, through the town of Temelli which has chanelled its marshlands into two sterile-looking parks with ponds on either side of the highway.  Soon we see a cluster of storks, swirling around, and others in the harvested fields gleaning tasty morsels of grain.  The major city en route is Polatlı, long-time seat of an artillery school (Topçu ve Füze Okulu), now boasting of a population over 100,000 and the wish to become its own province, separate from (very large) Ankara.  Polatlı has had a reputation for dullness, at least among the Gordion staff.  They used to joke:

            “What’s there to do in Polatlı?”

            “You’re doing it."

            Maybe today there is more excitement in the air, more choices, although my experience is that Turkish cities have kept the same personalities they had in the 1970s even if their  populations have tripled or quadrupled.

            An intrepid British friend used to stay in a roadside hotel called the Piknik Palas.  In the old days, Turkish hotels often included “palas” (“palace”) in their name, even if they were totally unpalatial.  Today, oddly, it’s no longer fashionable to be a “palas,” even if some distinguished examples are still with us, such as the Pera Palas in Istanbul.

            We couldn’t spot the Piknik Palas.  It must be history now. 

 

Colossal statue, from the east

 

            Continuing west, we drive by the colossal statue of a soldier, or perhaps Atatürk, on the crest of a hill, a  recently erected (2008) monument to the Turkish soldiers who fought against the Greeks in the key Battle of the Sakarya, late summer 1921.  It reminds me of the Colossus of Barletta (a 5th c. statue of an early Byzantine emperor), although much, much bigger  (31 m. vs. a mere 5 m.).  Coming from the east, we see him from the back, for he is facing west, gesturing “Stop, no further!” to the Greek army which had made it inland this far.

 

            The turn-off from the highway takes us into another world.  Even if the track of the high-speed train to Eskişehir crosses above the one-lane road, we’re in traditional Anatolia, with a few farm houses; an abandoned old-fashioned ochre-painted railway station; fields of grain, yellow as they always are in mid-summer, and  only the random tractor or car on the road.

            In the distance we see the Phrygian tumuli scattered here and there.  Most were robbed, in antiquity or recent times, but a few, including the largest of all, the so-called Midas Monument located on the outskirts of the village of Yassıhöyük, survived intact.  The Midas Monument was opened in 1957, its tomb chamber, a log cabin sealed with rocks and clay, containing the skeleton of a mature man lying on a bed, surrounded by countless bronze bowls and cauldrons and intricate, inlaid wooden furniture. 

 

The excavation house (left)and the "Midas Monument" (right), the largest of the Phrygian tumulus burial mounds

            We drive into the courtyard of the excavation house, a traditional two-storied village house that I am guessing was built in the 1950s during the Rodney Young years.  Ken comes to greet us, and shows us the latest addition, a large depot, like a small warehouse, where finds from many seasons will be stored for the researchers and conservators who will study and preserve them.  The spectacular finds go immediately to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara; here are kept fragments, worth scientific study but not necessarily museum display.

Gordion excavation house: a work room

            Inside we meet our friend Ayşe, who is conducting ethnoarchaeological research.  Copies of a recent issue of a Polatlı newspaper are lying about; on its front page is an article about her investigations.  Mention is made of a Dr. C. Brain.  He turns out to be none other than C. Brian Rose, a professor of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Ken’s designated successor as  project director (pending government approval), also working at Gordion this summer. 

 

New excavations (summer, 2013)

 

 

            Ken takes us to the settlement mound to show us the latest excavations, a section of the Phrygian fortification system, and, from a distance, the conservation work on early Phrygian buildings, an effort that goes on every year, with new techniques tried, a huge effort to preserve wall foundations made of sun-dried mudbricks in a climate which is harsh, with snow in the winter, rainstorms in the spring, and hot dry sun in the summer.  New fencing has been installed, replacing rusty, gnarled barbed wire that despite its neglected appearance still performs its job of keeping visitors from entering the excavation areas.  New explanatory panels have been put up, conforming to the specifications of the Culture Ministry.  They look great, but they too will surely have to be replaced in a few years after the weather has taken its toll. 

