The Southeast: Terrorists, Biblical ruins and Baklava

The Fellowship
Shashank- an Indian-American student from Berkley who was unquestionably the leader on this trip as his command of the Turkish language was head and shoulders over anyone else in the group.
Eb- One of the other Beloit students in Turkey.
Leonard- A German exchange student studying in Ankara for the semester at a different university.
Anya- A Polish exchange student here for the semester who study’s at the same university as Leonard.
Eric- My lovely flat mate, also a student at Beloit.
Travis- me

The cow could not have been dead for more than a few days. Though the skin looked dried and stretched, the organs that were hanging out of the gaping hole in its chest were still bloated, meaning that either the bacteria had not produced enough gas to pop them or that the wild dogs had not gotten hungry enough yet to start eating the biggest piece of road kill I have ever seen.

The cow’s carcass—lying on the side of the small road that ran parallel to the Tigris river—was a strange juxtaposition to the beautiful scene that was before us: the sun setting across the grassy plain just outside of the city walls of Diyarbakir and the an ancient, stone Roman bridge spanning the Tigris a quarter mile in front of us. Diyarbakir is at the heart of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey and was once the hoped for capital of Kurdistan—which sadly never came into existence. The other facet of this scene that should have detracted but only seemed to add to it, were the 4 adolescent who had been following and aimlessly hassling us for the last half hour.

This was the second day of our four-day trip around the Southeast of Turkey. We had boarded a long-distance (15 hours to be exact) bus on Thursday evening from Ankara bound for Diyarbakir. Despite the frequent stops along the way, I had managed to spend a few hours semi-consciously lulling my head against my seatmates shoulder in a poor attempt at sleep. By the time the sun had come, I had ceased this futile effort and was taking in the truly breathtaking scenery that was passing outside the bus windows. The mountainous landscape at first bore a striking resemblance to the Southern Alps of New Zealand then promptly shifted to the grassy mountainsides that I could have sworn were from the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. As the hours passed by so to did the scenery, until by about noon, we were out into the grassy plains of the Kurdish homeland.

Before we continue, a bit needs to be said about the Kurds. The Kurds are an ethnic group that are located in several Middle Eastern countries, and in Turkey, they number about 14 million. Physically, there is almost no difference between them and the Turks; the differences lie in their language and culture. Most of the Turkish Kurds are centered in the Southeast of Turkey with Diyarbakir being their informal capital. The contemporary problems between Turks and Kurds stem from when Ataturk created the Turkish Republic. In an effort to unite the country, he tried to overcome the differences between particular ethnic groups through a process of assimilation. This effort included banning the Kurdish language and not recognizing them as separate ethnic group. Naturally, oppression always breeds some resistance. And in the late 1970’s, the Kurdish separatist movement was born—the most famous and infamous face of which is the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party).

The PKK demanded that the Turkey allow them to have an independent state Kurdistan, which naturally, the Turkish government refused. This led to 15 years of fighting through the 1980’s and 1990’s in which around 30,000 people were killed. Though the PKK still exists, the organization lost the majority of its power when its leader, Abdullah öcalan, was caught in Kenya in 1999. After his capture, Ocalan did a 180 in his view on Turkish government, accepting them as the legitimate government and thus, in the views of many Kurds, betraying the movement. So while the PKK still exists, it is specter of its former self. The problem, however, is certainly not yet solved. A fact that was evident by the multiple police check points we had to stop at throughout our trip.

The main goal of this trip was to attend the Kurdish spring festival of Nevruz: an event that was banned until only three years ago, but that for the last three years has brought out about one million people to a field on the outskirts of Diyarbakir. The festival involves a host of concerts, huge fires and inevitably, political riots and tear gas. It sounded like the perfect cultural experience.


Nevruz, however, did not start until the next day so we decided to head over to Mardin for the night. This involved a fairly simple hour and a half minibus ride through the misty rain that delivered us to the base of this ancient city. Mardin is both a gorgeous and surreal city filled with tan stone houses and narrow alleyways that extend down a steep hill from an ancient castle at the hills summit. From the base the hill looking south across the fertile Mesopotamian plane (that in the mist looked remarkably like the ocean) dotted with small farming villages, it is possible to see into the northern border of Syria.

We spend the remainder of that Friday wandering through the back allies of the city trying to walk off the cramps that—unavoidably—occurred after spending an excess of 15 hours on a bus. After a cheap dinner and desert of Turkish ice cream, we returned to our hotel to finish the night playing cards and charades. Unfortunately, as I was feeling a little worse for ware, I turned in early and missed charades and the quote of the trip, which occurred shortly after the game when Leonard was lying, sprawled across one of the beds, bits of potatoes chips littering his chest, and in his slow German accent declared, “My body is a battlefield.”

The next morning after a quick, glutinous breakfast at our hotel (the meal was included with the room and we are college students), we left to finish our wanderings of the city before returning to Diyarbakir for Nevruz. The rain from the previous day had cleared and the hot sun lit up the unreal landscape that only a day before had been shrouded in mist. The affect was stunning and it was only with difficulty that we were able to pull ourselves away from the perch we had found next to the castle wall and board the minibus.

