Turkish Letters #4 -- Amasya -> Göreme -> Konya -> Afyon (John)

Amasya

I will avoid the potential pun and simply say that Amasya is stunning. Not the town so much, although it is full of beautiful old buildings, but the setting. A valley cuts East to West (or vice versa) through craggy snow brushed mountains as though God had hit the place with an axe then got bored with vandalism and went off to bother people elsewhere.

The place is famous as the home of Strabo the geographer, and for a series of governors who went on to become sultans of the Ottoman empire, as well as being the site of a group of Pontian tombs. I know nothing about the Pontians except that they had an eye for post-mortem architecture. Their tombs were carved from the almost vertical walls of the valley. The tombs are not particularly attractive, and not at all ornate. It is solely their location and the obvious difficulty of their construction that astounds.

The Pontian kings indulged in the benefits of a slave state - getting what you want, where you want it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be buried when you are dead. Choosing to be buried 500 feet up a sheer cliff face is another matter. Obviously the tombs were carved out of the rock while the future occupants were still extant. Otherwise the pragmatic locals would have promised the Earth, and the come the day tossed the royal remains in the river and got on with the more important matters of growing apples and sitting in rooms waiting for the invention of tea.

If the tombs tell you anything about the Pontians it is that they lacked common sense. Which may explain why they are longer dwell amongst us. Firstly, the tombs are carved out of solid rock. Secondly, the internal space is bigger than the entrance requiring a large amount of rock to be removed through a very small opening. Thirdly, the rock around the tombs is cut away so they are free standing. These tombs make the pyramids look like the epitome of architectural efficiency. To top it all they were pillaged anyway.

Amasya's other claims to fame, which I forgot to mention earlier, are that it was the capital of the Cappadoccian state, and that it was here that Attaturk planned to overthrow the Ottomans and create modern Turkey.

The fact that it was the capital of a state probably accounts for the presence of a citadel, or as they are known in Turkey a Kale. The kale clings atop a conical peak whose height and sheerness would give an eagle vertigo. The original fortress was established when Methuselah was still playing marbles, and has been added to over the millennia. Tall, strong and proud it stands unassailable with views to die for, which I am sure most assailants did. By the time they reached the gates all the attackers could do was stand, doubled over with their hands on their knees, gasping for breath while the defenders hurled abuse and, I am sure, more substantial things upon them. After which the attackers would retreat to the valley to steal apples and await the invention of tea.

We were able to stroll up aided by a paved road. The ruins were overgrown with weeds and shrubs happily growing in places only a fool would approach. A thin covering of snow gave the place the most romantic of airs. Finches darted about with the confidence only winged creatures can have at such a height. Down below the native species of crow (black heads, tails and wings with a grey body giving the impression they were wearing the ubiquitous old mans' grey wool vests - which is sensible in the bracing air) wheeled and dived.

The snow and ice made footing a tad treacherous. However, the site is being upgraded and labourers were constructing steps and paths for tourists. A little voice at the back of my mind reminded me that with Turkish building standards being what they are the new additions may be making the place more treacherous to the unwary. And at this height the unwary are more accurately referred to as the dead. One of the labourers wandered over and happily scampering up a partly collapsed wall that would have given a mountain goat pause for thought showed me a tunnel that ran within the walls and under the citadel. He appeared to claim that it ran all the way back down to the town. I did not want to call him a liar as I did not know the Turkish equivalent but on later consideration decided we had misunderstood. The tunnel was there and it was impressive - I have pictures to prove it.

All things considered, the climb and moments of terror were well worth it. I recommend it to future visitors, especially after the safety railings (a rarity in Turkey) are in place.

Now to the town itself. Situated at the bottom of a deep valley it has its own micro-climate. Snow can cover the mountain tops while flowers still bloom down below, and half the trees seem undecided as to what to do with their leaves. Deciduous indecisiveness. The terrain also dictates that any ugly new development (in Turkey all new development is ugly - and no I am not being an old stick in the mud) has to happen further along the valley and out of sight of the city centre. Thus the city is largely composed the quaint traditional architecture. The old houses are painted in delightful colour combinations that would make a designer weep with envy - I know I did.

