Part 11, Turkey 2011: The Beautiful, Battle-Worn Plains of Ararat and Iran
The drive was long, but I knew we were getting closer as the elevation increased to make my skull throb and the temperatures drop. Outside there was snow and lava fields as far as the eye could see, all born from that great, Biblical volcano, Mount Ararat.
(Ararat's lava fields)
Looming above an uninhabited plain stretching to Iran, Ararat, which rises to 16,854 feet, is staggering in its size and beauty. Sacred to the people of this region (and to Abrahamic peoples the world over) for thousands of years, it has also been the centerpiece of great political upheaval between Kurds and Turks, and has a recent history of Western hikers being kidnapped by the PKK who hide on the mountain. The air is thin to breathe but thick with tension. Everywhere, armadas of tanks lie and wait:
And in stark contrast to these are the nomadic peoples living in Yurts scattered across the plains:
They are the steppe nomads (we are officially on the Central Asian Steppe), descendants of the Huns and Genghis Khan, Turkmen and Kazakhs, and they come mostly from deeper into Central Asia to bring their herds to greener pastures. Seeing them, some of the last nomadic tribes in existence, affected me in a way I cannot quite voice. Some longing arose in me that I couldn't place, calls of ancestors from long before that settled in their ways.
The nearest town of Dogubeyazit is more Iranian (being just about 15 miles from the border) than it is Turkish or Kurdish. Farsi is spoken and the money and goods exchanged are Iranian. Shocked to see Americans, the people there were most welcoming and curious, and we couldn't help return their curiosity, eager to sample food and goods forbidden to us in the United States due to trade embargoes.
And, as with other parts of Turkey, we encountered children who came to beg and marvel at the newcomers.
Finally, we were able to rid ourselves of the giant bag of pumpkin seeds purchased in Urfa, watching as their elated reactions quickly descended into the savagery which is the providence of hungry children.
Yet in the midst of the poverty they live in, there are echoes of the grandeur that was. Just outside the town is the Renaissance-era palace ruins of Ishak Pasha, a place that is among the most beautiful I've ever seen in my life:
From the lions meticulously carved into the harem gateway:
To the elegant columns of the dining hall:
To the mosque where pigeons flit across the high, domed ceiling:
To the entrance of the family tomb:
The building is a wonder of art and architecture. Sadly, aside from these few preserved rooms, many more have floors that have fallen through, or stairways which lead to dungeons and cellars which have collapsed. The bulk of this damage is the direct result of the fact that the palace was bombed by the Russians in the Campaign of the Caucasus. Like everything else in Eastern Turkey, it's enter at your own risk, right down to the windows which drop hundreds of feet down the cliffs below:
(notice how some of the wood is still intact)
Walking around the palace reveals beautifully situated, ancient graveyards:
Medieval mosques:
(Note the ancient Urartian fortifications behind it on the cliffside...these are roughly 3,000 years old)
Slightly intimidating cattle:
And hordes of Kurdish teenage boys who seem to know how to say only two things in English: "You're beautiful!" and "I love you!"
Further out from the town we decided to drive to the Iranian border before the sun set. Weaving through hairpin turns on barrier-free, dirt mountain roads was a white-knuckle experience, but oddly, as the border loomed in the distance, I felt a sense of calm. Perhaps it was something about how the trucks, lined up for a mile or so to get into Iran, made everything seem like business as usual:
Of course, it wasn't. Just as we reached the border, our guide veered off on a dirt road which took us ever closer than we anticipated. Guarded by heavily-armed Jandarma, we made it through the first checkpoint to arrive at the location of the second largest meteor crater fall in the world:
(the guard tower you see is in Iran, it is BEYOND illegal to have a photo of it -- this is the only one I managed to smuggle/save).
