Aug 00 - Ottoman architecture within the walled citadel in Ankara

I hitched up the E90 to Ankara from Gordion via Polatli, and stayed 9 days in that city if I recall, a little longer than I'd planned. I stayed in an affordable, old-fashioned hotel frequented by Turks, with a smokey T.V. room on the ground floor where I'd watch some Turkish T.V. with them.

- There are 3 great sites and sights to experience in Ankara: the Citadel with its ancient Byzantine walls; the awesome 'Museum of Anatolian Civilizations'; and the Anit Kebir, the massive and vast tomb of Ataturk. A 4th is the ruined Roman Imperial cult Temple of Augustus with its famous inscription.

 

- Ankara is a large city, the 2nd largest in Turkey with a population of > 3 million in 2000, but which didn't feel as large as that. It was founded by the Hittites who named it Ankuwash in @ 1,200 B.C. "The town grew and prospered due to its position on the royal road [?] running from Sardis to their capital at Hattusas". It became a staging post on the royal road /b/ Sardis and Susa under the Persians. The Hittites were succeeded by Phrygians (who named the city Ankyra), Lydians, Persians, Hellenistic Greeks, and invading Galatians (Gauls who renamed the city Galatia). "By the early 1st cent. BC, the Romans had made substantial inroads into Asia Minor, and in 74 B.C. their 14-yr.-old campaign against the kingdom of Pontus ended when Mithridates the Great was defeated just NE of Ankara by Roman general Pompey." Central Anatolia opened up to Roman control as a result and in 24 BC "Ankara was officially absorbed into the Empire under Augustus and renamed Sebaste (Greek for Augustus). The city thrived under the Romans astride major trade routes, developing into a flourishing city of 200,000 inhabitants by the 3rd cent. A.D. The Byzantines ushered in a period of decline with attacks from Arabs, Persians, Crusaders and Mongols, en route to greater prizes. But the Selcuks settled, taking control of the city in 1071. By 1361 Ankara had been absorbed into the Ottoman state, briefly occupying centre stage when the Mongol ruler Tamerlane [the vicious Timur] defeated the army of Beyazit Yildirim 30 km.s north of the modern city in 1402. [Beyazit would die as Timur's captive locked in a small iron cage in Samarkand a year later.] Though Tamerlane died 3 yr.s later and this final wave of Mongol conquest soon ebbed, the defeat precipitated several years of dynastic in-fighting among the Ottomans and slowed the Ottoman advance." (RG) Ankara then went into decline, with only its famous wool (Angora, from goats, for which Ankara's famous) to support it.

 

