Tagged: Kurdish

November 12th-14th – Hitch-hiking from Tbilisi to Istanbul

Goga picked us up on the highway just outside Tbilisi, round the first corner we passed an ancient looking church and he crossed himself before putting his foot down on the accelerator. Had I have known then the speed he was about to drive at there is no doubt I would also have crossed myself and added in three “Hail Mary’s” and an “Our Father” too…

Goga’s day job was as a financial manager for Georgian railways, but somewhere inside him was the soul of Ayrton Senna struggling to get out. He turned the roads of rural Georgia into his personal formula one track as he drove to the funeral of a friend’s father as if his life depended on it.

Still having rushed from summer into winter in the space of one week in Turkey it was nice to be going back one season here. Yesterday in Tbilisi I’d read a quote from George Eliot saying that if she was a bird she would just pursue autumn, the loveliest of the seasons, around the world. And here in the Georgian valleys, as far as I could see through my fingers, was a perfect autumn day on which she would have loved to have alighted, from the carpet of red leaves on the floor to the plump orange persimmons brightening up otherwise entirely bare trees. I have been frequently amused by the sight of the persimmon ever since it was recently described to me by a retired English-Texan lady with immaculate elocution as “the most erotic of fruits.”

After Goga dropped us off the next ride was a Turkish truck driven by Jesus (actually Issa which is the Muslim version of the same name). In his truck we got our first sight of the Black Sea, the moody cousin of the Mediterranean (which the Turks know as the White Sea). I can imagine the clouds that the Mediterranean gives birth to to be the fluffy, flighty ones that breeze around carefree, whereas the Black Sea’s progeny would be the grump, heavy-set ones that do the hard-work of pouring rain all over the earth. We approached the Black Sea border at dusk along roads so rough that we were shaken about in the truck’s cabin as if we were all dancing energetically to the northern Turkish folk music on the stereo.

A Georgian guy took us to the border and arranged to meet us on the other side to drive us on into Turkey but unfortunately we didn’t make it. One of my general themes is that Turkey, in direct contrast to its popular image amongst some in the west, is filled with the most generous, gracious, and gentle people you could ever hope to meet. But, as I discovered at this border crossing, it also has a very effective screening and selection programme for its bureaucrats to make sure that no-one with any of those qualities is given a governmental job.

The border staff couldn’t understand that our visa allowed multiple visits up to a total of 90 days in every 180 day period and refused us re-entry to Turkey, leaving us stranded in Georgia. Catherine’s attempts to explain the actual visa regulations to the commanding officer were just met with repeated shouts of “exit, madam!” When she asked for his name he refused to give it, making me think “who the fuck are you, Rumpelstiltskin?”

Anyway fortunately the border staff’s ignorance of their own country’s border laws meant that they also didn’t know that you can’t get two visas in one 180 day period so they agreed to issue us a new one. It was annoying paying again as we already had a valid visa, but it was better than the alternative of being trapped in Georgia and needing to pay for expensive flights out in order to complete our final few months travel plans.

Ultimately for us the episode, while a bit stressful, was just a minor irritant. I feel, however, for the Turkish people who must have to put up with ignorant and willfully deaf authorities on a daily basis.  

Our main lift the next day, along the beautiful Black Sea coastal road, was from a Kurdish truck driver named Ramazan, who initially said he going to Ankara. He was very hospitable, buying us lentil soup at a truck stop and providing us with numerous Turkish coffees on the go from the mini kettle he kept in his cabin. Actually Catherine was pouring the coffee, I was staring it through and then I noticed that Ramazan, oblivious to the road and traffic flying around us, had taken on the role of over-seeing the whole process. Deciding that, as we were speeding along in a ten tonne truck, at least one of us should look at the road I decided to opt out of my staring duties. 

Ramazan dropped us in a dark town that had evidently never seen a tourist before, but which was very excited about its chickpeas which it advertised in every shop along the highway in the sort of huge neon signs normally found on casinos or dodgy nightclubs. Two friendly locals drove us to a cheap hotel which appeared to be a students’ hall of residence – we got a suite there for 30TL (£10) including breakfast.

On the third and final day we hitched successfully to Istanbul, via Ankara (Turkey’s capital). The most interesting lift of the day, and possibly of our whole hitch-hiking career, was with Gorkem a young Armenian. Gorkem was a member of Carsi, the Besiktas football fan group who are famous for campaigning for left-wing causes. Most of the groups leading members have been arrested after figuring very prominently in the recent anti-government protests in Istanbul.

