Central and Eastern Turkey (Post #48)
Hi…this is Michele with Mike as the supervisor…today is Wednesday, September 14th. We just returned from three days in Eastern Turkey. We are currently in the central part of Turkey in the Cappadoccia region. This region has a variety of unusual geological features including the massive “fairy chimneys” which are shown below:
We were very fortunate to take a three day tour of Eastern Turkey with a young man who grew up there. The first day we left our hotel at 3:30am to go to the famous Mt. Nemrut, (2nd highest mountain in Turkey) where huge heads fell off the bodies of giant statues during an earthquake hundreds of years ago. Below is a picture of a few of the heads. (For reference, these heads are approximately 6 feet high.)
The highlight of our Eastern Turkey trip was visiting a small town, less than 10 miles from the Syrian border. This village, called Harran (population 6900), is made up of mud-brick behehive houses where the prophet Abraham is said to have spent the last years of his life (as mentioned in the book of Genesis). Since our guide, Taha, was raised in Harran along with his 9 siblings, he knew many of the people there and much of his family still lives there including his mom and dad. We were fortunate to meet his mom and dad, who had an arranged marriage (as opposed to a “love” marriage). Taha explained that most of the people in Eastern Turkey will have arranged marriages and the women will be married by 14, 15, or 16 years of age. Until very recently, women were not educated past the middle school level since most would simply be giving birth to many children and tending to the household chores. Although Taha’s family no longer lives in the beehive looking huts, they still own them and this is where the 4 cows are kept. Below is a picture of Taha and his mother, both of which were kind enough to let us photograph them.
Eastern Turkey is very conservative and the only people who are not wearing head scarves are Western women (i.e., tourists). It is quite dessolate and the primary industry is agriculture. It is a very different world from Western Turkey but it is an area that Mike and I hope to explore more one day.
Tomorrow (Thursday) we will take a 12 hour bus to Istanbul where we will spend 3 days before flying to Valletta, Malta. We will blog again in Istanbul so stay tuned…
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Tags: Category #13 Turkey
Michele Harmon
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