- Details re the clash /b/ Tamerlane and Beyazit: "It's been said that the two biggest dogs in the neighborhood will eventually fight. Initially, some fairly innocuous diplomatic notes were passed between Beyazit and Tamerlane concerning border town disputes, refugees of one being harbored by the other, and so on, but things quickly turned ugly. Beyazit’s diplomatic approach to Tamerlane was influenced by the fact that one of his sons, Prince Ertoghrul, had been killed by Timur’s troops at Sivas. The tone of their correspondence became more abrasive. Beyazit opened a letter with “Know, oh ravenous dog named Timur,” questioned his courage and stated that “If you lack the courage to meet me in the field, may you again receive your wives after they have thrice endured the embraces of a stranger.” ... It was definitely on at that point. Beyazit received word that Timur’s forces were approaching his capital at Angora (Ankara) [his capital? Not Bursa?] from the east. Beyazit sped with all haste in their direction, failing to replenish supplies, incl. water, through a series of forced marches in desert terrain [? - what desert(s)?]. Timur moved his army south, then west, and then north, positioning it /b/ Beyazit and Angora, and laid siege. In his approach, Tamerlane had been grazing his horses, replenishing his supplies of water, and scorching the earth behind him. Beyazit's troops were suffering from forced travel and lack of water, but he planned to refresh them before battle. When Timur’s scouts reported the approach of the sultan’s troops, he lifted the siege, deployed his army in the town of Cubuk NE of Angora and deployed his engineers. When Beyazit's men arrived at a river to refresh themselves, they watched in horror as it dried to a trickle. Timur’s engineers had dammed it and had done so to coincide with the arrival of the Ottoman army. The only remaining nearby water sources were small wells poisoned by Timur’s men. The battle began and proceeded at a rough stalemate until a large contingent of Beyazit’s Tatar cavalry switched sides and turned on his flank. Timur, himself having Tatar [Mongol] blood [and having married a Chagatai princess and descendant of Genghis], had spent months sending spies to urge tribal loyalties among Beyazit’s Tatar contingent and promised rich booty in exchange for their betrayal of the sultan. The tide of battle turned in Timur’s favor. Beyazit refused to concede defeat and fought on bravely surrounded by his loyal Janissary guard until his army collapsed and he was forced to flee. He was captured when his horse was killed underneath him. His sons fled, and his wife, who was in the follower’s camp, was also captured. Victory against the Ottomans had seemed impossible for the best coalition of armies in Europe, but Timur, the lame conqueror, made it look easy at the age of 66." listverse.com/2018/01/15/10-terrors-of-the-tyrant-tamerlane/ (I'll fact-check this account sometime, which I've edited, as it falsely refers to Angora as Beyazit's capital and as his "beloved Angora", and to desert terrain in the area.)

 

- "Following Atatürk's final victory [in the Turkish War of Independence], the designation of Ankara as the official capital of the Republic was ratified by parliament on Oct. 13, 1923. But on that date, "the city was still little more than a backward provincial centre. The majority of its population lived in mud-brick bldg.s and electricity or running water were luxuries. ... The gov't recruited German and Austrian town planners to transform the city and Ankara soon overspilled its original boundaries. ..." (RG)

 

- I toured the following.:

- The first port of call after settling in at my hotel was the citadel or kale, the walled, elevated, ancient part of town in which Roman column drums, inscribed lintels, and large pieces of ancient masonry were recycled for use in the construction of the Byzantine defensive walls and towers. (I've seen the same thing in the 'Sea castle' in Saida/Sidon, Lebanon where ancient column drums stabilize and almost decorate the walls.) The spolia even include sculpture in high relief, statues laid on their side, 4 in a row on the exterior of one wall. The kale's an atmospheric time-capsule filled with 1/2-timbered, Ottoman houses, cobbled streets, shops and cafes enclosed by the well-preserved walls. It was very much lived-in, a bit run-down (or "defiantly unrestored" [RG]) and a bit garbage-strewn, although it's been much gentrified and commercialized since 2000. I explored it well and was charmed by it. My photos reveal that I kept coming back to it. (I'll scan another photo or 2).

- "Ankara's first city walls were probably built by the Hittites when they recognized the defensive potential of the citadel outcrop over 3,000 years ago. The walls seen today were built on the orders of Emperor Michael III ('Michael the Sot') in 859, who renovated defenses built by the Roman emperor Heraclius, who in turn had used earlier Gaulish [Galatian] fortifications as a foundation." (RG) According to the LP, the outer walls were 9th cent. but the more prominent inner walls were built in the 6th.

- Most enter via the South Gate, a twin portal flanked by 2 large towers, the largest of which has commanding views over Ankara and sheer drops. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7uc8F8l4VI

- The much restored, 12th cent. Alaeddin Camii, which has a detailed, carved Selcuk mimber. That might have been the mosque in which I met and sat and spoke with a young imam.

- "The NE edge of the city, just about visible from [the citadel walls], is the approximate site of the battlefield where Pompey defeated the Pontic king Mithridates the Great in 74 BC." (RG)

- I saw kids flying kites from points along the top of the walls (I'll scan a photo), and lots of stray dogs and cats too.

