A JOURNEY INTO TURKEY’S WILD EAST
Tim Hannigan, Contributor, London

Features News
Sunday, December 09, 2007

Jakarta Post

The man behind the counter in Istanbul train station raised a quizzical
eyebrow: "It’s dangerous in the East — Islamists, the Kurdish rebels,
and it’s close to Iraq. Are you sure you want to go there?"

I smiled nervously and nodded. He shrugged and handed over a ticket
for a 30-hour train ride into Turkey’s wild eastern borderlands.

I did wonder if this was a sensible time to be making the trip:
it was late autumn, and for weeks tension had been mounting along
the Iraq-Turkey border, with the Turkish parliament threatening
cross-border raids against rebel bases in northern Iraq. But I put
such worries from my mind, clambered aboard the train and settled
down for the long journey across Anatolia.

The splendors of Istanbul have been attracting tourists for more
than a millennia and the package resorts of Turkey’s Mediterranean
coastline seethe with sunbathers every summer, but I was heading for
somewhere altogether different.

Eastern Turkey fades into a tangle of sensitive borders: Georgia,
Armenia, Iran and Iraq. A geopolitical hotspot for centuries, invaded
by Mongols and Russians in the past and riven by insurgency in recent
decades, it’s not surprising that it has never been much of a tourist
destination.

But it wasn’t stories of violence that I had in mind as the train
rolled on past Ankara into the night: it was images of clear skies,
jagged mountains and cobalt-blue lakes.

A long way from Istanbul

I was a long way from Istanbul now. There wasn’t a trendy wine bar or
upmarket boutique in sight, and there certainly weren’t any girls in
short skirts. Instead there were bulky women swathed in coal-black
chadors, donkey carts in the alleys of the bazaar and a faint smell
of spice in the gritty wind. Welcome to eastern Turkey.

Erzurum, where I clambered down from the train, seemed adrift in a
huge landscape. From the minaret of the fifth-century citadel that
loomed over the town I could see the sweep of empty yellow steppe to
the north, and the ribbed brown hills, glowing in the October sunlight
to the south.

Erzurum is an ancient city. A staging post on the Silk Route, it was
repeatedly seized by invaders. The conquering armies left their marks
on the town, and the arrow-straight main street is a thoroughfare
through Turkish architectural history with ancient mosques and
seminaries between the modern shops and cafes.

The cosmopolitan secularists of western Turkey will tell you that
Erzurum is a hotbed of aggressive Islamic radicalism. There are
certainly more veiled women than on the streets of Istanbul, but it’s
a remarkably friendly place, and everywhere I went the people offered
warm greetings and cups of sweet black tea.

***

East of Erzurum the countryside was colder, and wilder. Great expanses
of flat red-brown earth ran out from the road as the bus sped along
the highway to Kars. Mud-walled villages stood in groves of poplar
trees and small boys herded flocks of shaggy brown sheep over the
broken soil. In the distance a long ridge of hills rose to a pale sky.

Kars is just about the most remote city in Turkey. Made famous by
author Orhan Pamuk in his novel Snow, for many Turks Kars is a synonym
for cold provincial backwardness.

It was certainly cold when I arrived just before nightfall. A bitter
wind was howling along the grid of streets laid out during a period
of Russian occupation, but there was real warmth in the people here.

I ate a delicious dinner of stewed lamb and aubergine with tomato and
fresh bread in a lokanta — a simple cafe. The waiter had worked in
Germany as a young man and had picked up a little English there. He
was eager to welcome me to his part of the country.

"People in Istanbul say it is dangerous here," he said. "We are poor,
yes, but we are good people."

Toward the Frontier

The next morning the hills beyond Kars were covered with snow. The
sense of winter rapidly closing in added a feeling of excitement as
I boarded a battered minibus heading towards the Iranian frontier.

The road passed villages hidden among willows and poplar trees. Ahead
the great conical peak of Mount Ararat — where according to legend
Noah’s Ark ran aground after the Flood — rose from a yellow horizon.

Kurdish folk music played on the minibus stereo and a blue and white
charm to ward off the evil eye dangled from the rear view mirror.

