Ankara

During the Toussaint holiday, I had the opportunity to visit Ankara, the capital of Turkey, located in Anatolia.  I left on Thursday afternoon, again flying with Pegasus Airlines to Istanbul, then connecting to Ankara.  I was impressed by the modern design of the Esenboga Airport, built by the reknowned Turkish construction company, TAV.  Stepping out of the terminal into the evening air, I felt a warm, dry 16 degrees compared to the damp cold I had left behind in Brussels. (I was nevertheless grateful for the cold spell in Belgium since our refrigerator broke down right before I left, and I hadn’t been able to get a repairman due to the holiday….all our food supply had to be put out on the balcony!)

As I rode into the center of the city, I was struck by it’s size (more than 4 million) and modern appearance.  Before it was declared the capital of Turkey in 1923, Ankara was a small provincial city of 35,000.  Constantinople, as Istanbul was then called, had been the capital of the Ottoman Empire.  In WWI, the Ottomans were defeated, and the Allies occupied Constantinople, planning how to divide up these lands between  Armenia, France, Greece, Italy and Great Britain, while leaving central Anatolia to the Turks.  It was in Ankara in 1920 that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the leader of the Turkish Nationalist Movement, decided to set up a resistance movement, and the second Turkish Parliament Building was built here in 1923.  Ataturk is a national hero of great proportions, and his picture can be seen throughout Turkey as a symbol of the modern secular society.

Recently, I discussed the current political climate in Turkey with one of my students here in Brussels. She is Turkish and very critical of the conservative leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who is serving his third term, and has been in office since 2003.  She spoke of the October 29 peaceful demonstration in Ankara (curiously just three days before my arrival) in which tens of thousands of pro-secular Turks  turned out with flags and photos of Ataturk to march to his tomb at the mausoleum (see my photos below.) Erdoğan and his AK party had banned the demonstration, but the demonstrators gathered against government orders, and were sprayed with pepper gas and water cannons.  Undeterred, many hundreds continued the march to celebrate Republic Day.

 Thus, my first visit on Friday, which dawned sunny and bright, was to the mausoleum of Ataturk.  Visitors were proudly informed by a young soldier, soon to complete his mandatory military service, that the leader’s remains were embalmed and laid to rest in a tomb which cannot be viewed by the public.  The great mausoleum complex, reflecting the form of an ancient Greek temple, sits high on a hill overlooking other areas of the city.  There is a museum there containing a number of photos and personal effects of Ataturk, but most interesting for me was the history of the Battle of Gallipoli as told by the Turks, with life-size dioramas recreating the trenches as they must have been in all their misery and horror. 

One of the delights of Turkey for me is the richness and elaborateness of design in traditional architecture and decoration.  Ankara is primarily a modern city, so there are not so many examples in the city center of older construction, but the Turkish love of color and intricate design can still be found in details such as the decorative lights over the major thoroughfares.  I tried rather unsuccessfully to photograph them, and I am now determined to get a better camera for my next travel adventures.

Turkish cuisine is also delightful….its freshness, abundance of vegetables and fruits and delicate seasoning place it among my favorite cuisines of the world.  Of course, it has much in common with Bulgarian food as the history and cultures of the two neighboring countries are forever intertwined.  Turkish breakfasts are particularly satisfying.  Like Americans, Turks enjoy a hearty breakfast to begin the day.  They enjoy an array of cheeses, sausage, breads, salad, fresh olives, and fruit in season, all accompanied by a hot glass of çay.  Though we often hear of the famous thick Turkish coffee, it is tea that Turks love to drink throughout the day.  You can see tea sellers delivering ornate trays of tea to people working in shops and offices, carrying them aloft as they hurry along the street.  The practice is to brew the tea quite strong in a large urn (something like the Russian samovar), then pour a small clear glass half full of tea, and half full of hot water. 