As in many Turkish cities you stumble across stately mosques, bath-houses and so forth that have stood for centuries, in some cases approaching millennia. While large areas still maintain the Turkish (read half-arsed) approach to building the city has a certain order which leads me to believe the inhabitants interbred with some passing Swiss at some stage. They have pedestrian crossings, and the motorists' behaviour can be said to approach the rational. It has a well-to-do air and very few signs of catering to the tourist trade. Which is odd given God knows what else keeps the place running. The primary industry is said to be apple growing but I believe it is, in fact, cute children. I was tempted to kidnap some and sell them to Hollywood. The place is awash with schools and you are seldom out of earshot of the gleeful sound of juvenile delight. Each school, of course, has a statue of Kamal Attaturk.

As I have mentioned previously, Turkey has Attaturk sculptures like the village cur has fleas. After a few days you feel uncomfortable if you pass out of his steely gaze. Amasya is particularly proud of its ties to Attaturk and has some of the more remarkable sculptures dedicated to his memory. Attaturk is one of the great figures of history and his effect on Turkey is indelible. However, he must have done something to upset artists - maybe he closed the art schools. Most of the statues display the sculptors' distaste, lack of taste, or lack of skill - all attributable to my previous suggestion. Anyway, the big sculpture has Attaturk astride a horse and surrounded by some grim figures whose visages suggest that he has just asked them to carry him and his horse up to the Pontian tombs for a quick visit.

This statue is surpassed in bizarreness only by the one dedicated to Ferhat. Ferhat (according to the plaque) was a brave man, he was a designer. He brought drinking water to the town of Amasya. Given the town has a river running through it, I believe Ferhat was a pretty smooth talker. Not far from the statue of Ferhat is one dedicated to Strabo the geographer. You would imagine a map-maker could have suggested a grid system to the town worthies in the early days of Amasya's development but this is Turkey after all.

We spent days strolling about admiring the landscape, the buildings, the children, in fact almost everything. When it all became too much we would sit somewhere and have the inevitable cup of sweet tea. Promenade by the river - cup of tea, stroll through town - cup of tea, back to the hotel - cup of tea, off to the restaurant - O.K. glass of beer. Each morning, as clouds spilled over the mountaintops to dissipate at the tree-line we would be woken by the muezzins' call to the faithful. Shiralee has explained to me how the muezzins in Istanbul will used a call-and-response system to avoid competing calls. In Amasya the echoes from the surrounding cliffs render this method untenable. Instead it sounds as if the local muezzins have developed a rondeau system that utilises the echoes while maintaining individual clarity. The sound is amazing.

I want to say Amasya is heaven, but it is more like the place 'mostly good' people go when they die. I could be happy I my old bones were to occupy one of the Pontian tombs. Boy, what a view.

Göreme(Cappadoccia)

Writing about Göreme will quickly deplete one's supply of adjectives. After crossing a plain that at this time of year displays a desolate beauty you enter a gorge that looks like Hobbiton after a real-estate boom. Tall stacks of exotically weathered rock rise from sinuous valleys. The whole place is riddled with caves, crevices and hole-like absences. The area is a geological freak designed by an accommodating creator to make extraterrestrials feel more at home should they ever care to visit. If they do they can check out one of Turkey's three UFO museums, which was, unfortunately, closed when we chose to see it. Maybe aliens prefer the peak season.

As my puny supply would bore any discerning reader, and I have been told that suffixing expletives to adjectives for emphasis will lessen my chances of finding a publisher, I will resort to direct technical description.

