July19 is when these events occurred
The breakfast at the SV Business Hotel was pretty good. Nothing was cooked to order, but the selection was extensive, the fruit and bakery items were fresh and there were lots of vegetables.
We started the day by returning to the area we had been the prior evening, but before we got there we went up onto the City walls. Diyarbakir's single most conspicuous feature is its almost 6km circuit of walls and gates that circumvent the old city. It was claimed that the walls are second in length in the world, exceeded only by the Great Wall of China. The walls were originally built by the Romans, but their present size dates from the 5th century when the Byzantines did major renovations. The walls are being restored, but that process is not complete.
We climbed up on the north Harput Kapisi Gate and walked along the top of the wall for a short distance. We then went back to the complex of buildings and museums that we had been unable to visit the prior day. It was a Sunday, so the park that these buildings surrounded was filled with families and strollers. We spoke with a few people, several of whom had some loose American connections and a few of whom had a German connection. There was an art museum that we quickly ran through, but we spent a lot of time in the history/archaeology museum. This area falls with the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys and the museum had relics from mankind's presence here going back to 8000 BC. The history of empires in this area that was displayed in the museum started with the Hurrian and subsequently included Assyrian, Persians, Alexander the Great, the Suleucids, the Romans, the Arabs (who gave the city its present name, Realm of Bakr, and its religion), the Safavid/Persians and finally the Ottomans. We met two college girls in the museum who were visiting from the Trabzon area where we had been in May.
After we left there we got lost [it turned out that we were not far from where I wanted to be] attempting to get to the Mardin Kapisi, south gate of the walls. We asked a few people for directions, and then were sort of adopted by a woman, who is a primary school teacher, and one of her of students. (It was never clear to us what their relationship was.) For the next several hours she took us on a whirlwind tour of Diyarbakir.
We walked down a main shopping street and visited the Ulu Camii, the city's most impressive mosque. Its courtyard was rectangular, Arab style, unlike virtually all of the other mosques we saw in India and Turkey that were square.There were sculptures of a huge lion and bull framing the entrance and reliefs on the walls featuring fruits and vegetables.
The Diyarbakir house museums were built and for a long time owned by Armenians. (They were largely killed or run out of Turkey in 1915 by the Ottomans in what the Turks characterize as the fog of war, and the Armenians describe as the first genocide of the 20th century.) They had summer and winter quarters. The summer area had a center courtyard with a fountain. Sleeping was on wooden platforms in the courtyard to catch breezes. We were able to enter the house of poet Cahit Sitki Taranci that was built in 1820 of black basalt stone. He lived in the first half of the 20th century. Some of his poems were printed on charts and there were many photographs of him, his family and the period when he lived. One of his more famous poems is Age Thirty Five:
"Age thirty five! It is half the way.
We are in the middle of life like Dante.
Jewel in our young ages
Begging, imploring is useless now.
It goes with having no pity on.
"Did it snow to my temple?
Is this face with wrinkles is it really mine?
And black circles under my eyes?
Why look so hostile now,
All mirrors I mistakenly deemed as a dear friend?"
Just wait until he gets to 65!
The Dengbe Evi, a Kurdish storytelling house, was closed on Sunday.
We then went to a shopping area and had some coffee, our self-appointed guide spilled some on her blouse, and she then took us to a tacky shop that sold tourist stuff. We then went to the courtyard of an older, elegant hotel that was setting up for a wedding. We stopped for beers and cold drinks in the courtyard. Our guide put us on her Facebook page and decried teaching in Turkey. All references to Kurdish language and customs is forbidden. She said that she was getting burned out on teaching and wanted to come to the US.
At this point I was wondering if we would be able to get rid of our guide. She took us through a maze-like set of streets until we emerged at the Mardin Kapisi, the gate I wanted to go to. We were able to go under the wall into a cave-like area that used to be a caravanserai, a fortified way station for caravans, which now contained some shops and a small chapel. There were two towers in the vicinity, Nur Burcu and Yedi Kardes Burcu. (Tower of Seven Brothers -- I forgot the story.) The latter had an informal concert going on it, with lots of people gathered around. It also offered great views of the Tigris River, the Bridge of Ten Eyes (arches) and the surrounding countryside. Wedding pictures were being taken on the ramparts and our guide somehow managed to get Karen included in some of the pictures. When we were watching the concert we spoke with a Turkish family. By the end of our visit to the Mardin Gate, our guide somehow persuaded this family to give us a ride in their car to our hotel.
After we got out our guide then requested 50 lira (about $17). I half expected that was going to happen, but I was too tired to protest and just paid. While I was doing that, Karen complimented the younger girl on her earrings, and our guide instructed her to take them off and give them to her. It took protests and sneaking them back to the young girl when the guide was turned away to get them returned.