 

- One day, while walking @ one side of the base of the kale I came upon the end of a long queue of men facing and leading into a cave in a cliff. The queue was in something of an open, wide enclosure between walls. I asked the men at the end of the line what they were waiting for (in a combination of English words and body lg.), and a young guy at or near the end hit the palm of one hand with the side of his fist (the side with the thumb), and made other gestures to indicate that the queue led into a brothel, and sufficient to dispel any doubt. These men were all waiting their turn. The few I spoke to at the end were enthusiastic and tried to encourage me to join the line. (The thought that they'd be getting sloppy 2nds, or 18ths, or 46ths or whatever didn't dampen their enthusiasm.) I don't know how many women could have been working in that cave-brothel, but with such a long queue I don't assume the patrons were encouraged to take their time.

 

- The famous and splendid 'Museum of Anatolian Civilizations' (est. 1921, with > 200,000 artifacts) over 3 days, spending more time in that museum than in any other that entire trip after the Bastam in Tehran. I saw some of the best artifacts on display anywhere from the Paleolithic, Neolithic (incl. from Çatalhöyük), Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, 'Early Assyrian', 'Early Hittite', 'Hittite empire', 'Late Hittite', Phrygian, Urartian, Greek, Hellenistic and Roman cultures and periods, incl. ceramics, figurines, stone reliefs, cult items, cuneiform tablets, stelae, jewelry, statues, seals, ivories, coins, etc., etc. I'd taken archaeology courses at U of T. in undergrad, and so many of the items were familiar to me. What a collection!

- A wall painting of a map excavated at Çatalhöyük is on display, thought to be the plan of that site. Dated to 6,200 ± 97 B.C., it's the oldest known map found anywhere to date. arkeonews.net/the-oldest-map-of-the-world-found-in-catalh...

- Some postcards I bought give examples of the more impressive items.: An obsidian mirror (claimed by the RG to be the oldest mirror found anywhere) and an iconic statuette in baked clay of an ample, enthroned mother goddess from Çatalhöyük (both early 6th mill. B.C.) (I'd like to tour Çatalhöyük some day); a Hatti bronze ritual standard from Alaca Höyük (late 3rd mill. B.C.), one in a large collection of similar standards found there; an 'Old Assyrian' baked-clay tub from Kültepe (18th cent. B.C.); a stone relief of the head of the Hittite or neo-Hittite goddess Kubaba from Carchemish (8th cent. BC); a Phrygian inlaid table from Tumulus MM [Midas mound] at Gordion (8th cent. BC); and a round Roman todo with a wreathed portrait bust in bronze of Ulpius Aelius Pompeianus, the Agonothetes of the sacred games of Ancyra (117-138 CE). www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiQDlXkkaj8

- A highlight was the collection of finely inlaid Phrygian wooden furniture (the best preserved from antiquity) and other grave goods from the huge tumulus at Gordion, the tomb of King Gordios dating from the reign of his legendary son Midas that I'd toured only a couple of days earlier. I'd seen these years earlier in the National Geographic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxYrPc_oeTE I also recall original Hittite friezes and statues from Hattusas, where copies stand in their place today.

- The museum is housed in the former, 10-domed Bedesten (covered market) and Kursunlu Han built by Mahmut Pasha, grand vizier to Mehmet the Conqueror, in the late 15th cent.

 

- One evening, after the museums and the other sights and sites had closed, I got to talking with a young American woman (in the citadel I think?) who was there with some other people at the time. She was travelling with her friend, also American, and they were staying and visiting with her friend's relatives (her uncle's family?). We spoke about the sites and what we'd seen, but she hadn't been allowed to see much. She was chaperoned everywhere and was in the home of these people much of the time. She and her friend weren't happy.