Some time ago when I was a lot younger a huge volcanic event filled a broad river valley with layers of ash. This ash was compacted under its own weight to form a porous friable stone (stone is quite an exaggeration as you can cut the stuff with a butter knife). Subsequent eruptions strewed the area with lava in an ad hoc fashion. The lava cooled leaving the area with a spattering of rock more resistant to erosion than that beneath it. Erosion took its toll washing away any rock not covered by a non-porous layer as easily as a stain in a Nappi San ad. The end result is what you see in the attached picture.

Early humans found the caves ideal and easily affordable accommodation, and the place has been inhabited since Eve suggested a dietary supplement to Adam. This neck of the woods has long been visited by peoples migrating East to West and its fertile soils made it a prime target for any horse-borne pirate with an eye to settling down. During such incursions the locals merely had to scamper up to their caves pull up the ladders and wait out the siege - all the time praying the invaders had not invented the high-pressure hose.

This ease of defense made the place particularly attractive to early Christians whom fell upon the cliffs like a pack of pious termites and carved out churches like there was no tomorrow - which some sincerely believed. Unfortunately, the stone is so fragile it can be shattered by a withering glance and huge chunks of rock regularly crash into the valleys below exposing tunnels, rooms and whole churches to the eye of the fortunate tourist. Many of these cave dwellings were inhabited up until the 1950s (some are still), when the Turkish government decided, most uncharacteristically, that it was too dangerous and moved the population to equally shoddy, but less charming, above ground accommodation.

We arrived in Göreme around 8.00am after spending seven hours in a hellish otogar in Kayseri (essentially an ashtray with a bus service). We were picked up by our host and driven a short distance to the Fairy Chimney Inn. Fairy Chimneys is the tourist friendly name for the weird rock towers. Our room was part room part cave and quite cozy. Attached to it was a grotto (not grotty) bathroom larger than most rooms we had previously stayed in. After a hearty breakfast and extended shower we regained our human forms and visited the village. The centre of Göreme has been gentrified and is awash with rug shops, souvenir shops, bike hire places and a couple of quite reasonable restaurants. We later tended to visit it only for essentials (food and beer). The rest of the day we wandered around taking pictures of rocks, caves, old buildings, orchards, dry-stone walls and so forth until the very stones cried out for mercy. After that it was into the village for dinner home for a couple of beers and then crashing into bed - our cave/room had under-floor heating (progress ain't all bad).

We were woken the next morning by the muezzins' call to which the local dogs - out of piety, disrespect or a wicked sense of humour - responded with a chorus of howls. After another hearty breakfast (a very important meal to the traveller - after this assume all our breakfast were hearty) we set off for the nearby open-air museum. We wandered about gawping at paintings and frescoes that have been there for up to 1,200 years. Most have been horribly vandalised, the soft plaster proving too great a temptation for the kind of dickhead who assumes we all want to know where he was in 1963. A particularly brilliant site was the 'Black Church'. It is obviously but well repainted. However, given this place was inhabited until 1953, the question of authenticity is a moot point. After a while we became blasé about things the age of which would have staggered us previously.

Next, in the tradition of great Australian explorers, we set off totally unprepared into the wilds. Luckily, one of the village dogs took pity on us and decided to act as our guide. Originally I expected it to lead us into a valley where we would discover the desiccated remains of countless other fools. But Shiralee's promise of a pidé convinced it not to eat us and wait for something tastier. We trekked for hours always wanting to see what lay over the next ridge or around the next corner. Inevitably it was another ridge or another corner. We found fragments of Byzantine frescoes, churches and even older dwellings. We looked down from grottoes and cliffs onto meandering paths bordered by huge poplars doing their best to impersonate the rock formations around them. Tiny isolated orchards and vineyards turned up in the most unlikely places. It was just...just marvellous.

Eventually our four-footed guide showed us a little café, literally a hole in the wall where we sipped tea and chatted to the owner. He explained that the little nooks we had noticed in many of the caves, which with the place being inhabited by Greeks I assumed were for nick-nacks, souvenirs etc, were for pigeons. Pigeons were vital to the area once as a source of fertilizer. Today they are just a hobby, particularly tumbler pigeons that flutter about the village like feathered hiccoughs. Finally after following paths that were trod by well-known biblical figures we came to a little village and where we paid off our guide with gözleme and soup soaked bread. A visit to Göreme and its environs are a must for anyone with a sense of history.