 

Conservation work on Phrygian building foundations

            After lunch, we take our leave and head for Polatlı on the back road.  We will miss the colossal statue of Atatürk, but we will see instead, from the distance, a tumulus – perhaps with its burial intact – under investigation at this very moment by the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations lest ever-vigilant tomb robbers get in first.  We drive by “hobby gardens,” plots of land in the middle of nowhere where apartment-dwelling Polatlians can come grow vegetables and flowers.  And just before we enter the city we see the monument for the Battle of the Sakarya, celebrating the 1921 victory against the Greeks.  It looks like the double spine of a dinosaur, slowly cascading down the hillside.  In all these years, I have never stopped to visit it.  Next time, I should.

For the Gordion Excavations: http://sites.museum.upenn.edu/gordion/

 

Mix and match

The Ankara weather is glorious: sunny, dry, daytime temperatures maximum 28 C (80 F), cool at night.  Many have left to take their August vacation by the seashore (heat and humidity? -- for sure, if it's the Mediterranean coast), and the city seems relaxed.  Wearing my favorite Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and Birkenstocks, I went to my local Starbucks to buy more Guatemala Antigua coffee, and then to Zeynel, a restaurant that specializes in the traditional milk-based desserts beloved in Istanbul and the Balkan territories of the Ottoman Empire.  Ramazan, the Muslim month of fasting, ends tomorrow, so this is my last chance to get some güllaç, a favorite Ramazan dessert.  Güllaç is a distinctive combination of sweet starch wafers cooked with milk, sugar, and ground walnuts.  It is divine.  Marie-Henriette doesn't care for it, though, so for her I have bought a portion of kazandibi, a caramelized pudding of milk and rice flour.  If at dinner this evening she turns up her nose and chooses fruit instead, I will eat it myself.

If my recent posts seem jumbled, you are right.  I am transferring the blog from another host, but it appears I haven't arranged the previous posts in the correct sequence.  FYI: I began writing this blog in March, 2012.  My last substantial posts were in late July. Everything since has been "archives" -- posts from 2012. 

From now on, we should be on track.

Ankara Scribbler: Archives

(posts from March and April, 2012)

   

Nisan 2012

04/29/2012

The Pink House of İsmet İnönü

              İsmet İnönü (1884-1973), the second president of the Turkish Republic, lived in Ankara in a house known as the “Pink House” (Pembe Köşk, in Turkish), down the hill from the Çankaya House used by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first Turkish president. For years I had walked or driven by it. Yesterday, at last, I went inside.
            The house still belongs to the İnönü family. They have arranged the main downstairs rooms as a museum to İsmet and his wife, Mevhibe (1897-1992), filled with photographs, clothing and other personal possessions, and historical maps. The house is opened to the public twice a year for several weeks, first around Republic Day (Oct 29), then in the spring, a period encompassing two additional national holidays, Children’s Holiday and National Sovereignty Day (Apr 23) and Commemoration of Atatürk and Youth and Sport Day (May 19). Children are especially welcome.


            We on the tour had the good fortune to be led through the exhibit by Mrs. Özden Toker, İnönü’s daughter. Elegantly turned out and speaking perfect English, she shared reminiscences of her parents, of Atatürk (she was 8 when he died, in 1938), and of others they encountered. This personal testimony transformed the visit from simply a pilgrimage to a house where a famous person had once resided to a living connection with the formative years of the Turkish Republic.
            A large basket of individually wrapped organic apricots from Malatya (famous for its apricots) was passed around as we wandered from room to room. I learned that İnönü studied, at military high school, Arabic, Persian, and French as well as Turkish, with French continuing til the end. Such was elite education during the late Ottoman Empire, quite different from today. English he learned later in life. While stationed in Yemen just before World War I, he and friends took advantage of a grammophone and records left by a departing French engineer. This was his first exposure to western classical music – at first, just off-putting sounds, but later to become an enduring interest. Soon after their marriage, İnönü bought his wife a piano; he followed her progress keenly. He himself, in later years, took up the cello. Our friend Ron Tickfer remembers the İnönüs seated in the front row at the weekly concert of the Republic Symphony Orchestra. They arrived and departed in their modest Hillman, quite a difference from the light-flashing convoys that today mark the passage of important people through the streets of the capital.