Gorkem’s day-job, away from Carsi, was even more interesting. He worked as a war photographer and has been to both Iraq and Afghanistan. On one assignment in the latter country he was shot twice. Gorkem was now focusing on his own photography projects, making regular trips into civil-war torn Syria to photograph the persecuted Kurdish people there as a means of telling their story to the world. After all our recent experiences in Kurdish Turkey and Iraq, meeting Gorkem made this a very fitting final hitch of our journey to Istanbul.

Finally we reached the old Ottoman capital and crashed into the wall of defensive traffic which has been erected around the modern city. If only the Byzantine Empire had thought of doing the same thing back in 1453 the invading Turks would probably have got bored and gone away. Still, despite the grindingly slow traffic surrounding it there is always something exciting about arriving in Europe’s largest city. Here we were within ten minutes of the Bospherous Bridge crossing that was going to finally take us out of Asia, where we have spent the vast majority of our last five and a half years travelling. Thanks to traffic the actual crossing took closer to an hour, but it was worth the wait – there was the Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque and all lit up in lights and waiting to welcome us to the start of the European leg of our journey home…

Facts and figures from the hitch from Tbilisi to Istanbul

Total distance travelled – 1,858 km

Number of lifts – 19

% of the drivers who smoked – 100%

Origins of the drivers – 2 Georgians, 3 Kurds, 2 Laks, 10 Turks, 1 Armenian, 1 Syrian

Occupations of the drivers (were known) – financial manager, truck driver (x4), wrestler, road construction company manager, coal salesman, war photographer

Hospitality offered – free accommodation for the night (twice), 4 bowls of lentil soup, 2 salads, 2 baskets of bread, 8 glasses of tea, 4 Turkish coffees, 38 cigarettes (i.e. one each offered on every lift), a bag of hazelnuts, one pomegranate and 10 tangerines

November 5th – Visiting the Capital of Kurdish Turkey (Hitch-Hiking from Iraq to Liverpool Day Two)

Today we caught our first sight of the much-feared PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), the guerrilla army who have fought a decades long war with the Turkish government.

The day began innocuously enough. We woke up in our couchsurf hosts place to discover Autumn had suddenly arrived in Sanliurfa and, as if to apologise for his late arrival, had immediately thrown a grey sky over everything and painted all the leaves yellow. Loving Autumn as I do, and having only experienced one during the last five years of travel, I was delighted.

Our mission today was to hitch-hike from Sanliurfa up to Diyarbakir (Amet in Kurdish), the de facto capital of the imaginary country of Kurdish Turkey. We found a truck heading in the right direction. The driver was Kurdish and, not content with just giving us a lift he also gifted us half a bottle of perfume, perhaps in an attempt to mask the odour of my travelling clothes.

The driver didn’t speak English but was delighted with our little Kurdish and our enthusiasm for his people. And, typically of the Kurdish driving style, he decided to steer the truck with his elbows while photographing us.

He also put on some Kurdish music which came with accompanying video on his truck’s dashboard. “PKK” he proudly announced and then used his fingers to transfer a heart-felt kiss from his lips to the guerrilla soldiers on the screen. It appeared that the record he’d put on was the PKK’s Greatest Hits as every single song, from traditional folk to Kurdish hip-hop, featured the army in action, men and women in military uniforms marching, dancing and firing rifles. The driver beamed with pride.

Previously the PKK were considered a great threat in the region. Not only targeting the army but also, occasionally, kidnapping foreigners. A friend of mine who travelled here in the 1990s told me when he boarded a bus all the locals left because they feared a tourist being there would make the bus more likely to be targeted.

The situation now is much, much improved. With a ceasefire in place the area is now safe for travellers. We encountered no problems getting up to Diyarbakir with two further lifts and we arrived in the ancient city at dusk. The streets of Diyarbakir’s old town appeared almost entirely populated by small gangs of kids. Turkey has a very young population and in the Kurdish areas families are even bigger than elsewhere. One man I met in Kurdish Iraq had 22 children, or enough for a full game of football.

Diyarbakir also claims to have the second longest wall after the Great Wall of China. Although, disappointingly, it is quite a distant second at only 6km long. With no couchsurfs available we found a nice hotel just within the old town walls. The room overlooked an old mosque with black and white striped walls reminding me of Sienna Cathedral.

With only one night to spend there before heading out of the Kurdish area of Turkey we were looking forward to seeing the local traditional culture the next day and Diyarbakir (Amet) did not disappoint, providing the most spectacular experience of our whole Turkey trip – see tomorrow’s blog for details.     

November 4th – Hitch-hiking from Iraq to Liverpool (Day One)

When I started this daily blog last week my theme was trying out a hospitality diet, i.e. seeing if it was possible to live in Turkey only off food that was offered without me asking for it. Since then I’ve barely mentioned my diet here because the truth is, in both Turkey and Kurdish Iraq, it’s just been too easy to live this way. When couchsurfing and hitch-hiking it is simply not necessary to buy food. The hosts and drivers see it as their duty to feed you and they are insulted whenever you try to pay.

