GROUP JOURNAL FOR

MELITOUR EASTERN TURKEY TOUR

JULY 29,2001 TO AUG 12 , 2001

 

Day 09 Tuesday     Aug 07  2001 Al Merati    

DOGU BEYAZIT      

It is easier to crush mountains with my bare hands

To anguish hundred years in prison..

To paint the sky red with my own blood

Than to pass one moment with a fool…

Pahlavan Mahmoud, 19th c. politician/wrestler/poet of the Emirate of Khiva

                                                                                         

I don’t know if I got this quote right or anything right recently.  This trip was wonderful.  I think that everyone had quite a bit of energy well into the second week.  Clearly a step up food-wise from Rick.  (Thanks at least to Rick for bringing Meli to our attention.)  This day was a mostly-travel day.  This was tucked in-between some really-a-lot-of-traveling days and the occasional long-time-on-the-bus days.  (Thanks again to Mitten).
 We began at the Otel Oral in Erzurum.  Nice place with an internet café down the street.  Midnite there were 10 young Turkish men playing some interactive killing game on the web.  I couldn’t get on the sites I wanted to here.  Perhaps not enough mayhem and open wounds on the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball site.  Haven’t we come a long way now?  You call this the bridge across the digital divide?  I guess it’s a start. 
The museum had been closed the day before so we attended today.  It was built in 1310 if I remember right but basically like many things from those centuries, was Seljuk.  There were the usual items inside, very nice.  Two students, an Agricultural engineer and a Mechanical engineer, visited with us briefly.  Like many students we met, they expressed some desire to visit and study in the US (perhaps out of politeness).  This is the continuing worldwide “farm team” the US enjoys at this point.  The power to “skim” the best and brightest from all countries to come and share, learn, and contribute to the American Melting Pot is no fantasy.  This illusion that these “foreigners” are sucking at the teat of the US is sour grapes.  If it weren’t for the ongoing arrival, integration, and contribution of immigrants to the US, we’d all be on Springer.  The whole country.  How about instead of deporting aliens we find some chronically underperforming “American” families and send them packing?  I digress.
         We left for a nice drive to Dogubeyazit which I think means “Eastern-White”.  The further east we got, the closer the checkpoints.  At least these guys had uniforms.  I don’t know why I feel so stupidly indignant about this; while I found it reassuring that the pimply 18 yo soldier (armed) checking my passport at a checkpoint near Erzurum was wearing a uniform, once we got within 10 miles of Hakkari, it was like the wild wild west (or east, for that matter).  These not so pimply jandarmes were in vests and jeans, smoking and carrying assault rifles.  This smacked of a banana (or watermelon, in this case) republic.  This pissed me off and disappointed me.  Mark and I at least got pros with ties and automatic weapons in the back seat of our escort in the city.  Those guys were just fine.  It must have been the ties.
         Meli told us about some of the background to the Kurdish/Turkish issues during the long bus ride (in addition to telling us about some fun “flower arranging” tour visits to Salt Lake City and Norway).  My soothed brow refurrowed immediately after Meli left the Urartu Bazaar in Van several nights later – that is when the poison spewed from the maw of that horrible man at the carpet joint. This happened once Meli was out of sight and all the carpets were paid for, of course.   He wasn’t horrible for hating Turks, (or just hating for that matter), but for being a poor teacher and an information vacuum.  Nice kilim, though.  That man hated and hated and hated and I don’t think that he is alone.  How did this all happen?  Ottoman transition issues, a la Balkans, if you ask me.  Kurdish state?  I am not sure that they want one.  I know that most outside concerns prefer mild bilateral destabilization.  Sad but true. 
         We passed an old Silk Road bridge, sort of checkerboard-style.  It was next to the town of Aksakalkarahanli.  “White beard of the black prince” - Look it up.
         We pulled into Dogubeyazit only to see a mirage of 25 tricked out Toyota SUVs ready for the Silk Road.  I always think of the Silk Road as an East-West thing but I guess it had to be two-way.  The main West-East export of historic note was, of course, Islam.  No mistake that these off-Silk-roaders were from the Muslim country of Malaysia.  The next big regional export was petroleum.  These guys were all from Petronas (get it, PETROnas) the Malaysian oil conglomerate.  With Islam, Central Asia, Petrol, and a couple of Germans (OK, Dutch) orchestrating it, it struck me as a familiar recipe for intrigue.  These guys were very nice, of course.  It was someone’s birthday.  It always is.  Foreign devils on the Silk Road. 
         The last gas station on the road had Farsi script and the hotelier spoke some Farsi.  Ararat was nice.  Very nice. Thanks to Meli, my Turkish teacher, my traveling companions, and all of my Turkish friends.  Mashallah, Mashallah.  
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