Mrs. Özden Toker
            Two wonderful photos show İsmet Pasha with violinist Suna Kan and pianist İdil Biret, the first two child prodigies (harika çocuklar, in Turkish) sent to France in the late 1940s for intensive musical training, financed by the Turkish government. In the first, the five-year-old İdil Biret is seen from the back, playing the piano; the İnönüs are in the front row, listening intently. In the second, İsmet Pasha is seated with the two girls, one on each side. Little İdil is slipping off her chair, no doubt bored by her chat with this old man. Suna, five years older, sits up straight and looks over indulgently, like an older sister. Both Suna Kan and İdil Biret, renowned soloists, continue to give concerts to this very day. The İnönüs would certainly be pleased.
            Someone asked Özden Hanım about the relations between her father and his children. Atatürk, we all knew, had been married only briefly, with no children. The İnönü family, in contrast, seem to have been happy and close-knit. While Özden Hanım’s two older brothers were studying in the US, one perhaps both at Caltech, İsmet Pasha wrote letters to them frequently: 200 to Ömer, 400 to Erdal, who stayed longer. How did he find the time? And he let Özden Hanım marry a man of her choosing: Metin Toker, a journalist. Her mother was not pleased – did journalists make a regular living? But her father gave the green light.
            Turkish members of our tour expressed their own memories, especially the gratitude felt by many that İnönü had kept Turkey neutral for almost all of World War II. Despite shortages and rationing, the Turkish people were spared the horrors of that war. As one friend’s grandmother said to her complaining daughter, “May God never show you the soles of the enemy’s boots!”

The Pink House
            After thanking Özden Hanım for the fascinating visit, we lingered outside on the sidewalk. As we were chatting, up came a large bus, then a second. We watched as a stream of middle-school students headed exuberantly for the Pink House, for their turn with the Inönü family and early Republican history.

 

 

04/22/2012

Easter x 2 (+ more)

            Last Sunday was Easter. So was the Sunday before! Oddly enough, the Christian world celebrates its most important festival on different dates. This year, the western church (Catholic and Protestant) celebrated first, the eastern Orthodox churches later.
            In Turkey, Easter, whether eastern or western, passes virtually unnoticed, so small is the Christian population. But if you stroll on a Sunday in Beyoğlu, the district of Istanbul favored in the 19th-20th centuries by non-Muslim minorities and by foreign embassies (now consulates, the capital having moved to Ankara), you will encounter Christians of various denominations emerging from a cluster of churches. Today, they are as likely to be Filipinos and sub-Saharan Africans as traditional Greeks or Armenians.
            In 1984-85 I played the organ for services at St. Helena’s, an Anglican chapel tucked away in a wooded corner of the British consulate. The building was permanently damp and, in winter, very cold. The priest, Peter Armstrong (now resting in peace in the Anglican cemetery in Asian Istanbul), a large, florid, and cheerful man given to grandly intoned sermons larded with phrases such as “ . . . empires that rise and wax and wane and fall . . . ,” supplied me with a space heater that we placed directly behind the organ bench. To keep my fingers from freezing, I bought cheap woolen gloves and snipped off the fingertips.
            The congregation consisted of diplomats, business families, and academics  from the English-speaking world, and also a sprinkling of people that only Turkey can produce. Mildred – I forget her real name, although I can still picture her – grew up in Bornova, the prosperous enclave on the edge of Izmir (or Smyrna, as she persisted in saying) where Levantines resided, the business families of British, French, Italian, and Maltese origin established in the Ottoman period. She had long lived and worked in Istanbul, and clearly identification as an Anglican was important for her.
            From time to time at St. Helena’s a new face would appear. Sometimes the face was unexpected, such as Turkish Muslim. Fr Peter was welcoming but always very careful. “They tell me they want to become Christian,” he confided to me in a conspiratorial tone. “I never know if they are sincere. They might be agents sent to accuse me of proselytism.” The potential convert would then be assigned a program of study, prayer, and reflection lasting at least three times as long as in a Christian country, to make sure of the commitment. Most applicants quickly disappeared.
            Proselytism, especially by Christians, was long illegal and still arouses deep suspicions. One wonders why all the fuss, for the Christian population of Turkey is tiny, the number of converts from Islam miniscule. Local Christians established for centuries – Greeks, Armenians, Syrian Orthodox – don’t even try, knowing the penalties. Turkey is officially a secular country, and although almost all citizens are Muslim, duly noted in the space for “religion” on the national identity card, in practice people range from fundamentalists to non-practicing and even atheists. Nonetheless, at election time when passions need to be aroused, accusations can fly furiously, and some have paid with their lives. 