 

- The Ahi Şerefeddin or Arslanhane (Lion-House) Camii (1290), built by Mesud II, "an unadulterated example of Selcuk architecture" (RG), 400 m.s2 with one minaret. It's a 'forest mosque' with 24 wooden columns (4 rows of 6) supporting a wooden ceiling, a fine walnut mimber (1209) and stucco and tile mihrab. (I'll scan a photo.) "Ahi Zerafattin, the mosque's founder, is buried next-door in an octagonal tomb with a pointed roof, Ankara's sole surviving Selcuk tomb." (RG) www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjifBgHoZr4 The mosque was built with spolia from other bldg.s and it's said that the basis for its name is that it contains a statue of a lion buried within its walls. Update: It was designated a Unesco site in 2023 in a serial nomination, one of 5 Selcuk 'Wooden Hypostyle Mosques of Medieval Anatolia' which date from the late 13th to the mid-14th cent.s., all in central or Western Turkey. "[Their] unusual structural system combines an exterior bldg. envelope built of masonry with multiple rows of wooden interior columns (“hypostyle”) that support a flat wooden ceiling and the roof. These mosques are known for the skillful woodcarving and handiwork used in their structures, architectural fittings, and furnishings." (Unesco) I toured a similar, wooden, 'hypostyle' mosque, but Safavid, 16th cent., in Maragheh over a month later.

- I think I toured another forest or 'hypostyle' mosque, the Ahi Elvan Camii (early Ottoman, late 14th cent.), "founded by the Ahi brotherhood, a medieval guild associated with the dervish orders." (RG)

 

- The remains of the Roman 'Temple of Augustus and Rome', an Imperial cult bldg. built in honour of Caesar Octavius Augustus /b/ 25 and 20 B.C. after 'Ancyra' had been made the provincial capital of Galatia. It displays a lengthy inscription in Latin on one of its walls: the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, the 'Deeds of the Divine Augustus', the emperor's political testament, composed by Augustus himself, to be engraved on 2 bronze pillars before his mausoleum per his will, and which was carved on every temple to Augustus in the Roman world soon after his death in 14 A.D. This in Ankara is the only one which survives in its entirety. "The inscription recounts his early career, magistracies, and other honours; the public benefactions he had made from his private means; and his warlike and diplomatic achievements. It culminates with his claim to have restored to Rome the republic, a form of government that actually ended with his accession in 27 BC. A summary of his benefactions was added after his death." (RG and Britannica) All that remains of the temple are the high walls of the cella, the inner sanctum (supported inside by a thicket of scaffolding). The temple was built over an earlier Phrygian shrine to Cybele and to Men, the phallic god. (LP) It "was converted into a church in @ the 5th cent., and into the medrese of the nearby Haci Bayram Camii in the 15th." (RG) I was impressed with that huge inscription, of course.

- The Haci Bayram Veli Camii (1427-'28), "named after Bayram Veli, founder of the Bayrami order of dervishes [Ankara was the centre of the order], and Ankara's most celebrated saint. His body is buried in the turbe in front of the bldg" (RG). The 'Haci Bayram mosque and surrounding district' is on Turkey's long list of tentative Unesco sites, with this mosque and the Augustus temple as its focal point. "The Bayrami sect, ... a Turkish Sufi order [tariqah] was founded by Bayram-ı Veli in Ankara @ the yr. 1,400 as a combination of Khalwatī, Naqshbandī, and Akbarī Sufi Orders. The order spread to Istanbul where there were several tekkes and into the Balkans, incl. Rumelia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Greece, from the 15th cent. onwards." (Unesco)

 

- I photographed (but don't recall) the Julyanus Sutunu (Column of Julian) "commemorating a visit to Ankara by the Byzantine emperor Julian the Apostate, chiefly remembered for his short-lived attempt in the 4th cent. to revive worship of the old Roman gods. ... Once memories of the Byzantine empire had faded, the locals took to calling the column Belkis Minaresi, "the Queen of Sheba's Minaret"." (RG) It was topped by a heron's nest.

 

- I explored a large, open, ruined, 2-storey han or medreseh and its many rooms opening from colonnades @ a central courtyard.