I also had the opportunity to try salep, a creamy hot drink made from a flour derived by  grinding the dried tubers of a specific species of orchid. These tubers contain a nutritious starch-like substance.

On Saturday, I visited the older part of the city, located on a hill beneath the castle.  One area has been completely renovated under the direction of the mayor of Ankara to create a center for the promotion and development of traditional arts and crafts.  The galleries and workshops are open in this serene village atmosphere, and on a Saturday afternoon, Ankara inhabitants appeared to have come here to relax, drink tea in one of numerous tea gardens, and play backgammon and other traditional games while gathered around with friends and family.  The renovated area was very pleasant, but almost too perfect in its authenticity.  I then headed up towards the castle, passing through old neighborhoods which bore the signs of decay and wear that I associate with the passage of centuries.  This part of the city, the original Ankara before it became Turkey’s political capital, felt more inviting and real than the mayor’s well-intentioned project.  I climbed as high as I could go only to discover that the actual castle fortress was on a nearby hill that I could see clearly from the high walls on which I was standing!  At any rate, the view over the city from this vantage point was excellent. 

On my way back down through the steep streets of the old quarter known as Hisar, I savored the sights of small shops selling a plethora of fascinating wares, including a hardware store with stacks of huge aluminum cooking pots fitted one inside the other like Russian matrioshka, and all kinds of unusual items that intrigued me as to their possible uses.  I found a jewelry shop where the young man repaired my ring purchased in Bodrum at no charge. The garnet had fallen out of its setting while I was in a bar in Brussels, and a friend and I had searched the floor with our cell phones until I located the stone!  As a way to thank the jeweler, I bought three simple but lovely bracelets made of cut stones, very inexpensive, to offer as gifts to friends.

I next wandered through a covered market street which seemed to specialize in wedding ceremony necessities.  Some of these items were incredibly fanciful such as the elaborate tea trays adorned with tassels and tapestry.  The wedding garments displayed in showcases were equally extravagant and totally unfamiliar to my western eyes.  Back in central Ankara, we paid a visit to Kurtuluş Savaşi Müzesi (The Republic Museum) which is located in the Second Turkish Parliament Building dating from 1923.  From here, Ataturk established the republic of Turkey, and the capital shifted from Istanbul to Ankara.  Unfortunately, the museum curators are still in the process of having all the informative plaques and the brochure translated into English, so I was not able to understand much from the explanations offered.  The building itself is one-story and quite modest in size and construction, but retains the atmosphere of the period.

On Sunday, almost all shops remain open in Turkey, so after a lovely brunch, I made a shopping excursion to see the glass and china produced by Paşabahçe Mağazalari. (www.pasabahcemagazalari.com). The shop in Ankara has a section devoted to pieces of unique artistic value, with prices in the hundreds and thousands of Turkish lira, lovely to admire, but beyond my means.  I did find a reasonable set of small glasses with thick transparent pedestal bases that were just what I was looking for to serve limoncello.  My other treasured purchases that afternoon were a large wedge of smoked cheese which I had tasted at brunch, known as a kasar cheese, dried cherries from one of the many shops offering dozens of varieties of dried fruits and nuts (Turkey is the world’s number one producer of figs and dried apricots), and a large bottle of olive oil shampoo produced by the Turkish olive oil company, Komili.  To complete my tour, I had hoped to visit the emblematic swans in Kuğulu Park, but it was unfortunately closed for renovations, and its mascots had been temporarily removed to an unspecified location. 

Anitkabir, Kemal Ataturk's Mausoleum

Photos showing the area before restoration

after restoration

bazaar in Hisar

The Second Turkish Republic Building

Kocatepe Mosque (1967-1987)

Turkish çay

salep, made from a flour of ground orchid tubers

sunrise seen at Esenboga Airport before my departure

My trip was brief, but worth the effort to get to know this modern capital in central Turkey whose bureaucratic sobriety is punctuated by minarets alongside numerous luxury shopping malls.