On our return to Diyarbakir, we were devastated to find that the police had seen fit to the end the festival, which usually goes into the early morning until around 4am. Though this was a bit deflating, I have come to realize that when traveling abroad like this, the best thing you can be is flexible; nothing will ever work out quite as you expect, but then that is the beauty of traveling.


We decided that to check out the sights of the city and after wandering to the old Roman bridge and seeing the dead cow, we boarded a minibus to the center of town to find a water pipe bar and dinner. After accomplishing this, we went to a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar filled with Kurdish men chatting and playing cards. Everyone in the bar—and in the entire city for that matter—was incredibly nice and talkative, despite their inability to speak English and our inability to speak adequate Turkish or Kurdish. To finish up the night, we met up with some friends who had also come down for the festival and chilled under the crescent moon up on roof of our hotel; a very cool and memorable way to end the night.

Our journey to Hasankeyf the next day was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever taken. The road to these 14th century ruins that sit precariously on a sheer cliff over the Tigris River winds through a fairy tale landscape of eroded monoliths capped with lush patches of emerald grass and the occasional tree. We spent several hours wandering, dumbstruck, around the hundreds of cave houses. It is difficult to describe how it felt to be in this ancient city surrounded by such incredible scenery, but I felt that were this moment to last for the rest of my life, I could easily die happy.

Upon arriving in Diyarbakir, our fellowship parted ways with Eric and I continuing on our quest and everyone else heading back to Ankara for classes the next day. Though there were several places that Eric and I planned to visit the following day before heading back, the main reason for our divergence as simple: Baklava. The city of Gaziantep is renowned across the world as the birthplace of this delicious, honey-soaked treat and we were going to be damned if we were going to be this close to it and miss it.

However, before we reached this sweet-tooth Mecca we had two more places to visit; Urfa and Harran. Our stay night in Urfa was one to remember simply because of the hotel we stayed in. For $8 a night we got a tiny concrete cell with two beds, no heat (unfortunately the beautiful weather we had had early that day did not persist), no hot water and Eric got a blanket with a stain that looked distinctly like human feces. We were so tired that none of this really mattered and after a mid-night walk around the town and a kebab, we slept like babies. We awoke to heavy rain and after a quick meander around town, we got on a bus to the small town of Harran.

Harran is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on the planet. It is mentioned in the Book of Genesis as the place where Abraham stayed for several years around 1900 B.C. The town is small and only required an hour or two to wonder around, but the feeling of insignificance in the face of such history was striking and once again, the misty rain only served to heighten this sensation. After drifting through the goat pastures surrounding the ruins and taking in beehive houses, we caught the bus back to town and boarded a bus to Gaziantep.

After the watching a Turkish comedy based on the Exorcist, we got of the bus and took a minibus into town to the store that was said to have the best baklava in the world.

It did not disappoint. Both Eric and I had been fasting all day in preparation for this encounter and after a delicious dinner, we had about 3 pounds of baklava that can only be described as orgasmic. It would have been worth the 20 hour round trip from Ankara just for 1 hour in this place. And as if the food were not enough to bring us back, we also had the two coolest waiters in Turkey who chilled with us for most our meal, giving us a cigar and bringing us free coffee and tea.


At the end of our incredible meal, we thanked our host, offering them our email and making our way outside to find a minibus back to the bus station. We asked one of the doormen where we could find the Otogar and were immediately approached by a man who said he would take us there. Past experience made me a bit suspicious and worried that we would have to pay an exorbitant price as we were the only ones riding in this van, but the driver assured me that there would be no money involved. Though I still did not believe him, after that meal I was in no state of mind to resist anything, so we got into the van.

It turned out that the driver’s friend—who had brought us to the van—was an ex-professional soccer player named Mustafa. As we drove, he told us that he was in town to visit family but that he lived in Istanbul. Upon hearing that we tried to go to Nevruz, he told us that he did not trust the Kurds and that they had recently stolen $200,000 from him, but luckily, he had friends in the military and police who were helping him get it back. Eric and I both looked at each other as we could only imagine one of two things that would get you that kind of money and get it stolen. He did not choose to elaborate on what his business was but upon arriving to the bus station gave us his number in Istanbul and told us to call him anytime we were there. It also turned out that he and his friend were just that nice and wanted to help out some travelers and would not except any money for the ride to the bus station. We thanked them, said goodbye and still in shock at how nice everyone in Gaziantep was, I found myself hoping that this would not be the last time I was here.

It was the perfect end to the most intense four days of travel that I have ever had. Unfortunately, the female attendant on the bus back did not see fit to continue this trend. Despite there being about 20 free seats on the bus, she forbid me to sit any where else on the bus beside the seat that was assigned to me and scolded me in Turkish every time I slipped my shoes off. (However, I decided to keep doing it anyway partly because it was much more comfortable, but mostly just to spite her). I did manage to slip into another seat for the last few hours of the bus ride and made myself feel a little better by giving her a dirty look as we de-boarded into the chilly early morning of Ankara.