(the endearing Engrish attempting to describe what we were looking at)
Truly, the crater is amazing. It cuts through every layer of rock and sediment like a hole-punch into Hell. Inside, birds nest and their calls echo off the walls. The meteor itself lies buried beneath 50 feet of sediment and is priceless in value. When it hit, the blast would have been akin to an atom bomb, and given its proximity to Ararat, it's not such a leap to imagine it as the finger of God, smiting the Earth for all the killing this place has seen.
When I wasn't staring with wonder into the pit, I was gazing out at the rolling green hills of Iran. Behind me is an Iranian village, I could even make out the people from where I stood:
It's all so benign and lovely. So disarming that one might forget that one wrong step a few yards in would spell either instant death or a very long term in an Iranian prison.
But, as it would turn out, the Iranians were the least of our worries. As we drove back to the checkpoint, the Jandarma, AK-47's in-hand, blocked our way and demanded in Turkish that we hand over all our cameras. While they were distracted by Sean's SLR, I quickly slipped the sd card out of my phone (which I had used to take the illegal images of tanks and the border), and then handed everything over. They deleted photo after photo, and through translations from our guide, explained that the only reason we weren't being arrested was because they could tell the photos had accidentally caught the forbidden images (mine on my sd card had not). It was terse, aggressive, and terrifying. I was afraid of being searched at any moment with them finding the card with the images. It was pure luck they didn't, and I'm grateful, for thousands of journalists, citizen and professional, reside in Turkish prison for trumped-up charges of illegal documentation of security points. It's a move supported by the U.S. in the interest of combating terror, and it's nothing to fuck around with. Had I known I might face arrest rather than image deletion for taking photos, I might not have done so in the first place. Despite its aspirations, Turkey still ain't Europe, and freedoms afforded there don't apply here in the wild and rugged East.
It was a relief to arrive back at our lodging, a modest building with no internet but a view from our room of Ararat which was to die for:
When night fell, the sky came alive with billions of stars and the mountain, so isolated and uninhabited during the day, lit up with fires extending all the way to the snow line. Sean was too tired, so I walked outside alone to get a clearer view at the fires burning in the night. I wondered if they might be shepherds, then I heard it:
Artillery fire, flashes of light on the mountain, shots in the night.
With a rush of adrenaline I ran back inside and stared out at the mountain to wait and watch the fires go out, one by one, until none remained.
(Ararat's lava fields)
Looming above an uninhabited plain stretching to Iran, Ararat, which rises to 16,854 feet, is staggering in its size and beauty. Sacred to the people of this region (and to Abrahamic peoples the world over) for thousands of years, it has also been the centerpiece of great political upheaval between Kurds and Turks, and has a recent history of Western hikers being kidnapped by the PKK who hide on the mountain. The air is thin to breathe but thick with tension. Everywhere, armadas of tanks lie and wait:
And in stark contrast to these are the nomadic peoples living in Yurts scattered across the plains:
They are the steppe nomads (we are officially on the Central Asian Steppe), descendants of the Huns and Genghis Khan, Turkmen and Kazakhs, and they come mostly from deeper into Central Asia to bring their herds to greener pastures. Seeing them, some of the last nomadic tribes in existence, affected me in a way I cannot quite voice. Some longing arose in me that I couldn't place, calls of ancestors from long before that settled in their ways.
The nearest town of Dogubeyazit is more Iranian (being just about 15 miles from the border) than it is Turkish or Kurdish. Farsi is spoken and the money and goods exchanged are Iranian. Shocked to see Americans, the people there were most welcoming and curious, and we couldn't help return their curiosity, eager to sample food and goods forbidden to us in the United States due to trade embargoes.
And, as with other parts of Turkey, we encountered children who came to beg and marvel at the newcomers.
Finally, we were able to rid ourselves of the giant bag of pumpkin seeds purchased in Urfa, watching as their elated reactions quickly descended into the savagery which is the providence of hungry children.
