I crossed northern Turkey from the capital
Ankara by public bus in February 1968. It was winter. It was
cold. Very very cold. The bus terminal in Erzurum in the winter
of ‘68 was on a broad crossroads of packed earth. There wasn’t
another motorized vehicle in sight. But, coming through the
intersection, was a troika. In Turkey the wilderness is the wild
wild east.
Then there were the mountains, all day mountains. Meat, only
meat, at every stop. Snow, cold. Overnight at the Iranian
border. Asleep in a sleeping bag in the aisle of the bus. I was
unwell.
Thirty three years later it was springtime. It was warm.
Everything was updated: the food, the bus, the sleeping
accommodations, the roads.
The highlights of the tour in 2001 were the cities of southeast
Turkey and the omnipresent baklava stands, Mount Nemrut and the
sculptures of kings and gods, the Roman mosaics now housed in
the Antakya museum, and the landscape at Ani.
The Rome theme in southeast Turkey offers a much smaller
footprint than that in western Turkey. Local and Roman
administrators and merchants spent a good deal of their riches
on villas and on enhancing the interior design of their homes
with some of the finest wall and floor mosaics that come from
antiquity. Ancient villas continue to be discovered and their
mosaics have been and continue to be unearthed, cleaned, and
displayed in museums; the year before my visit some of the most
brilliant of these works of art - the motif of which is Greek
and Roman mythology - were uncovered in this part of Turkey and
are now exhibited in the Antakya Museum.
Arriving at Mount Nemrut, we’re presented with a long, straight
climb with no view from the parking lot of what’s on top.
According to the author of the article in Wikipedia, “In
62 BC, King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene built on the
mountain top a tomb-sanctuary flanked by huge statues 8–9-metre
high (26–30 ft) of himself, two lions, two eagles, and
various composite Greek and Iranian gods, such as
Heracles-Artagnes-Ares, Zeus-Oromasdes, and
Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes.” The headless statues are framed
by the crest of the 7000 foot high mountain (see podium of
gods and kings, mount nemrut); the heads are scattered
around the courtyard.
Ani was an Armenian city overlooking the Akhurian River (see across
the river, ani for the view from the Turkish side) and is
now located at the Turkey-Armenian border. It flourished more
than a thousand years ago and was finally abandoned in the 17th
Century, its demise due to wars, earthquakes, and a relocation
of the trade routes.
At its apex the population was over 100,000 and you can envision
the design of the city based on the empty space between the
ruined churches each of which likely had its own congregation
from the neighborhoods - which are leveled - surrounding it. The
site is notable because of how well it illustrates the word
"destitute" and for the remarkable architecture of its churches.
