Our bus to Ankara was scheduled to leave from the Gaziantep bus terminal at 7:30 AM. The terminal is across town but easily accessible by public bus. The problem is I didn’t know how often the buses would be running at that time of the morning, so we aimed to be at our local bus stop by 6 AM. As we were walking downhill, a passing bus saw us coming with our suitcases and stopped. Given the absence of traffic at that time of the morning, we were at the bus terminal 45 minutes before departure. That was okay because the terminal itself, which is immaculately clean, was open for business.
I had brought along a knitting project and a book, thinking I’d need something to do during such a long bus ride. Not the case. We spend almost the whole time looking out the window. The final impression we got after the trip was how mountainous Turkey is. We even ran into some snow, which actually portended things to come. A few times I felt almost like I was looking at little alpine villages, in which all the houses had slopping rooms with very large overhangs; the minarets could have been church steeples. Somehow I had imagined we’d get north of the mountains and find Ankara situated on a wide, flat plain that ran to the Black Sea. Not the case. Ankara is hilly and surrounded by mountains. Actually, it has a lovely setting.
Equally magnificent with the reception we received from our host and hostess, Gloria and Yalchin Onyruru. My mother and daughter had met Gloria on a tour that traced Paul’s footsteps through Turkey. And there is another family member, Kotik, the cutest and smartest little terrier you’ve ever met. Not only were we treated royally, but it was so nice to touch base with a fellow church member and share thoughts and ideas. Also, staying with people who’ve lived for decades in a city gives you a perspective tourists don’t get. We tagged along on their Saturday afternoon errands, going to the open market then the supermarket Real. We ended up in a coffee shop in Real, drinking lattes while a pianist and violinist played traditional pop numbers. Somehow it didn’t feel like the Turkey I knew in Gaziantep. Of course, we have similar open markets in Gaziantep and I love to shop there, but they are definitely a bit rough around the edges compared to the one we visited in Ankara. However, Ankara is also criss-crossed with expressways that are jammed at commute hour. That’s one thing that’s nice not to have in Gaziantep.
We did make two very typical tourist stops. The first was the Ataturk mausoleum. It is, of course, the burial place of Kemal Ataturk. Part of it is very reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. We also knew there was a museum there. In fact, the evening before our visit our host spent a couple of hours explain recent (WW I to the present) Turkish history. It was a fascinating presentation, one he apparently gives to visiting businessmen and other guests who are interested in the roots and development of the Turkish Republic. We thought we’d drop by the mausoleum and then move on to other tourist site. We hadn’t expected the museum to be of the size and scope that it was. There were life-sized dioramas of battle sites in Galipoli, all sorts of personal artifacts from Ataturk’s life and oil paintings of events surrounding the founding of the republic. There also photographs and collections of items from day-to-day life documenting the changes brought about with the founding of the republic.
For me – the language teacher, I guess – one of the most moving artifacts was a small piece of lined paper with the first thing Ataturk wrote in Roman script. Prior to the founding of the republic, Turkish had been written from right to left in Arabic script. Most of the largely peasant population was illiterate, but Ataturk was highly educated. He’d spent his whole life reading and writing Turkish in Arabic script. At the time the republic was founded, he declared that henceforth Turkish would be written left to write using Roman letters. Of course, he himself had to comply and learn to write that way. It was touching to see his first attempts. It is also quite an accomplishment that in just a few generations Turkey has become a highly literate country.
My favorite place, however, was the Anatolian Museum of Civilizations. I’ve always been curious about ancient civilizations, and Anatolia – basically what’s now Turkey – has been home to such a variety of civilizations that I have a difficult time keeping them straight. The exhibition are of the museum is a restored bedestan or covered bazaar. It was formerly used as a place to market made from local angora wool. It had fallen into complete disrepair and the renovations took a long time. However, the result in fabulous. It won European Museum of the Year award in 1997 and I could easily see why. I liked just being in that space. The walls are all that off-white sandstone, and they made good use of wooden slats on the ceiling – sometimes parallel and sometimes fanned out beneath a domed space. The artifacts were arranged chronically beginning from the Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer, learning to use tools) period onward. The items on display were well chosen, well described and well lit. Also there were explanatory panels in Turkish and English at the beginning of each section. It was a real history lesson. You can take a video tour of the museum at the URL below.
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/en/SanalTour/Ankara-AMM/index.html
What I liked best were the stone slabs with carved reliefs from the late Hittite period. They were excavated at the site of the ancient Hittite city of Karkamish. I got all excited because the site is just south of Gaziantep. However, it turns out to be off limits. Not only does it literally straddle the Turkish-Syrian border but it is also heavily mined, as in you-step-on-it-and-it-explodes. Some of the reliefs narrated scenes from the epic of Gilgamesh. In fact, it is speculated the Karkamish might have been the site where the tale occurred. That’s kind of an exciting thought. Below is a link to a site about Karkamish.
http://hittitemonuments.com/karkamis/
We left Ankara by bus on a Sunday morning, heading to Ankara and supposedly into a snow storm. The saga continues.
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