 

ANIT KABIR - the famous 'Anit Kabir' (Turkish for mausoleum), the massive, brutalist tomb built from 1944-'53 for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), army general, founder and first president of the Turkish Republic. ("Atatürk" means 'Father of the Turks', a title officially bestowed by parliament in 1934, and "Kemal" means 'Perfect'.) Admission to the tomb and the complex is free, and encouraged. It's the most monumental tomb I've seen anywhere that's not subterranean, (I stood on the mound above the tomb of Qin Shi Huang-di near Xi'an, and I've seen his terracotta warriors; the Tang-era Zhaoling mausoleum is the world's largest), Moghul (the Taj and Hemayun's tomb), or an ancient pyramid. (I haven't toured Mashad in Iran, Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, nor Medinah in the R.S.A. Tian'anmen square was off limits to clean up the tank-tracks when I was in Beijing in '89 and so I missed Mao's tomb. Online sources re its dimensions are contradictory.) The complex was crowded but I took it in well enough. I'd appreciate it more now than I did then. I like brutalist architecture but it struck me then as over-the-top, reflecting a cult of personality unlike anything else I'd encountered that focuses on anyone other than a religious figure such as Jesus, Muhammad or the Buddha. (The Venezolano veneration of Bolivar might come close. I write a bit about such things in this photo-comment.: www.flickr.com/photos/97924400@N00/16629772685/in/photoli... ). Some indications of the local, cultish regard for Atatürk when I was in Ankara: A friendly, young Turkish woman in the Citadel (a tourist?) asked where I'm from and only a sentence or 2 into a brief exchange, and out of any context, said she loves Atatürk and he was wonderful (to paraphrase. What she said sounded a bit rote. Who did she think I was? ["Atatürk's status is so untouchable that criticizing his memory is a crime under Turkish law." www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgD11FzN44 ]). An abundance of postcards with photos of the man, well-coiffed and done up in the best western suits, never in a fez (which he outlawed), were on sale everywhere. I bought one with a photo of a monument to the 'Dumlupınar martyrdom' (commemorating the 'Battle of Dumlupınar [Aug. 26-33, '22] in the Greco-Turkish war), a marble plinth and a flag below a cloud formation resembling 2 eyes looking down at it with this caption: "Atatürk'ün bakışını yansıtan bir doğa olayı", "A natural phenomenon reflecting Atatürk's view." www.flickr.com/photos/talatoncu/17001037335 www.flickr.com/photos/duckorange/2161522037/in/photolist-... www.flickr.com/photos/32030149@N04/3348945311/in/photolis... The country has become less secular since 2000, at least politically, and so I wonder if I'd have a different impression today. (Atatürk was a secularist.)

- At the 10 min. pt. of the vlog in this link, a tourist comments on Atatürk's ubiquity in Turkey.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZlgVgcahS4

In this next video, "almost on cue, everyone [at the complex] stops as horns pay [Atatürk] tribute.": www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbDv9Psi8Zk

- Atatürk worked hard to modernize and westernize Turkey and did much good for the country. His resume is amazing.: "Born in Ottoman-occupied Thessaloniki, Atatürk made a name for himself as a military commander during WW1. He’s best known for his defeat of the Allies at the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. Throughout the war, he also commanded armies in the Balkans, Caucasus, Syria and Palestine. Despite the Ottoman Empire’s loss in that war, Atatürk was the only Turkish general to have never suffered a defeat. The Allies were then set on colonizing Anatolia and dividing it amongst themselves. While the Ottoman sultanate was agreeable, Atatürk was intent on driving the Europeans out. He established the Grand National Assembly with Ankara as its capital and for a time the country had 2 rival governments, but Atatürk gained many followers and soon launched and waged the Turkish War of Independence from 1919 to '23. His victory led to the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. He would then remain in power as president until his death in 1938, creating the first modern and secular republic in the Muslim world. He looked to the West for inspiration in the reform of education. Math and sciences were emphasized by schools, and a common curriculum was implemented. He abolished and replaced the Arabic-based script with Romanized script. Literacy rates increased dramatically as a result. He granted women the vote (although only local elections were a thing in his time). And quite controversially, he abolished the Islamic caliphate which had been centered in Turkey since Ottoman times. He also abolished sharia courts and translated the Quran into Turkish for the first time."

