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Category Archives: Turkey travel
Syrian Refugees on the Turkish-Syrian Border
How do you get into a Turkish camp for Syrian refugees? Not easily, it turns out. I had taken a shared dolmus minivan to the village of Yayladagi where the camp was located, about 60 km south of Antakya and … Continue reading
Posted in Turkey travel
Tagged Alawites in Turkey, Hafez Assad, Syria refugees, Turkish travel, Yayladagi, Yayladagi refugee camp
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Saving an 18-year-old brother from dying too young
It seemed quite impossible to wander alone around Diyarbakir or any other town in Turkey and not meet interesting people eager for conversation with a foreigner. I met Muhammed in front of the nearly one-thousand-year-old Ulu Camii, the “Great Mosque”. … Continue reading
Posted in History, Turkey travel
Tagged Diyarbakir, PKK, Turkish travel, Ulu Camii Diyarbakir
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The Woman Who Gave Away 10,000 Trees in Kabul
Not all of Sandra’s visits to Afghanistan have been as eventful as the time that she was blown out of bed one night, accompanied by shards of flying glass, by the explosion of a suicide bomb nearby. But she has … Continue reading
Assyrian Christians Return to their Roots
I was leafing through a book on the lectern in the Assyrian Christian church of Meryem Ana, in what I assumed to be Syriac script, written from right to left, when a man came up to me and asked me … Continue reading
A Kurdish Teacher Mourns His Brother
I took a “dolmuş” mini-bus ride between two towns some hours apart in the south-eastern, Kurdish part of the country. For part of the way, I sat next to a teacher, who said he taught English. It was apparent that … Continue reading
Posted in History, Turkey travel
Tagged Kurdish education, Kurdish history, Turkish travel
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Seeing Hasankeyf Before it Drowns
I took a late morning bus from Bitlis, near Lake Van, feeling so lousy with a cold that I left town without even visiting the fortress that dominates the town. This was a nearly unprecedented event in my personal traveling … Continue reading
And Now for the Turkish/Kurdish View from Denmark
She came and sat down next to me in the hotel restaurant (I could never sit there alone for long) and said that she spoke three languages: Kurdish, Turkish … and Danish. She knew the occasional English word, but not … Continue reading
Posted in Turkey travel
Tagged Kurdish Turks, Turkey travel, Turks in Denmark, women in Turkey
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My Grandfathers Killed the Armenians
A Turkish teacher from Izmir who lived at the hotel where I was staying showed me pictures of old Armenian grave stones which he pulled up on his iPhone and which he said were from somewhere nearby, but he wasn’t … Continue reading
Posted in History, Turkey travel
Tagged Armenian genocide, Armenian history, Armenian slaughter, Bitlis, Turkish history
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Bitlis: Musings on street scenes, conversations at the tea house
When I checked into the Dideban Hotel in Bitlis, not far from Lake Van, I realized that my sore throat had actually become a cold. So, tea was the only thing for it. Leaving the hotel, I strolled down the … Continue reading
A Kurdish Cotton Farmer
The man next to me on the bus from Van was not Batman, but was from the town of Batman a few hours away. At first I thought he was old — the gnarled hands, the missing teeth — but … Continue reading
Turkish Travels, with a Turkish-English Dictionary 