I used the hotel's fitness room and sauna. That was refreshing, but we were too tired to go out to eat so we just ate some of the fruit and snacks we had been carrying around. Watched Al Jazzera International's report on the bombing that occurred in the Turkish border town of Serca, about 200 km to the east and called it a night.
P.S.: During our first trip to Turkey, it was on the eve of parliamentary elections. In those elections a Kurdish party, the People's Democratic Party ("HDP") won 13% of the vote, for the first time clearing the 10% threshold needed for representation in Parliament. That was a singular achievement for Turkey's long-suppressed Kurdish minority and was cited repeatedly by Kurds with whom we spoke. The HDP's success was largely based on the Kurdish vote, but it also attracted the votes of liberals and secular voters who flooded the streets of Istanbul two years ago in anti-government protests. That success upset Turkish politics and denied President Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, ("AKP," an Islamist party that has governed Turkey in an increasingly autocratic manner for over a decade), a majority in Parliament. The political parties were unable to form a coalition government. Some Kurds told us that Erdogan was unwilling to enter into a coalition and thus made unreasonable demands thereby forcing another election. Others, including the Islamist wife in the couple with whom we ate lunch on the tour in Cappadocia, said that the HDP and a right-wing nationalist party were racists and they both were the ones who were unreasonable during the coalition negotiations.
Subsequent to our departure from Diyarbakir, the Turkish government launched air strikes against the Kurdish fighters in Iraq ("PKK") and Syria ("PYD") and instituted a new wave of repression against the Kurds in Turkey. (Ironically, it did this after announcing an agreement with the US to let the US use the Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to better bomb ISIS.) Yet those Kurdish fighters have been among the most effective in fighting ISIS. This reignited the conflict with the Turkish Kurds, lead by the PKK and resulted in PKK bombings of Turkish military and police installations in the Diyarbakir area. Some Kurds told us that Erdogan's objective in all of this is to rouse nationalist feelings within Turkey and tar the HDP as a terrorist front for the PKK in order to win votes from the other two parties, thereby regaining the super majority his AKP previously had in Parliament and resume his march to make Turkey a one-party state and to grant him an imperial Presidency. That opinion is shared by a former US Ambassador to Turkey in a NY Times op-ed piece. This all may be a good political strategy for Erdogan [We will see; the election is in November.], but it does not help in the fight against ISIS [Ultimately it is impossible to win a war without good troops on the ground.] and runs the risk of plunging Turkey back into the armed conflict that it had for 20 years with the PKK.
The breakfast at the SV Business Hotel was pretty good. Nothing was cooked to order, but the selection was extensive, the fruit and bakery items were fresh and there were lots of vegetables.
We started the day by returning to the area we had been the prior evening, but before we got there we went up onto the City walls. Diyarbakir's single most conspicuous feature is its almost 6km circuit of walls and gates that circumvent the old city. It was claimed that the walls are second in length in the world, exceeded only by the Great Wall of China. The walls were originally built by the Romans, but their present size dates from the 5th century when the Byzantines did major renovations. The walls are being restored, but that process is not complete.
We climbed up on the north Harput Kapisi Gate and walked along the top of the wall for a short distance. We then went back to the complex of buildings and museums that we had been unable to visit the prior day. It was a Sunday, so the park that these buildings surrounded was filled with families and strollers. We spoke with a few people, several of whom had some loose American connections and a few of whom had a German connection. There was an art museum that we quickly ran through, but we spent a lot of time in the history/archaeology museum. This area falls with the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys and the museum had relics from mankind's presence here going back to 8000 BC. The history of empires in this area that was displayed in the museum started with the Hurrian and subsequently included Assyrian, Persians, Alexander the Great, the Suleucids, the Romans, the Arabs (who gave the city its present name, Realm of Bakr, and its religion), the Safavid/Persians and finally the Ottomans. We met two college girls in the museum who were visiting from the Trabzon area where we had been in May.
After we left there we got lost [it turned out that we were not far from where I wanted to be] attempting to get to the Mardin Kapisi, south gate of the walls. We asked a few people for directions, and then were sort of adopted by a woman, who is a primary school teacher, and one of her of students. (It was never clear to us what their relationship was.) For the next several hours she took us on a whirlwind tour of Diyarbakir.
We walked down a main shopping street and visited the Ulu Camii, the city's most impressive mosque. Its courtyard was rectangular, Arab style, unlike virtually all of the other mosques we saw in India and Turkey that were square.There were sculptures of a huge lion and bull framing the entrance and reliefs on the walls featuring fruits and vegetables.