- But his legacy is controversial.: He declared that "[t]he evils which had sapped the nation's strength had all been wrought in the name of religion." David Pryce-Jones writes that "[i]n a swift and brutal reversal, Turks were obliged to repudiate the Ottoman assumption that their faith had entailed superiority over others." Atatürk's revolutionary reforms and changes "concerned only the outward forms of Westernization, and were at a complete remove from its spirit. Western strength derived in the final analysis from the spectrum of institutions, political and otherwise, through which a citizenry could express its energy [or at least that was the case in much of the West in the 1st 1/2 of the 20th cent.]. The Ottomans had had no such institutions and the Turks did not now acquire them. Mustapha Kemal's powers were every bit as absolute as the sultan's, but, thanks to improved techniques of communication, far more effectively applied. Much as the sultan had relied on faithful janissaries to execute orders, Atatürk recruited his People's Party, which held all but one seat in the assembly, to do his bidding. Tailored to one-man rule, the resulting state had no place for a loyal opposition, for accountability, for free association, for civil rights, nor indeed for any of the essentials of democracy. Whoever stood in Mustapha Kemal's way was murdered, either secretly or through scandalous judicial fixes. ... [Would I have been arrested in Ankara if I had said as much?] Luckily, and it has been as much by luck as by skillful management, Mustapha Kemal's heirs have been able to proceed further down the road to Westernization. Turkey is now the only Islamic country (leaving aside the questionable example of Pakistan) [or Malaysia or Indonesia?] in which a free and fair election has led to a change of government. But it still suffers from the repercussions of Atatürk's rule. The military has taken power several times on dubious nationalist pretexts, while extremists of one kind or another have engaged in campaigns of mutual and reciprocal murder. Kurds, even if they don't engage in terrorism but strive for a pluralist solution to their plight, encounter state terror in response. Immune to extirpation by decree, Islam has made a comeback, and about a quarter of the Turkish electorate now votes for the Islamic Fundamentalist party." (That was written in 2000.: archive.wilsonquarterly.com/sites/default/files/articles/... I'd written a bit in this description re E. Knobloch's theory explored in his book 'Russia & Asia' that cultures and societies with nomadic roots such as those of Russia, [Turkey,] etc., tend toward nationalism and authoritarianism, as their ancestors, exposed on the open steppe, required strong leadership and unity to survive, and I asked if that might be a factor here. But reading some more, incl. the article in the last link, I was reminded that Atatürk represents military leadership, that the military seeks and expects public acquiescence to the occasional coup [3 in 20 yr.s!], that it has great power in Turkey which as a result is relatively militaristic politically, uncompromising with its minorities and often with its neighbours, and fosters the unquestioning adulation of its greatest military hero, the 'father of the Turks'.)

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YPuTsfjZkg

- The mausoleum aka the 'Hall of Honour', 41.65 × 57.35 m.s in area, 17 m.s in height, faces an expansive square, the immaculately kept 'Ceremonial Ground', 129 x 84 m.s, paved in the centre with 373 travertine flagstones resembling carpets and kilims, and surrounded by colonnades with long narrow halls behind them. These halls contain exhibits and house the 'Atatürk museum', displaying his effects, his wardrobe, 2 Lincoln Limousines, and his grand, black Cadillac (none of which I recall). The mausoleum itself is entered through huge bronze doors above a monumental flight of steps. Fine and impressive mosaics decorate the ceiling and represent Anatolian carpet designs (I'll scan a photo), and carved and gilded inscriptions from speeches given by Atatürk cover some of the walls. The man is buried under a large, raised, plain 40-ton marble cenotaph at the centre of the NE side of the bldg.

