Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 22 2007

Going, going…

by PAT YALE

Before coming to Turkey I lived in Bristol, in the west of England.
For most of my adult life I could rock up to the nearest shopping
center and find anything I wanted, ready to buy.
So when I moved to Göreme it took some time to adjust to the
necessarily three-pronged local approach to shopping, which goes
something like this. First we scour the shelves of the local dükkan.
Then we head for Nevºehir. Then when Nevºehir also lets us down, we
try Kayseri, an hour away by bus.
Kayseri is also our last port of call in veterinary crises and last
week found me hotfooting it to the vet school after a local clinician
bungled a routine spaying operation. The vet school vet is both
encouraging and discouraging, but at last he sends me on my way,
whereupon my first thought is to indulge in a little retail therapy
at the new Kayseri Park shopping mall. Instead I find my legs turning
as if of their own accord toward the Tavukcu Mahalle.
On the surface Kayseri is a big, modern town whose historic monuments
— the old city walls and innumerable Selçuk mosques, medreses and
tombs — look increasingly lost amid the high-rise evidence of a
booming local economy. In such circumstances the Tavukcu Mahalle
looks like the place that time forgot.
In the late 19th century Tavukcu was a flourishing Armenian
neighborhood full of sturdy stone mansions whose interiors boasted
magnificent displays of local carpentry. But the passing years have
been cruel to it. Some of the houses fell victim to would-be treasure
hunters in the 1920s; others were asset stripped more recently to
supply the burgeoning market for reclaimed home fittings. The death
knell was a brand-new road that slashed through the mahalle. I had
stumbled upon its dejected remnants almost by accident while hunting,
would you believe it, for reclaimable iron railings to adorn my
Göreme home.
It’s a sunny day and snow still lingers on the ground. In their
heyday many of the houses were painted bright blues, reds and
yellows, and even in ruins they make a vivid splash of color against
the wintry landscape. But nowadays this is a dirt-poor district where
a foreign face is a rarity. Eventually someone beckons me inside a
magnificent old mansion. Reused as a butcher’s, it reeks of stale
blood and at the top of the curvy staircase a crop-eared kangal dog
eyes me warily, its legs neatly crossed in front of it like a ballet
dancer’s. Beside it a deep red fresco unravels like old wallpaper.
Now that it’s almost too late the authorities have started work on
restoration. Seeing me weighing up their work, Mehmet Usta rushes to
show me the old church half-hidden behind a lofty wall. We ring the
bell and are politely dismissed by the custodian. But I’d visited in
2002 and, turning away, I remember the glittering altarpiece that
lurks inside, a splendid, sad reminder of a Tavukcu now gone forever.