As I mentioned before, the centre of Göreme has been gentrified. But the rest, whose layout is based on the movements of an epileptic earthworm, is a mixture of construction sites, old houses and cave dwellings. The locals can be seen picking fibres, drying fruit and doing other stuff in the traditional ways. Opposite our hotel men were building a house and shaping, dressing and carving the stone by hand on-site with nary a pair of goggles or face mask to be seen. Donkey carts litter the place all so highly decorated as to suggest the locals took the lyrics to 'Paint Your Wagon' literally. I thank God 'The Village People Movie' never made it to these parts. Despite the number of donkey carts we never saw a donkey although one obviously lived next door, and to judge by the sound was stabled on the second floor of the house.

Not all our time was spent wandering about in awe, admiration and rapture. We spent quite some time in the company of Lorraine who worked where we were staying. She regaled us with picaresque tales of her youth in Canada and her later travels to almost every obscure danger spot on the face of the Earth. Experienced, intelligent, educated and charming Lorraine herself is worth a visit. She gave us insights into the lives of the villagers caught between fundamentalism, tradition, pragmatism and modernity. It was Lorraine who made our last night in Göreme one of the highlights of our trip. If you have ever seen 'The Moonspinners' in which Walt Disney sends Haley Mills to the Mediterranean to deal with some nefarious Anthony Quinn type smugglers and fall in love - it was like that only better.

We had set out to have some dinner in the village and then meet Lorraine's friend Ali, a local musician, guide and character at a wine bar. We wound up rousing Ali out of bed. He then, with typical Turkish hospitality, invited us into his house where his mother treated us to delicious soup, endless cups of tea and countless pumpkin seeds while Ali sang traditional songs while playing a variety of drums. His father returned from prayers and gave us a rousing chorus of God knows what. It left me feeling talentless, uptight and totally inadequate to the situation - ie: typically Anglo.

We eventually made it to the wine bar where Ali and a bunch of local guys, one playing what appeared to be a pregnant banjo, belted out some lovely tunes. Never once did they stop Nana Mouskouri-like to explain that the song was 'about a little bird'. Although at one stage Lorraine burst out laughing and explained that the heart rending vocals we had just heard translated as 'Oh, no. The dog has stolen my slippers'. It was amazing. They even humiliated a Frenchman. If our time and budget had been more forgiving we would still be there. If Lorraine or Ali ever visit Australia you, as our friends, are honour bound to treat them to a great time.

Konyand Afyon

The journey to Konya took us across God's pool table - an area of land so flat it should serve as the world centre for spirit level production. Tiny villages nestle beside the road with no other apparent function than to break the monotony. The villagers must own vast numbers of electrical appliances as I could see no other reason for all the power pylons that dot the plain. Of course some bureaucrat may have decided that a power pylon safari park was a viable proposition.

Later we passed a huge industrial facility.   We wondered why it was located in the middle of nowhere. 'Proximity to resources' I suggested. 'What resources? Dirt?' Shiralee responded. We decided it was to minimise the consequences of a Bophal-like happenstance and prayed the bus would go faster. Freshly ploughed fields were dotted with clumps of earth in such a way that I expected a fez wearing rodent to pop up from a hole and say 'Merhaba, Doc?' Needless to say this did not occur. The enigma remains.

A few kilometres from Konya two rows of power pylons on either side of the road were bent down to the ground. It looked as if a giant had grabbed one end of the cables and given them an almighty yank. This being Turkey I suspect the worker attached the tensioning machine to the cables, turned it on and then went off to prayers. Weird.