So now here’s a new theme for the remaining blogs of our journey home – hitch-hiking from Iraq to Liverpool. We began this day by getting a lift across the Iraq-Turkey border and we will see if we can make it all the way home by 21st December. We’ll go through Turkey, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Spain, Catalonia and France. If you’d like to see how we get on please click below and follow this blog for daily updates.

Today was the last day of our sadly too brief stay in Kurdish Iraq; I’ve never made so many friends in such a short space of time. In amongst all the laughing and joking and the never-ending debate about the relative merits of Messi and Ronaldo you can almost forget that many of the people here are recent refugees from an ongoing civil war. Kurds have been particularly targeted in the Syrian conflict and most of the refugees we spoke to still had friends and family in the war zone.

On our last morning here we briefly met an old Kurdish Syrian engineer. Typical of people here he wouldn’t say goodbye till he’d checked whether there was anything he could do to help us. As he was leaving we told him how sorry we were about the situation in Syria and he pointed to the sky struggling to find words, before blurting out in a voice breaking with emotion “my god forget about me.” He walked out quickly so we wouldn’t see him crying, so he didn’t see the tears he left in our eyes.

Kurdish generosity carried us all the way to the border, as Shivan, the owner of our hotel, drove us on a two hour round-trip to drop us off there. En route he told us about his life under Saddam, how there were Iraqi soldiers everywhere, and no work or money for Kurds. Since Saddam’s downfall Shivan’s life has been transformed, at only 33 he now owns two shops, two hotels, two cars and two houses (and last month his second child was born). When I asked Shivan said he hated George W. Bush (‘he killed too many people’) but, of course, he is glad that the invasion of Iraq liberated Kurdistan. Is it too much to hope that Kurds elsewhere will be permitted such freedom without the need for bloodshed?

At the border we were picked up by two Kurds from Turkey who drove us back to Sanliurfa, where our couchsurf host Deniz was waiting. En route, of course, they took us for a meal and insisted on paying. As I don’t eat meat I was trying to order a lentil soup (corba) while the driver insisted I eat kebab. We batted back and forward for some time “corba” “kebab?”, “erm, corba”, kebab?”,”no, corba”, “kebab?”. Eventually it appeared I’d won the battle when my lentil soup was delivered. But I hadn’t won the war, as soon as the soup was gone the kebab arrived. 

30th October – The Magical World of Şanlıurfa

Şanlıurfa (formerly Edessa) is one of those magical places which enchant us with enthusiasm for never-ending travels. While the cultural influences that pour into Turkey’s coastal resorts are western European, and consequently making places blander by the year, here Turkish is mixed with Kurdish, Arabic, Syrian and Iraqi, giving the city an entirely different, and wonderful, flavour.

The city’s main street is quite modern and the women’s style there that of the 21st century middle east, the headscarves with long macs that we saw everywhere in Palestine. But when we stepped away from the main strip, down an alleyway in between an electronics shop and a stall selling fake Adidas tracksuits, we found ourselves in a different world. Back in that kingdom, which covers much of India and most of Indonesia too, where everyone wants to say hello and where the kids giggle and run down the street in excitement at the sight of foreigners.

The streets here were tight and narrow but punctuated with minarets that periodically proclaim Allah’s commands and otherwise provide homes for hundreds of pigeons. Down at street level the men sat at tables in archways under the mosque walls rolling skewers of barbecued meat and peppers into kebabs. Little groups of women in heavy black robes occasionally emblazoned with bursts of bright purple, hurried by, the older ones with facial tattoos, looking like they’d blown in from the pages of the Arabian nights. 

Unllike Istanbul’s grey edifices, Şanlıurfa’s many mosques are made of sandstone which glows in the sunlight and makes me think of Oxford colleges knocked down and reborn as bunches of domes and minarets. The mosques particularly cluster underneath the castle around the cave where the Prophet Abraham was born. King Nimrod, who was sleeping with his mother (according to the Pixies), tried to burn Abraham on a pyre here but God thoughtfully turned the fire into water and the hot coals into fish. Leaving behind a legacy beneath the castle hill of small lakes filled with sacred carp, which the locals won’t fish for fear of going blind; which would be a particular torture in Şanlıurfa because here is so much beauty to be seen.

When we’d finished wandering the streets a local man insisted on paying our bus fare back to our couchsurf host’s place. Every day we spend in Turkey seems to include some kindness, great or small, from strangers.