- The complex was designed by architects Emin Onat and Ahmet Orhan Arda and is approached from the NW to the SE via 'the Lions' road', a 262-m.-long walkway lined by 24 Hittite-style stone lions, 12 on each side, representing the 24 Oghuz Turkic tribes. They're seated "to represent both power and peace." 10 rectangular, cube-like towers stand in a symmetrical arrangement in the complex which "symbolize the ideals that influenced the Turkish nation and the creation of the Republic of Turkey" (which I don't recall).

- All the stone and marble used in the complex was sourced in Turkey. Porous travertine, the external cladding of concrete surfaces inside the Hall of Honour; white travertine used to construct the Hall's columns; and red and black travertine used to pave the ceremonial ground, was all quarried in Kayseri; the Hall of Honour's external walls and the perimeter columns of the Ceremonial ground consist in yellow travertine from Çankırı; the red, black and cream colour marble in the floor of the Hall of Honour was quarried in Hatay, Adana and Çanakkale; and the Hall's internal walls were built with tiger-patterned marble from Afyon and green marble from Bilecik. (Wikipedia)

- İsmet İnönü, Turkish army general, hero of the Battle of İnönü (after which he was named) and 2nd President of Turkey, is buried under a marble cenotaph at the SW side of the complex opposite the Hall of Honour.

 

- In Ulus square, closer to the citadel, I photographed the 'Victory Monument' (1927, artist Heinrich Krippel from Austria), a bronze, equestrian statue of Atatürk high on a plinth with scenes in relief from the War of Independence, above statues of 2 soldiers, one calling his friend to the front, the other observing it, and of a woman carrying a cannonball (representing the contributions of Turkish women in the war).

 

- I watched some late-night Turkish T.V. on a few occasions with Turkish patrons in the smokey T.V. room or lobby of my old hotel. I recall watching a talk show featuring a mustachioed man who spoke a fair bit and a blonde woman who laughed nervously at much of what he said. I was told he was a big pop star and a Kurd, that she was his wife, and that it was common knowledge that she was "always in the womens' shelters". (You remember strange and surprising things like that from your travels.) After some google-searching, I've found him.: İbrahim Tatlıses, a most successful and popular folk singer and movie star www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YlEUJ14vtE who "recorded 42 albums, including [such] notable ones as Ayağında Kundura and Selam Olsun, and was the host of the highly popular 'İbo Show'." (Wikipedia) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai_IDHNNjTE www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBpnHU7FpZ8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU8ZAryrRs0 Born İbrahim Tatlı in Urfa in 1952 to an Arab father and Kurdish mother, his Wikipedia entry is fascinating.: "In the 1980s the Turkish government banned the use of Kurdish; at a concert in Sweden in December 1986, Tatlises sang folk songs in Kurdish and was thus prosecuted for separatist propaganda [?], but was found not guilty in 1987. The charge was dismissed after he showed regret [again, for singing in Kurdish in public]. In 1988, he was asked by businessman Mehmet Yılmaz at a cultural festival in Uşak to sing a Kurdish folk song, but refused, saying "I am a Kurd, but the laws ban me from singing in Kurdish". For this, he was indicted on September 19, 1988. [?!] In 1994 there was evidence that Turkish counter-guerrilla organizations targeted Kurdish businessmen, including Tatlıses. In 1998 it was reported that he offered to be an intermediary /b/ the government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) during the armed conflict. He recorded a song with Iranian Kurdish musician Abdollah Alijani Ardeshir." Since then there have been 3 assassination attempts on his life. "He was shot in the leg in 1990, survived an assassination attempt in 1998" and on March 14, 2011 "he was attacked and seriously wounded in the head" upon leaving the TV station following the recording of his weekly show. "A bullet entered the back of his skull and exited through the front." He was taken to hospital for emergency treatment, and regained consciousness 5 days later. The police arrested @ 20 people involved in the attack. (!) It doesn't seem he did much to merit all that negative attention apart from being a successful Kurd (or half-Kurd). But it's alleged that he has a history as an assailant in a domestic relationship. In 1984, he was accused by an ex-wife of kidnapping her and of beating her for 7 hours. In his interrogation by police he's reported to have said: "Savaş [the ex-wife] is the mother of my child. To let her wander around would make it feel beneath me." (Wikipedia) (But of course I don't think his treatment of women has much to do with the attempts on his life. www.youtube.com/watch?v=22odBJ-TXKA www.youtube.com/watch?v=O69_tFa5K9E )