Doğramacızade Ali Paşa Mosque (Ankara)
            Five years ago I was summoned by İhsan Doğramacı, the founder of Bilkent University, to take part in a discussion of an audacious proposal. A mosque in memory of his father had just been built near the university campus. Prof. Doğramacı, born in Erbil, northern Iraq, in the late Ottoman period, spent his high school years in Beirut in the 1920s and 30s. He was impressed by the peaceful co-existence of different religions, and wondered if that could happen here in Turkey. The new mosque complex, a striking modern design of architect Erkut Şahinbaş, includes an outlying building separated from the mosque proper by a courtyard. The rooms inside resemble the comfortable, carpeted meeting rooms in convention hotels. Prof. Doğramacı proposed that Christian and Jewish as well as Muslim groups use these rooms, and he was seeking ideas on what sort of religious activities might take place there.

Courtyard, Doğramacızade Ali Paşa Mosque
            This inter-faith initiative was not at all to the liking of the conservative Directorate of Religious Affairs, the governmental office that regulates Sunni Muslim practice in this country. Christian or Jewish activity in a mosque complex was out of the question. Prof. Doğramacı has since died (in 2010), and as far as I know the rooms sit silent and unused.
 

 

04/15/2012

Turkish haircuts

                Every four weeks I feel an urge to get a haircut.  I negotiate with myself: can I put it off for a week? How about ten days?  Eventually there is nothing to be done and I head to the barber’s.
            Typical start: “How shall I cut it?”
            “Medium. Not short. Let it not be short!”
            I end up leaving the barbershop with my head only slighter rougher than a billiard ball. I have had, however, the entire head attended to: a trim of nostril hairs; ear hairs removed, either singed with a flaming alcohol-soaked taper tapped against the ear (traditional method) or removed with a battery-powered mini-shaver (urban style); and the wildness of eyebrows tamed. Sometimes I request a shave, a treat I have never had in the US. The shave comes at the end, after the haircut, the shampoo, the drying and combing. The best shave I ever had was in Antakya (ancient Antioch), in a tiny barbershop across from the police headquarters. The barber wielded his razor as if it were a feather.
            The traditional barbershop is a social center, for men. In the summertime, I pay a visit to such a barbershop in Dörtyol, the city near our excavations. The shop is air conditioned, highly desirable in July. A few men are reading newspapers, a TV is on, and an apprentice supplies towels and tools and sweeps the floors. The barber, named Tekin, wants to know where I’m from, what I’m doing in Dörtyol. I tell him. He has heard of the excavations, and approves. Although Dörtyol is a good-sized regional town with a population of 70,000, everyone knows what everyone else is doing.



