ISTANBUL
The Turks, İ'm told, came from places like Kyrgyzstan about a thousand years ago, but the similarities end there. Coming back from a month in the relative backwater of Central Asia İ was really struck by how dynamic Turkey has become. İstanbul seems more prosperous with every summer and the place is so bustling its practically bursting at the seams. During th day we visited the classic sites--Byzantine Aya Sofya, the majestic Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and the labrantine bazaars--which were overflowing with visitors including tens of thousands from the four mega cruise ships docked near the Golden Horn. On an afternoon trip out to the small island of Kinilada we could barely find a seat on the ferryboat full of local vacationers. Nor did we take for granted landing a reservation at one of the citys budding fushion restaurants, which always seem to heat up just as we leave at 10. During a night lit up by private fireworks shows we went out to a cafe on a sidestreet off the İstiklal, which can get as many as a million pedestrians each day. Our cafe was packed so tightly among hundreds of riotous Turks and two sidewalk bands that we had the fleeting sensation of being out with the whole city for the evening. Life in İstanbul seems to be moving at a pace and scale unmatched except in a handful of exceptional places in the world.
The marina at Kinalada, near Istanbul
The beach at Kinilada
Aya Sofya
The Blue Mosque
Caroline buying a leather jacketAll the more shocking then, how the public face of İslam seems to be growing steadily in this vibrant, 21st Century City. The headscarf, once the sole preserve of women of a peasant background, is now increasingly worn by women of all stripes and probably half of all women that we saw on the streets of İstanbul. Additionally high oil prices have shot up Arab tourism to the city to the point that it is no longer unusual to watch women in full burkahs lick ice cream cones from beneath their black face flaps. İt all contributes to a feeling among ardent secularists of being under siege, as if Ataturk's Republic is sliding eastward toward İran or Afghanistan. Whether these fears are justified or not is subject to constant debate within Turkey (and within our five person travel party) but the issue came to a head (so to speak) last week when the constitutional court came within one vote of banning the somewhat popular ruling party on the charge of "undermining secularism", largely because the ruling party recently tried to reverse an 80-year-old ban on head scarfs in universities (headscaves are banned in all public institutions except hospitals). İts a crazy, often absurd tug-of-war to be happening in a land of fusion restaurants and cruise ships.
Sultan Ahmet from a rooftoop 
Modestly covered inside Sultan Ahmet Mosque
My family and the family of my dad's cousin--one of the few Kuran families out there
IZNIK and BURSA
For our family tour we were lucky enough to have Vedat Bey, a kindly septuagenarian with fifty years experience leading tourists around every nook and crany of Turkey. He said that his worst tour experience was accompanying Henry Kissenger above Cappadocia on a rickety army helicopter. On the first day Vedat Bey led us through Iznik (an early Christian center and one of the earliest Ottoman capitals) and then to Bursa, another early Ottoman city sprawling onto the Ulu Dag mountain, where Turks go to ski in the winter. We saw a spectacular early mosque, built before the conquest of Istanbul gave Turkish architecture its classic, distinct style and we ate at the Iskander Cafe, the legendary originator of Iskander Kebab, an awesome compilation of doner meat, pida bread, tomato sauce and liquid butter. In the evening I split off from the shopping women to go to the traditional bath which had a huge pool of hot thermal water and where I bumbled around trying to find the knob to the cool water. "You'll have to be patient with him," one of the managers said to the other in Turkish, "he's a new Turk."
For our family tour we were lucky enough to have Vedat Bey, a kindly septuagenarian with fifty years experience leading tourists around every nook and crany of Turkey. He said that his worst tour experience was accompanying Henry Kissenger above Cappadocia on a rickety army helicopter. On the first day Vedat Bey led us through Iznik (an early Christian center and one of the earliest Ottoman capitals) and then to Bursa, another early Ottoman city sprawling onto the Ulu Dag mountain, where Turks go to ski in the winter. We saw a spectacular early mosque, built before the conquest of Istanbul gave Turkish architecture its classic, distinct style and we ate at the Iskander Cafe, the legendary originator of Iskander Kebab, an awesome compilation of doner meat, pida bread, tomato sauce and liquid butter. In the evening I split off from the shopping women to go to the traditional bath which had a huge pool of hot thermal water and where I bumbled around trying to find the knob to the cool water. "You'll have to be patient with him," one of the managers said to the other in Turkish, "he's a new Turk."