 

- I was thinking of extending my trip into 2021 for up to 5 or 6 mos. if I could find some relatively lucrative work somewhere en route. I thought that after my tour of Iran I might take a boat to the UAE or another Gulf state and see if I could find work teaching English for a spell. I spent (or wasted) a couple days in Ankara looking into any such options. I visited the U.A.E. consulate and spoke to a consul there whose English was good but who was befuddled and said (to paraphrase) "I don't know how I can help you. This isn't an employment office." It's just as well as I'd probably have to commit to more than a couple of months to find work like that, and which wouldn't have done my resume any good.

 

- In my tourism, I missed the enclosed site of the Roma Hamalari (the 'Roman baths') set in a large palaestra (sports field) "scattered with truncated columns and fragments of cracked masonry. Of the baths themselves, which date to the 3rd cent., only the [hypocaust] survive." The site looked to be extensive, but there was an entry fee that seemed a bit steep at the time for what it is, and so I balked. I don't know how much of a miss it was. (I've seen plenty of hypocaust elsewhere.)

- I don't recall and can't say whether I toured the 'Museum of the War of Independence' in the bldg. in which the Republican Grand National Assembly held its early sessions, where it first convened on April 23, 1920, and where the Turkish Republic was declared on Oct. 29, 1923. It reviews "the struggle to preserve Turkish independence waged /b/ 1919 and 1923" and the various military campaigns fought against other interloping imperial powers, with all captions in Turkish.

- I don't recall the 'Republic museum' either (again with all captions in Turkish), nor the "grandiose" Ethnography museum.

- I bought a postcard in Ankara with a photo of a massive, perfectly globular chandelier in the interior of the huge, new, neo-Ottoman Kocatepe mosque (1967-'87), which was photogenic www.flickr.com/photos/pra-yudi/6002398750/in/photolist-2e... , and I planned to go see it one evening but didn't make the time. (I might've been a bit mosqued out.) It's one of the largest mosques anywhere and was a miss.

 

- From Ankara (I would've taken a city bus to the eastern outskirts of town) I hitched to Boğazkale and the heart of the Hittite Empire of the late 2nd mill. B.C. I travelled east on the D200 and E88 and then either SE via historic Çerikli (where Turkmen tribes settled in the 11th cent.) to Yozgat, then north up the twisty Yozgat Boğazkale Yolu, or (more likely) headed NE up the D190, through Sungurlu and then south down Boğazkale Yolu to the town of Boğazkale.

- Yozgat and environs has been archaeologically fruitful, revealing "countless artifacts" from the Bronze age and the Hittite, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuq and Ottoman eras. A site surrounded by walls on the Kerkenes plateau (a miss) is believed to be that of the lost city of Pteria, "burned, destroyed and abandoned in the Battle of Pteria /b/ the Lydians and the Medes. The battle ended on May 28, 585 B.C. during a solar eclipse taken as an omen that the gods wanted the fighting to stop. :) (Wikipedia)

- This is a 200 click, 2 1/2 hr. trip (via Sungurlu) but it took me most of a day, assuming I left Ankara in the morning as I would do, for I arrived in Boğazkale @ supper time. (See the description in my next photo).

Done