Barbershop in Oltu (northeast Turkey)
            A few weeks ago, Marie-Henriette dropped me off at Ramses, my local barbershop in Ankara.  I found Ramses after my barber at the Bilkent Hotel had been replaced with a high-end co-ed hairdresser. I tried it twice. I felt very uncomfortable, although the staff was nice. Barbershops are the preserves of men! Nearby a (fake) blonde was getting her hair done. I leaned back to have my hair washed in a basin behind my neck, as is done for women. 
            Ramses is a big city barbershop, even if fairly small, with its mirrors, shiny black countertops, and plush seats. I haven’t yet learned the source of this name, Ramses. There is nothing pharaonic about the place. Ramses is actually Ramazan, a portly young man in a T-shirt, and a very good barber. He wasn’t there. His mother had died 40 days before, so he was away for the traditional Muslim commemoration of this anniversary, a reception for family and friends featuring the recitation of the Mevlid, an early 15^th c. poem in Ottoman Turkish that concerns the life of the Prophet Muhammad. A teenage boy was minding the shop. He didn’t dare give me a proper haircut, but offered to neaten me up by trimming the rough edges. 
            “Where are you from?” he asked.
            “America.”
            “But you’re thin! Americans are heavy.”
            That was a surprising remark. I don’t think of myself as particularly thin. And this boy had the beginnings of a belly that would someday rival Ramazan’s.
            I leaned forward and he washed my hair in the basin. He was happy to have given me satisfactory service, but insisted I take Ramazan’s card.
            “Call first!” he said. “Make sure that Ramazan is here.”
            I promised I would.
 

 

04/07/2012

Cultural heritage needs fighters

             For the past three decades, construction on Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean coasts has boomed. Hotels from simple to grandiose, apartment blocks, and little houses (known as “villas”), often multiplied in clusters, occupy beaches, coastal plains, and the adjacent hillsides, supplying the demand of sun-seekers, especially from northern Europe (including Russia), and middle and upper-middle class Turks eager to own their own place for their annual one-month paid vacation.  As recently as the 1970s, when I first visited, many of these areas were still remote.  One section of the road around the southwest coast, from Antalya to Fethiye, was gravel. The beaches between Antalya and Alanya were pristine. Bodrum (ancient Halicarnassus), today favored by celebrities, lay at the end of a monotonously winding one-lane road.  Antalya boasted one 2-star hotel, the Büyük (the `Grand`), in which the summer guest, after a night battling mosquitoes, awoke in sweat-soaked sheets. Locals escaped the torrid summers by decamping for the “yayla,” the uplands, with drier air and cooler nights.

Alanya (on the Mediterranean coast): view east from the Seljuk citadel
            Because the ancients had also settled the coasts of Asia Minor, this modern construction activity has created a monumental conflict between those seeking to explore and preserve the remains of the past with developers and their clients.  The cultural heritage in Turkey is fortunately not suffering as it is in Egypt or Syria, where the current turmoil has opened copious opportunities for thieves and looters to pillage museums and archaeological sites, but the problems are nonetheless ongoing and without resolution.
            I thought of this dilemma the other evening while listening to Vasıf Şahoğlu, associate professor of archaeology at Ankara University, lecture on his excavations at Çeşme – Bağlararası. Çeşme (pronounced “Chesh-meh”) is a trendy harbor town on the Aegean coast west of Izmir. When construction work close to the yacht marina revealed Bronze Age houses, the property owners in this pricey district must have been beside themselves with anxiety. It’s all very nice to discover ancient remains, but not where one wants to build a summer house!  We might suspect that earlier construction in the neighborhood had already revealed antiquities, but builders and owners managed to hush matters up. This time, maybe someone tattled, out of spite?
            This happened near Kinet Höyük, the archeological site where I work, in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean.  In November, 1999, when the excavation team was not there, during construction of a liquid gas bottling facility not far from the site, two workmen found a hoard of, reportedly, 1200 gold coins of Theodosius I (Roman emperor AD 379-395).  The  men secretly sold them through illegal channels. No one would have known a thing had not the brother of one of the workmen been cut out of the deal. He had been sick the day the coins were found. Angry, he told the police. By this time, the coins had long disappeared, apart from one which the men had kept (now supposedly in the Hatay Museum, Antakya).