Konya itself could have been a nice place had they not decided to compete with Ankara for the title of Turkey's most polluted city. It must be the asthma capital of the world. Emphysema is a competitive sport. The place is perpetually blanketed by a petrochemical fog. Looking down any street is a lesson in atmospheric perspective. Particularly if you are interested in perspective on Venus. After three hours of walking about I, my lungs weakened by a recent cold, had to reel gasping back to our hotel and sleep off the remainder of our visit.

The killer haze is exacerbated by the locals' penchant for riding two-stroke hybrid bike/cart contraptions that merrily belch out plumes of smoke that would have them pulled off Australian streets in a nano-second. Strangely enough Konya was the first place we saw people riding push-bikes. The flatness of the area makes it ideal for this. The air quality, however, makes the practice as safe as scuba diving without an aqualung. We even saw one future inmate of an insane asylum riding hands-free while reading a book in peak hour traffic. Shiralee reckons he was reading the Koran. He probably was. This is a country where people assume that painting a phrase containing the word 'Allah' on their car is the equivalent of installing seat belts, air bags, brakes and a shield of invulnerability.

The next day, at the first possible opportunity, we boarded a bus out of town. I farewelled Konya with as much remorse as a Londoner fleeing the plague. Shiralee will provide you with more balanced informative review of our time in this city. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, Konya can be summed up in three words. Don't go there.

The road to Afyon takes you off the plain and up into the surrounding hills. The landscape was exquisite. On our left marched mountains being suitably romantic. Dark tree covered slopes were towered over by snow covered peaks. On our right vast orchards of bare trees swept down to the distant lake - an exercise in subtle shade and fractal patterns quartered by rows of majestic poplars. Every now and then a stand of trees was painted a lovely pastel blue. This was either some kind of insecticide or an attempt to convince an unfortunate bush walker to give up drugs.

The roadside towns, if you can ignore the inevitable brick factories/cement mines, would not look out of place in a postcard from Austria. The only touches of reality/surreality were a series of themed road-houses which suggest Walt Disney experimented with some of his less well-conceived ideas off-shore.

Afyon seems to be an affable place. The old houses sprawl down the hillside and the modern centre sits at the foot of the hill. It is overtopped by a citadel that leaps out at you from surprising vistas as you wander the winding streets.

The Afyonites have taken a most un-Turkish liking to traffic lights. On most occasions motorists will give you a sporting chance if the lights are in your favour. They have rationalised the traffic flow with a series of one-way streets which is at first quite disconcerting.

Afyon has a university which is remarkable for a town of its size and location. The students seem to stick to the curriculum and avoid the extra-curricular activities of Australian students of old. In a Muslim state this is not so surprising. However, we did spend a couple of hours in a bar (after much searching) while waiting for our train. With candles on the tables, a contemporary folk band, and a group of students sporting beards and turtle-neck sweaters the place had a marvellous retro feel. One girl was wearing jeans and a jean jacket - Afyon's take on punk we presumed.

Having failed to see the Ataturk monument in Konya we were delighted to find the one in Afyon well able to make up for the loss. It is a clunky pedestal topped by two wrestling figures, one standing victoriously but still threateningly over the prone other. I assume the standing one is Ataturk but never having seen him naked I cannot be sure. Around the base are a series of four reliefs styled in such a way that I believe they were part of the repatriations from Germany after WWII then hastily re-purposed. The whole thing is the story of Turkey's struggle against the Greeks.

The first relief shows Ataturk and several other worthies stiff armed with rage as they try to sign a declaration of independence and discover the Greeks have stolen all their pens. The second is rather confused as a bunch of what appear to be the Waffen SS beat up on some unarmed Levantines. In the third soldiers politely offer Shylock a huge napkin to wipe his lips after dinner. The fourth is, of course, a profile of Kamal Atatuk. How this relates to Turkey's history is anyone's guess. This alone is worth a visit to Afyon.

As an aside, on the way out of Konya I swear I saw a sculpture of a Turkish soldier being chased by a pair of lions. Unfortunately, I was too slow to get a picture so you will have to trust me.

All in all we could have spent another day or two in Afyon but were due back in Istanbul so we had to leave. Maybe next time.