Catchup

Tonight I am in Marden, amidst the honey-coloured houses (according to the Lonely Planet, dispensor of what must be millions and millions of tourism dollars every year to specific places) and now able to recognize all the other tourists doing the southeast Turkey tour (two Japanese, four czech guys, a belgian girl, a french family who speak Turkısh, a couple other French guys, a german named Sven).

This morning I woke up on a wood platform sitting above the Tigris river to the early morning sun (and it really is early, since all of Turkey is one timezone) to the sound of donkeys braying (which is the weirdest sound ever) and water lapping about on its way own to the Gulf of Basra, and I realized how this whole thing is pretty ridiculous.

Things:

Batman - the l.p. says this is a dismal petrol town with nothing interesting. Which doesn't really account for the fact that it's a very green (in terms of many trees planted) shady place with a huge market (and we were there on market day, so it was filled with people from surrounding villages bringing cheese and vegetables and fruit and stuff) and a newspaper with a frontpage story about protests against the TOKI (state-owned but for-profıt (if I understand this right) mass housing project) developments for their failure to include low-income housing or sufficient amenities. Also, adults kept telling the children to stop bothering us (which they weren't doing that much of -- the Dogubeyazit cry of "hello money!" was missing). Ah, the paradox of development - it giveth with one hand and taketh with the other...

Travel by cheese-wagon: from Van to Batman we bought tickets from a somewhat sketchy bus company and ended up in an extended van whose back was full of cheese. The roads were under extreme constructıon for much of the way, so our mouths and noses were full of a mıx of dust and cheese. It was actually pretty comfortable and the people were really nice.

Kurdish children - are totally adorable and well-brought up. I'm sold.

Van - we did not see the famous Van cat, white with one blue eye and one yellow, although we saw many many many drawings, cross-stitches, and paintings of it. Our totally skeevy hotel manager told us he had one which was world-famous and could swim and open doors, but now all of them are under observation at Van university. He also told us he had ten thousand friends, and that french canadians are not friendly. Van is shaped a lot like a north american city - big buildings downtown, mostly residential subdivisins and housing blocks further out, a pathetically maintained waterfront in a poor area on the outside of the town (when Van came back from the Russians after WWI, the city was scrapped and relocated four kılometres further from the lake). We saw Van from above from the Van Castle outsıde of town; it also sprawls in a recognizable way. Trains from Istanbul to Iran go across lake van on a ferry boat, which we saw arive.

Turkish buses - When my parents worked at the University of Ottawa, they could catch a bus from their the top of the road above their little village to go a half hour into town. This seemed impressive to me. In Turkey, you can flag a bus down outside your village and go five hours into town. It is ridiculous that we do not have something comparable in Canada. Actually, it is in general ridiculous how little Canada seems to be interested in rural life being possible. Sometimes the roads are very bad (especially in the east, where one way to fight the war is to keep people immobile and poor); many of the people are unacceptably poor and probably do not have other transportation options; but all in all I'm very impressed by the bus system.

Hassankeyf - We spent two days in this village, where people have been living, in caves (and very nıce roomy well-carved-out caves) and houses for a few thousand years... It's on and in and below cliffs above the Tigris river. The old city (where some people still lived until a decade ago when it was declared a museum) is huge, with a graveyard, an old palace with a very large water reservoir under it, and the ruins of lots of houses. From the view alone, it's rather a no-brainer of a place to have a town.
Hassankeyf has been under threat from a dam project for a few decades now - a dam on the Tıgrıs would bury the town (not the old city at the top of the cliffs, but the rest). This has opposition from villagers, from Iraq (since the dam would reduce the water flow there) and - because of how gorgeous Hassankeyf is - from tourists, history buffs, nature lovers, and generally well-meaning people all over. Germany was going to provide funding for the dam - just this last week this was rescinded, so the balance goes on. 1) the paradox of development, agaın; 2) none of this can be separated from the fact that the people who live there are kurds and arabs; 3) of course there are other villages that don't happen to be in such scenic places that have had all their resıdents evicted, many many of them; 4) clean energy!; and so on. We slept outside above the river under the stars. We had a long talk with a former regional leader of the DTP (kurdısh party) who is now facing a court trial for organizing a peaceful Kurdish new year celebration (he's an Arab). Interestıng conversatıon; actually mostly a presentation he gave us (after which everyone in the town knew we'd talked with him and stayed at his place) on a very specific version of events. Travelling with Turkish speakers - good. Not speaking Turkish - less so.