In the early afternoon I arrived in Dogubayazit, a wild little border
town, 20 miles from Iran, clinging to a hillside above an empty plain
with Ararat looming in the distance.

Dogubayazit’s most famous attraction stands on a high promontory
above the town. The Ishak Pasa Palace is one of the most stunning
buildings in Turkey. Built by a local chieftain two centuries ago, it
looks out over the vast landscape of eastern Anatolia. The courtyard
was deserted when I visited and the honey-colored limestone of the
columns and archways glowed in the afternoon sunlight.

As I walked back downhill toward the town three boys huddling behind
a low wall out of the chilly wind called me over to ask my name and
my country. When I returned the question about nationality they
glanced nervously at one another and mumbled, "Turkey". But as I
walked away they called me back and hissed, "We are not Turkish,
mister; we are Kurdish."

The Kurdish homeland sprawls across the borders of Turkey, Iran, Syria
and Iraq. For many years Eastern Turkey — the Kurdish heartland —
has seen vicious fighting between the Kurdistan Workers Party, known
as the PKK, which wants to establish an independent Kurdish homeland,
and the Turkish army.

In the last couple of years there have been moves towards peace, but
the increasing Kurdish autonomy over the border in Northern Iraq has
made the Turkish government nervous, and reignited the aspirations
of Turkey’s Kurds.

Abandoned churches, troubled past

The waters of Lake Van, a vast inland sea in hemmed in by rugged
mountains, were as blue as lapis lazuli. The hillsides beyond the
shore were dusted with snow, but it was warm in the bright sunlight.

I was standing beneath the golden sandstone walls of the Armenian
Church of the Holy Cross on the tiny island of Akdamar, a mile out
in the lake.

I had caught a lift in a truck along the lakeside road, then convinced
a ferryman to take me across despite the lack of other passengers.

The Kurds were not always the only troubled minority in eastern
Turkey. A century ago the area was home to several million Armenians.

As the Turks fought Russia in the First World War the Armenians
were accused of having pro-Russian sympathies and deported en-masse
to Syria.

During the deportations hundreds of thousands, possibly millions,
died. Many regard the fate of the Armenians as the 20th Century’s
first case of genocide; for the modern Turkish government it is an
issue still too sensitive for open discussion.

What is certain is that all that remains of centuries of Armenian
culture in Eastern Turkey are enigmatic ruins like the church at
Akdamar.

The church was beautiful. Inside its echoing chambers the delicate
iconography could still be made out, a thousand years after it was
painted. I wandered the island for an hour, then caught the ferry
back to the mainland and hitchhiked into Van.

The city of Van was the last stop on my tour through Turkey’s wild
east. It was a bustling place and the sprawling bazaar hummed with
sights and sounds. Great bolts of colored cloth hung outside tailors
stores; pavements were lined with boxes of dates, nuts and apricots.

The smell of fresh bread wafted from hole-in-the-wall bakeries,
and the sizzle of grilling meat drifted out from kebab stalls. Old
Kurdish men in black-and-white headscarfs hobbled along the alleyways,
and shopkeepers called me inside to give me sweet tea and creamy
feta cheese.

Eastern Turkey might be the most troubled part of the country, but
it is probably the friendliest. And despite the checkposts and army
bases I saw in the region there was no hint of trouble, hostility or
impending violence.

I spent 24 hours in Van then took an afternoon flight back to
Istanbul. As the Turkish Airways jet roared up into the evening sky
I strained my head to catch a last glimpse of the wild landscape
through the cabin window. To the south ranks of hills ran on and on.

Somewhere among them were the PKK camps and the troubled Iraqi
frontier, but you’d never have known it.

***

Three hours later I was plodding uphill from the Golden Horn into the
heart of Istanbul. The bars and upmarket restaurants were crowded;
sleek modern trams hummed along the streets, and there were girls in
short skirts.

I found a cozy little guesthouse amid the carpet shops in the shadow of
the Blue Mosque. The young man on reception asked where I had arrived
from and raised an eyebrow when I told him. "The East?" he said,
"But it’s dangerous out there."

I smiled, finished checking in, and set about putting him right.