The Diyarbakir house museums were built and for a long time owned by Armenians. (They were largely killed or run out of Turkey in 1915 by the Ottomans in what the Turks characterize as the fog of war, and the Armenians describe as the first genocide of the 20th century.) They had summer and winter quarters. The summer area had a center courtyard with a fountain. Sleeping was on wooden platforms in the courtyard to catch breezes. We were able to enter the house of poet Cahit Sitki Taranci that was built in 1820 of black basalt stone. He lived in the first half of the 20th century. Some of his poems were printed on charts and there were many photographs of him, his family and the period when he lived. One of his more famous poems is Age Thirty Five:
"Age thirty five! It is half the way.
We are in the middle of life like Dante.
Jewel in our young ages
Begging, imploring is useless now.
It goes with having no pity on.
"Did it snow to my temple?
Is this face with wrinkles is it really mine?
And black circles under my eyes?
Why look so hostile now,
All mirrors I mistakenly deemed as a dear friend?"
Just wait until he gets to 65!
The Dengbe Evi, a Kurdish storytelling house, was closed on Sunday.
We then went to a shopping area and had some coffee, our self-appointed guide spilled some on her blouse, and she then took us to a tacky shop that sold tourist stuff. We then went to the courtyard of an older, elegant hotel that was setting up for a wedding. We stopped for beers and cold drinks in the courtyard. Our guide put us on her Facebook page and decried teaching in Turkey. All references to Kurdish language and customs is forbidden. She said that she was getting burned out on teaching and wanted to come to the US.
At this point I was wondering if we would be able to get rid of our guide. She took us through a maze-like set of streets until we emerged at the Mardin Kapisi, the gate I wanted to go to. We were able to go under the wall into a cave-like area that used to be a caravanserai, a fortified way station for caravans, which now contained some shops and a small chapel. There were two towers in the vicinity, Nur Burcu and Yedi Kardes Burcu. (Tower of Seven Brothers -- I forgot the story.) The latter had an informal concert going on it, with lots of people gathered around. It also offered great views of the Tigris River, the Bridge of Ten Eyes (arches) and the surrounding countryside. Wedding pictures were being taken on the ramparts and our guide somehow managed to get Karen included in some of the pictures. When we were watching the concert we spoke with a Turkish family. By the end of our visit to the Mardin Gate, our guide somehow persuaded this family to give us a ride in their car to our hotel.
After we got out our guide then requested 50 lira (about $17). I half expected that was going to happen, but I was too tired to protest and just paid. While I was doing that, Karen complimented the younger girl on her earrings, and our guide instructed her to take them off and give them to her. It took protests and sneaking them back to the young girl when the guide was turned away to get them returned.
I used the hotel's fitness room and sauna. That was refreshing, but we were too tired to go out to eat so we just ate some of the fruit and snacks we had been carrying around. Watched Al Jazzera International's report on the bombing that occurred in the Turkish border town of Serca, about 200 km to the east and called it a night.
P.S.: During our first trip to Turkey, it was on the eve of parliamentary elections. In those elections a Kurdish party, the People's Democratic Party ("HDP") won 13% of the vote, for the first time clearing the 10% threshold needed for representation in Parliament. That was a singular achievement for Turkey's long-suppressed Kurdish minority and was cited repeatedly by Kurds with whom we spoke. The HDP's success was largely based on the Kurdish vote, but it also attracted the votes of liberals and secular voters who flooded the streets of Istanbul two years ago in anti-government protests. That success upset Turkish politics and denied President Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, ("AKP," an Islamist party that has governed Turkey in an increasingly autocratic manner for over a decade), a majority in Parliament. The political parties were unable to form a coalition government. Some Kurds told us that Erdogan was unwilling to enter into a coalition and thus made unreasonable demands thereby forcing another election. Others, including the Islamist wife in the couple with whom we ate lunch on the tour in Cappadocia, said that the HDP and a right-wing nationalist party were racists and they both were the ones who were unreasonable during the coalition negotiations.
Subsequent to our departure from Diyarbakir, the Turkish government launched air strikes against the Kurdish fighters in Iraq ("PKK") and Syria ("PYD") and instituted a new wave of repression against the Kurds in Turkey. (Ironically, it did this after announcing an agreement with the US to let the US use the Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to better bomb ISIS.) Yet those Kurdish fighters have been among the most effective in fighting ISIS. This reignited the conflict with the Turkish Kurds, lead by the PKK and resulted in PKK bombings of Turkish military and police installations in the Diyarbakir area. Some Kurds told us that Erdogan's objective in all of this is to rouse nationalist feelings within Turkey and tar the HDP as a terrorist front for the PKK in order to win votes from the other two parties, thereby regaining the super majority his AKP previously had in Parliament and resume his march to make Turkey a one-party state and to grant him an imperial Presidency. That opinion is shared by a former US Ambassador to Turkey in a NY Times op-ed piece. This all may be a good political strategy for Erdogan [We will see; the election is in November.], but it does not help in the fight against ISIS [Ultimately it is impossible to win a war without good troops on the ground.] and runs the risk of plunging Turkey back into the armed conflict that it had for 20 years with the PKK.
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