Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 12 2009

‘Arksearch: The terrifying quest’

Today is Easter Sunday for the churches in the Western hemisphere
(Eastern churches celebrate this feast a few Sundays later), the day
when Christians celebrate their belief that Jesus rose from the dead,
after dying on the cross for their sins, to provide salvation for
mankind.

The Bible is full of stories that demonstrate salvation and foreshadow
the Easter events. The very first one of these, in the first book of
the Bible, Genesis, is also recorded in the Quran. Because of
mankind’s wickedness, God decides to destroy the world by a flood. Yet
he saves his faithful servant Noah and his family, and all the
animals, by warning Noah beforehand and telling him to build an
ark. The Quranic story emphasizes more the way the people of Noah’s
day ignore his warnings and refuse to turn back to God. The Biblical
story makes more of God’s promises to Noah after the flood has
receded: `As long as the earth endures, seed-time and harvest, cold
and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’ This
promise is sealed with the sign of the rainbow.
Both the Bible and the Quran tell of the ark coming to rest as the
flood waters subside on the mountains of eastern Turkey, although they
do not agree about the specific location. In actual fact, they may not
disagree so much as the Bible talks about the mountains of Ararat, not
Mount Ararat, which could include other mountains in the area such as
Mount Judi; it is all a question of interpretation.

It also seems to be a question of heated diplomacy and international
boundary wars when it comes to AÄ?rı DaÄ?, Turkey’s
Mount Ararat. I am more used to seeing photos of it taken from the
east, as it rises impressively above the plain. I was shocked to see
it starring as the first shot in the Armenian edition of the `sights
and sounds’ series of commercials on CNN. Blatantly ignoring the fact
that the mountain is within the borders of the Republic of Turkey,
this neighboring country seemed to base their whole commercial around
the idea that Noah landed in Armenia, even using the strap-line
`Noah’s route: your route.’

I could begin to understand why the border is closed, and why it can
be a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare to obtain permits to climb Mount
AÄ?rı.

Stories abound in the archaeological world that, just maybe, the ark
may still lie somewhere on the mountains of Ararat — the range in
southeastern Turkey that used to be part of the ancient kingdom of
Urartu. The summit of Ararat is snow capped, but every so often we
have such a hot summer that the cap recedes, and trekkers and
adventurers from the last century sometimes recorded in their logbooks
seeing shapes that could be the remains of Noah’s vessel, often
accompanied with sketches and hand-drawn maps.

It would seem amazing that a wooden vessel (the Bible tells us it was
made of gopher wood, and covered with pitch to waterproof it) could
survive so many millennia. It would need a combination of some very
specific conditions to preserve it. Perhaps buried in mud and
subjected to sub-zero temperatures, the decaying process could have
been halted.

The English Tudor warship the Mary Rose was pretty well preserved
underwater between the time she sank in 1545 and the time she was
raised in 1982. In 2006, as digging was under way for the Marmaray
project, the old Byzantine Harbor of Eleutherios was discovered,
including a number of ships preserved in the mud. These are now on
display in the Ä°stanbul Archaeological Museum.

If eight boats could survive from the fourth century, could the
conditions have been right for Noah’s ark to have survived more than
twice as long?

Australian professor Allen Roberts, archaeologist Ron Wyatt, travel
director Richard Rivers and Texan business consultant Marvin Wilson
believed it was possible. They traveled to Turkey in 1990 and 1991 in
order to research a site at Akyayla, in southeastern Turkey. This
strange mud formation appeared to have the shape of a boat. Its length
matched the measurements given in the Bible for the ark. Its width was
wider — but this could be explained by the structure flattening out
as it slid down the mountainside.

Previous research by German and Turkish archaeologists had added
weight to the theories that the Akyayla outcrop could be Noah’s ark;
now all that was needed was careful digging to confirm or deny the
theory. The foreigners had met with high-ranking officials from the
Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and received the necessary
permissions to explore the site.

Their first stop on the way was to be Bingöl. Knowing that the
area was dangerous, with terrorists from the Marxist Kurdish terrorist
organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), often clashing with
the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), they had intended only to travel in
daylight. But delays setting out meant that they found themselves
still on the road after sunset, nearing Bingöl.

Suddenly they hit a roadblock and the four of them along with a
foreign tourist were kidnapped from their bus. The following three
weeks were a nightmare of climbing through steep and dangerous terrain
— at gunpoint!

Roberts’ story of this time, `Arksearch,’ is a compelling read; not so
much for the sections on the Akyayla site, as the book was written
before later research showed it to be a syncline — this geological
formation is the result of the laws of physics and mathematics as mud
slides down a rocky mountain face, forming a boat-like shape — but
for the story of Westerners forced to be on the run in the mountains
with the PKK while the Turkish government mobilizes all its resources
to rescue them.

`We were at the mercy of the mountains, and the men who lived in
them,’ Roberts recalls. Having no control over the situation, they
were taken on a 350-meter climb up to a mountain ridge in the
dark. For the next few weeks this was to form the pattern of life:
night marches in single file Indian style, `a black hell’ he calls it,
and all the time they were under the watchful eye of their
guards. `The guerilla’s psychological stock in trade¦terror tactics
to intimidate us.’

Their captors would use chirruping birdcalls to signal to one another
as they moved to avoid the over 4,000 troops the Turkish Army had out
looking for them. Every time they moved off from camp, they would hear
the swish, swish of the branches used to sweep away their tracks. It
turned into a deadly game of nocturnal hikes, being used as human
shields in the conflict and pawns in the propaganda game.

Roberts tells the story of living the life that their captors lived,
before they were eventually released unharmed near Erzurum. He also
has nothing but praise for the Turkish authorities. `The young man who
typed my statement in the gendarmerie told me that his brother and two
of his friends had been killed by the PKK last week.’

`My eyes grew hot with tears — tears that blurred the distinction
between guerilla and soldier, between Kurd and non-Kurd. Inwardly I
wept for the people of a land I had grown to love.’

`Arksearch: The Terrifying Quest’ by Allen Roberts, published by
Monarch, 7.99 pounds in paperback, ISBN: 978-185424273-0

12 April 2009, Sunday
MARION JAMES Ä°STANBUL