Vedat Bey relates the legends of the Iznik walls
The Ottoman mosque at Iznik, one of the oldest ever
The Masoleum of Orhan Ghazi, the second Ottoman sultan
A village near Bursa
Bursa from the hilltop fortress
Bursa houses
Ataturk gave a speach from here, so now its perfectly preserved
The main mosque at Bursa, ca. 1410. Displays alot of Central Asian influenceKUTAHYA
From there it was onward through the bright yellow Anatolian plain to Kutahya, the Ottoman center of ceramics production. The art form is has been making a major revival in the past thirty years partly due to the dedication and effort of Mehmet Gursoy, a an unassuming fify-year-old who took us around his workshop where we saw a man caress a pile of clay into a perfect vase in five minutes,and a room full of women (half covered, half uncovered) slowly painting intricate designs onto the white ceramics.
Kutahya fortress, built with many towers to withstand earthquakes
A husky family in Kutahya
Old folk passing the time
The main mosque at Kutahya + my dad
A female dervish lodge in Kutahya
Mehmet Gursoy shows us how it's done when it comes to ceramics
Artists painting complex designs in Mehmet Gursoy's studio
Applying the glaze
A Roman temple outside of Kutahya
Ancient nomadic grafitti on the Roman temple
The houses of the village around the templeUSAK, PAMUKKALE
That was the main part of the tour although we did stop in the town of Usak which had an extraordinary little museum dedicated to the pre-Roman Lydian Kingdom, famous for the world's first coins and the legend of King Midas. In this ancient part of Turkey every turn in the road reminded the encyclopedic Vedat Bey of some timeless old myth or fable. We stayed the night near Pamukkale, the massive white pools formed by highly calcified spring water. There was a great thermal hot springs there where a completely covered Arab mother sat boredly watching her children splash around in the pool.
That was the main part of the tour although we did stop in the town of Usak which had an extraordinary little museum dedicated to the pre-Roman Lydian Kingdom, famous for the world's first coins and the legend of King Midas. In this ancient part of Turkey every turn in the road reminded the encyclopedic Vedat Bey of some timeless old myth or fable. We stayed the night near Pamukkale, the massive white pools formed by highly calcified spring water. There was a great thermal hot springs there where a completely covered Arab mother sat boredly watching her children splash around in the pool.
Shoe shiners in Usak
Pamukkale
One of the thermal springs at Pamukkale. The water is actually clean--I don't know why it looks like frog blood.FETHIYE (HILLSIDE), a.k.a. PARADISE
After that we drove strait away to the southern coast near the holiday city of Fethiye where we went to a resort near Hillside. Since my family went there without me last summer I'd been listening to them rave about it all year and it was awesome to finally get there and have it live up to all expectations. They pretty much do it all right--from the buffet dinners to the evening shows to the watersports to the nightclub--and I could have stayed there indefinitely. It was definitely a treat after trudging through places like Kyrgyzstan and Albania and in fact the thought of Hillside helped get me through places like that, acting like the light at the end of the tunnel.
After that we drove strait away to the southern coast near the holiday city of Fethiye where we went to a resort near Hillside. Since my family went there without me last summer I'd been listening to them rave about it all year and it was awesome to finally get there and have it live up to all expectations. They pretty much do it all right--from the buffet dinners to the evening shows to the watersports to the nightclub--and I could have stayed there indefinitely. It was definitely a treat after trudging through places like Kyrgyzstan and Albania and in fact the thought of Hillside helped get me through places like that, acting like the light at the end of the tunnel.
Desert
One of the evening shows
A nightime water show
Me, Caroline, Fiona and Pasha
Max, Fiona, Me, Caroline, Ari, Deniz
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