Yet in the midst of the poverty they live in, there are echoes of the grandeur that was. Just outside the town is the Renaissance-era palace ruins of Ishak Pasha, a place that is among the most beautiful I've ever seen in my life:
From the lions meticulously carved into the harem gateway:
To the elegant columns of the dining hall:
To the mosque where pigeons flit across the high, domed ceiling:
To the entrance of the family tomb:
The building is a wonder of art and architecture. Sadly, aside from these few preserved rooms, many more have floors that have fallen through, or stairways which lead to dungeons and cellars which have collapsed. The bulk of this damage is the direct result of the fact that the palace was bombed by the Russians in the Campaign of the Caucasus. Like everything else in Eastern Turkey, it's enter at your own risk, right down to the windows which drop hundreds of feet down the cliffs below:
(notice how some of the wood is still intact)
Walking around the palace reveals beautifully situated, ancient graveyards:
Medieval mosques:
(Note the ancient Urartian fortifications behind it on the cliffside...these are roughly 3,000 years old)
Slightly intimidating cattle:
And hordes of Kurdish teenage boys who seem to know how to say only two things in English: "You're beautiful!" and "I love you!"
Further out from the town we decided to drive to the Iranian border before the sun set. Weaving through hairpin turns on barrier-free, dirt mountain roads was a white-knuckle experience, but oddly, as the border loomed in the distance, I felt a sense of calm. Perhaps it was something about how the trucks, lined up for a mile or so to get into Iran, made everything seem like business as usual:
Of course, it wasn't. Just as we reached the border, our guide veered off on a dirt road which took us ever closer than we anticipated. Guarded by heavily-armed Jandarma, we made it through the first checkpoint to arrive at the location of the second largest meteor crater fall in the world:
(the guard tower you see is in Iran, it is BEYOND illegal to have a photo of it -- this is the only one I managed to smuggle/save).
(the endearing Engrish attempting to describe what we were looking at)
Truly, the crater is amazing. It cuts through every layer of rock and sediment like a hole-punch into Hell. Inside, birds nest and their calls echo off the walls. The meteor itself lies buried beneath 50 feet of sediment and is priceless in value. When it hit, the blast would have been akin to an atom bomb, and given its proximity to Ararat, it's not such a leap to imagine it as the finger of God, smiting the Earth for all the killing this place has seen.
When I wasn't staring with wonder into the pit, I was gazing out at the rolling green hills of Iran. Behind me is an Iranian village, I could even make out the people from where I stood:
It's all so benign and lovely. So disarming that one might forget that one wrong step a few yards in would spell either instant death or a very long term in an Iranian prison.
But, as it would turn out, the Iranians were the least of our worries. As we drove back to the checkpoint, the Jandarma, AK-47's in-hand, blocked our way and demanded in Turkish that we hand over all our cameras. While they were distracted by Sean's SLR, I quickly slipped the sd card out of my phone (which I had used to take the illegal images of tanks and the border), and then handed everything over. They deleted photo after photo, and through translations from our guide, explained that the only reason we weren't being arrested was because they could tell the photos had accidentally caught the forbidden images (mine on my sd card had not). It was terse, aggressive, and terrifying. I was afraid of being searched at any moment with them finding the card with the images. It was pure luck they didn't, and I'm grateful, for thousands of journalists, citizen and professional, reside in Turkish prison for trumped-up charges of illegal documentation of security points. It's a move supported by the U.S. in the interest of combating terror, and it's nothing to fuck around with. Had I known I might face arrest rather than image deletion for taking photos, I might not have done so in the first place. Despite its aspirations, Turkey still ain't Europe, and freedoms afforded there don't apply here in the wild and rugged East.
It was a relief to arrive back at our lodging, a modest building with no internet but a view from our room of Ararat which was to die for:
When night fell, the sky came alive with billions of stars and the mountain, so isolated and uninhabited during the day, lit up with fires extending all the way to the snow line. Sean was too tired, so I walked outside alone to get a clearer view at the fires burning in the night. I wondered if they might be shepherds, then I heard it:
Artillery fire, flashes of light on the mountain, shots in the night.
With a rush of adrenaline I ran back inside and stared out at the mountain to wait and watch the fires go out, one by one, until none remained.