Of Fevers and Fairy Chimneys - Cappadocia and Ankara

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Medieval troglophytes (what a great word!) carved churches alongside their homes, and ducking into a few rooms, I could smell they carved out toilets too. There is no single doubt in my mind that George Lucas used Cappadocia as his inspiration for Tatooine, the desert home planet of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. If he emails me otherwise, I’ll let you know. Later, I zipped up the rocky road to the so-called Rose Garden to see the magnificent sunset. That night I dined on four types of eggplant mezes, because no vegetable satisfies me more than a swollen purple aubergine. It was also my six-month anniversary since I left Vancouver. The Inca Trail, Bolivia, Villarica, Patagonia, Jericoacoara, Krakow, Vis, Dhermi….the names feel like characters in a sitcom ≠ full of personality and memories, but are they real? Six months, and I feel like I’ve been through a lifetime. I celebrated with a bottle of Turkish red wine, which was…complicated. I think I’ll stick to the wine nations I know.

The next morning I got lost driving the 50km south to the Kaymakli underground city, originally used by the Hittites 2000 years ago, and later developed by persecuted Christians in the Dark Ages. I was skeptical about the word “city”, but then I found out that 5000 people lived underground in these vast, man-made caverns. There were eight levels, with at least one room for every family, linked by low, narrow tunnels and carved out steps. Used primarily as a refuge when under attack, the Christians from surrounding villages would lock themselves under the hill for up to six months, by which time the invading army would have moved on and everyone would have lost their tan. As a museum, only a small portion was open to the public, but it was impressive nonetheless. Just as my pictures failed to do any justice, it was hard to imagine life for thousands of people under the ground. Back on the bike, past a few villages, a huge prison (today, I am grateful for not being an in a Turkish prison), holding on for dear life on a highway under construction, I overtook donkey carts and women selling peppers, turning heads with my hat, tightened under my chin. Thoroughly satisfied and bumsore from the scooter, I decided to head back into the city to get a taste of Modern Turkey.

As the world’s only secular Muslim state, Turkey is torn in four directions. Most countries have that tense canyon between their developed, affluent regions and the poorer, rural regions. In Turkey, the West, bordering Greece and Bulgaria, wants very much to be, and is, part of Europe. In the East, bordering Iraq, Syria and Armenia, Turkey is backwards, poor and rife with ethnic violence. The West don’t like the East much, and Western folks blame the Eastern folks for rising crime, homelessness and all the usual stuff that accompanies the desperate poor folks as they head to the cities for a better life. Vertically slicing this horizontal jam, Turkey has a religious-secular conflict going on, perfectly illustrated by women cloaked head to toe, accompanied by daughters wearing mini-skirts. Turkey as a modern secular state is the result of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who fought for and founded the Turkish Republic in the 1923. If you combine Lord Nelson, Ghandi, Churchill, Mandela, King Arthur and Abraham Lincoln, you would get something approximating what Ataturk means to the Turks. His image is everywhere; from currency notes to statues to murals to paintings in just about every shop or store. With his penetrating blue eyes and handsome bushy eyebrows, it is as if no other Turkish hero ever existed. In fact, publicly criticizing Ataturk is illegal and punishable by jail. That being said, the guy was a legend. He removed all religious aspects from government, Latinized the alphabet, gave women the vote, banned polygamy, introduced the Gregorian calendar, created a democratic legal system, gave Turks surnames (Ataturk means “Father of the Turks”), all the while avoiding a jihad while calling religion an “obstacle to progress.” He is famous for saying; “Peace at home, peace in the world!” Impressive guy. The kind of leader that comes once in a people’s history, and is nowhere to be found in this day and age. Nowadays, there is still a fear amongst the secular population that Islamic fundamentalists are waiting to take over and reverse engineer Turkey into another Iran. This creates an unusual situation in which the liberal left support the military, who have traditionally been anti-religion and therefore guard them from being swallowed up by a world of veils, head-scarves and kaffiyehs. If you’re still awake, this little history lesson was necessary to understand what I learnt in Ankara, Turkey’s CAPITAL city (I bet you though Istanbul was the capital….wrong!) Ataturk decided to move the capital to Ankara because it is strategically located in the middle of the country. It has a population of four million, of which three of us were tourists. The rest of the foreigners are in government, business, jail, or trouble if they’re looking for cheap accommodation. Ankara has NO hostels because it has NO tourists. As a big, sprawling city dedicated solely to running a country, nobody visits Ankara for its few sights or urban beauty. Nobody that is, except me.

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