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Finally we are back in colder climes, mountain streams rush by, snowy mountains appear round every bend, and the air is clean and clear (well until the next truck thunders past us blasting its horn again!).
We are back in Turkey but things here are a bit different - the people and the customs all seem a lot more European, oh yes thats because this area is Kurdistan, as we are reminded by almost everyone we meet.
We were told a lot of things about this part of Eastern Turkey last time we were here in the country - mostly that it was dangerous and we shouldnt go there, especially on bicycles. The countryside and mountains were beautiful we were told, but full of dangerous terrorists, and the cities wernt much better either. We were particularly warned about Diyarbakır and Batman, and didnt need to be warned about Hakkari as there was nightly coverage of the urban warfare that seemed to be occuring there. But we decided to ignore all of that and check it out for ourselves - especially as folk we had met who had actually been there said it was fine.
We left Birecik and the
Cheese making, Mamuniye
A Kurdish woman boils up the mornings sheep milk as preparation for making paneer.Eurphrates and head to ŞanliUrfa to see the cave where Abraham was born, and then onwards towards the Tigris. This area is just one great river after another and home to the beginnings of "civilisation". The road to Urfa was flat and boring, cutting a straight line through the rich farmland that makes up this "fertile crescent", though for the last few miles we entered some rough hilly country. We couldnt really appreciate it however as the visibility was poor due to haze and dust.
Urfa was great. We arrived planning to have a quick look round and then leave to camp somewhere, but the vibe of the place got us hooked and we decided to find a hotel and enjoy the parks around the famous mosques, pilgrimage sites and sacred carp fish pools. We relished sitting to have our tea on a grassy lawn - the first grass we have sat on for a long time, that was until the sprinkler system triggers and little sprouts of water spring up from the greenery and try to soak us and our bikes! The park area around Urfa´s mosques is a beautiful and very peaceful and calming place, even with
Persian tomb near Hasankeyf
Unique in Turkey and soon to be under 50m of water. huge crowds of tourists and pilgrims. The sun finally broke through and even the huge crowd of children that soon gathered around us was unusually quiet. a lot of the tourists were İranians and this combined wıth the numbers of İranian trucks and buses passing us all day made us feel like we were definetly on the right road.
We were happy to have found a hotel that night as a huge thunderstorm finally broke, a relief from the dust storm of the day before. However the rain was muddy because of all the dust in the air, a fact that reached the Turkish national news - which blames Syria for making their cars dirty!
The next day we set off towards Diyarbakır (unofficial capital of Kurdistan). The cycling is fine and the temperature cool, and its a while before we realise that the rolling stony and grassy slopes are in fact the same steppe that we cycled in last year - it is as if someone has taken a huge brush and painted the dull brown steppe bright green. Yet again we are amazed at the size of the sky - this land is so big and
Dark Skies and rain again.....
Be careful what you wish for when you are in the desert! we seem wonderfully small on our bikes. Mid-mornıng the black clouds broke and it rained on us - the first rain we had experienced for what felt like a long time. İn Egypt we kind of reached our limits of deserts and there were many times when a damp green drizzly hillside seemed like paradise. We even fantasised about rain. So now we rode along whooping and smiling at the lush green fields and fresh, sweet smelling rain soaked air. For five minutes. Then we pulled into a petrol station to shelter as were totally soaked and freezing. İt lost its appeal a bit after that.... Especially as it kept raining heavily most of the day. We were aimıng for a town and a hotel for the night to dry off but just before sunset the weather improved, the clouds broke and we began to dry out and think of camping. We stopped at an army post beside a big boarding school to ask for water and ended up pitching our tent here next to the soldiers small stone bothy.
This was the first of many such army "watchposts" we would encounter on the roads of Kurdistan, but the
Reluctant Soldiers
İn the bothy near Siverek. soldiers were really friendly and gave us food and lots of çay, letting us sit up inside the bothy to dry off for the evening. Despite this being a Turkish army guardpost we soon realised the four soldiers were all Kurdish on enforced military service, though judging by the age of some of them they had been doing a good job of avoiding it for as long as possible. They did a good job of guarding the school - one of them going out once every ten minutes to check it was still there. One of them proudly showed me his Kalashnikov and how to load the clip etc. - a bit wierd.