A still unspoiled Aegean view
            Education is the answer, some say.  If people are aware of their cultural heritage, they will protect it instead of trading it in for cash.  Alas, this is too idealistic. Passionate collectors can be very well educated people.  And the director of the Uşak Archaeological Museum (in western Turkey) knew perfectly well what he was doing when he sold off the unique gold seahorse pendant from the so-called Lydian Treasure, replacing it in the display case with a mediocre copy, in order to raise money to pay his gambling debts. This scandal came after the Turkish government had gone to great expense and effort to extract this Treasure from the Metropolitan Museum, which had purchased this illegally excavated group of objects in the 1960s.  
            What to do?  Fight as best we can to preserve the cultural heritage, and hope that others will, too.

To read: On recent pillaging in Syria: In the April 06, 2012, issue of The Daily Star 
(an English-language newspaper in Beirut), Jocelyne Zablit, “Experts sound alarm 
over Syria archaeological treasures” 

<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2012/Apr-06/169378-experts-sound-alarm-over-syria-archaeological-treasures.ashx>

    On recent pillaging in Egypt: In the March 10, 2012, issue of Le Monde (the French daily), Claire Talon, “Pilleurs d’Egypte”  [in French]

 

Mart 2012

03/31/2012

Accidents

            When I first set foot in Ankara, in 1972, I was in a bus accident. We heard a loud snap from  the underbelly of the airport bus, and then the bus headed straight across the curvıng road and flew into space. After a 360° lateral roll, it landed with a big thud in a ditch, on its feet. Broken glass, dust everywhere, but apart from bruises and shattered nerves, no one was hurt.  I checked for Marie-Henriette, my fiancée – fine – then my glasses – intact – but where was our friend, Patty Gerstenblith?  A white specter slowly rose from the central aisle: dust-covered, stunned, but all parts still in working order.  It was dark, mid-evening; I had no idea where we were. Villagers quickly arrived to inspect and to help. One pointed to the sky and said “Allah.”  I agreed: God had indeed shown us mercy.
        This February I had another accident, but of a different sort.  Rushing from my office in the dark winter evening, I didn’t notice the ice next to my car.  I slipped and fell forward, landing squarely on my right knee. The result: a broken knee cap and torn tendons, an operation, three nights in the hospital, three weeks recuperation at home. Six weeks later, I’m still on crutches, but have taken my first tentative steps without.

My balcony in Ankara:  Winter finished, Spring not yet here
            Accidents forty years apart: a frame for four decades largely spent in Turkey, in Ankara most of all, but also in Istanbul and with many summers on archaeological excavations in far-flung locations. Don’t ask me why, but it seems a propitious moment to begin writing a blog. About what? asked my daughter, Irene. About my life in Turkey, a journal of the ordinary – well, not TOO ordinary. A quote from Anais Nin that I taped to our icebox long ago lights the way: “There is an incentive to make your life interesting, so that your diary will not be dull.”  For “diary,” read “blog.”
        I’ll try not to be too wordy, and to  post once a week, on the weekend.
        In closing: Ten days ago, I ventured forth, on my crutches, to the Fine Arts Faculty of my university, my longest walk since my nasty fall, to watch a film  that Marie-Henriette was very keen to see.  What normally would take five minutes took me 15.  That included three flights of stairs in an elevator-less building. But what a film! “My Sweet Canary,” by Israeli director Roy Sher, presents the life of Roza Eskenazi, a Jewish woman from Istanbul and Thessaloniki (ca. 1895-1980) who became a leading singer of rebetiko, the nightclub, blues-like music popular in the cities of Greece and Asia Minor in the early 20th century. Contemporary musicians, notably Mehtap Demir (who is Turkish), Martha D. Lewis (British, of Greek Cypriot heritage), and Tomer Katz (Israeli), perform her songs as they travel through Roza’s places, Istanbul, Thessaloniki, and Athens. The visual aspect of the film is just as enthralling as the musical. I was on the edge of my seat (well, with my bad leg propped up) from start to finish. Highly recommended!

To learn more: www.mysweetcanary.com