İn the morning we were spotted by the schoolkids and soon a delegation of teachers had been sent across to invite us to the school for more çay. Soon we found ourselves in the staffroom being aked all sorts of questions about our trip, and felt slightly uncomfortable as we realised how dirty (caked in mud) and smelly we were in comparison to the well groomed teachers. They asked us our views of Kurdish people and we asked why they were all talking to each other
The Steppe again
Someone painted it green! in Turkish? Basically the kurdish language is banned in schools and all lessons are in Turkish - essentially a foreign language to the kurdish speaking students when they first arrive at school. The teachers claimed they were only speaking Turkish because we were there and that normally they can speak Kurdish to each other, but this really made no sense and İ think they were trying to gloss over the problem somewhat for our benfit. The English teacher admitted the problems she has teaching English to children via the medium of Turkish - essentially she first has to teach them Turkish and then English. This would be like kids at home learning French via Russian!! Not only this one of the prime examples of the way the Turkish govt. oppresses the Kurds but it clearly results in a major educational disadvantage for Kurdish children compared to their Turkish counterparts - thus helping to re-inforce lower employment and economic prospects in the Kurdish areas, and of course a growing resentment of the Turkish authorities. İ was reminded of the whole "Welsh Not" scenario.........
We arrived in Diyarbakır after a long hard day battling headwinds, rough tarmac and a road that
seemd to creep slowly and slowly uphill with no end in sight. The wind was cold but the scenery was fantastic - wide open wet grassy and stony hills that felt like some huge high altitude plain. The area was grazed by Kurdish shepherds clad in home-made jackets of thick sheeps fleece lined with cut peices of tarpaulin to protect from the wind and rain, who seemed to live in nomadic camps made from the same tarpaulin. Also there were many more stone bothies flying the Turkish flag with bored soldiers desperate for us to come and drink çay and chat. We felt better when we crested a 1130m pass and realised how high we had been climbing, the wind dropped and we flew downhill for miles into Diyarbakır.
The city is huge and seemed to comprise nothing but sprawling concrete tower blocks stretching on and on, in a style reminiscent of the worst "housing projects". One of the worst looking "estates"was surrounded by a 6 foot high fence topped with razor-wire, directly opposite and enormous army base. İn fact the only other feature of the city seemed to be lots and lots of army bases, until we reached
Artificial rain
The reason some streets look like its just rained while the others dont. İ still dont understand why tghey do this - maybe they just need to waste some of that water stored behind all their dams.... the centre and the ancient black basalt walls of the old city. While Erika found a cheap hotel for night İ made friends with the mafia "boss" of the street as he chased away groups of annoying children from the bikes!
We have a lie in the next day and enjoy a really pleasant walk around the lovely old city. Kurdish music and dancing comes from rooftops where people are partying and everyone looks and seems that bit different. There are great big black basalt walls surrounding the old city and the Tigris winds round one side beautifully cutting through the fertile flat farmland. The people are generally that bit paler skinned with longer, less rounded faces and look a lot more European than the Turks or Arabs. Blue eyes are common as are distictive long, bulbous noses. The city seemed to be full of women and whilst Erika was very happy it felt quite strange to be outnumbered by women for the first time in a long time. Kurdish women wear brightly coloured and patterned headscarves, often with a lace trim and in a loose style with the ends wrapped around and over their shoulders, making then look
Batman & Robin
No-one from Batman thought this was very funny either..... a lot more like the typical stereotype gypsy-girl than any of the gypsy women we met in Europe (who are all much darker skinned than the Kurds anyway....).
Whilst having a cheeky look around a posh 5 star hotel built inside an ancient caravanserai we were given a guided tour and free çay by Moses the manager, who had only recently quit a job working as a translator for the Americans in the Kurdish areas of northern İraq (not actually that far way from here....). He has 7 children and although the money was good it was just too dangerous. He outlined the main political problems in Kurdistan - cheifly that the Turkish govt. refuses to even admit that there ıis suuch a thing as Kurds. İt refers to them a "mountain Turks" and thus refuses to acknowledge the separate language, customs and culture, all of which are either suppressed or banned outright (the Kurdish language was actually illegal until recentşly and thus you could be arrested for speaking it openly....). Kurdish names are not recognised by the state, so children with such names have problems graduating school etc. and are forced to take Turkish names. Similarly all villages,
The Dicle/Tigris river
Near Hasankeyf and soon to be a lake.... towns etc. were long-ago re-named with (often derogatory) Turkish names, in a way that again remined me of Wales. Mosesd was keen to argue that although we are not independant in Scotland or Wales, we can call ourselves Welsh or Scottish, fly different flags, dance and sing our own songs and speak our own languages - even having mainstrweam education in them. He seemed to think if the Turkish govt. went down a similar road with Kurdish then the majority of the problems would be solved and the armed resistance would loose most of its support.
We left Diyarbakır and made good progress cycling towards Batman (with a name like that we couldnt resist) across miles and miles of flat farmland once again. Batman itself was pretty uninspiring, being home to Turkeys oil industry, but at no time felt dangerous as we had been warned. We eagerly headed up to the hills beyond to find a place to camp. We could see a line of steep rocky hills ahead but couldnt figure out where the road crossed them, but soon we turned a sharp bend and a hidden valley opened before us liker a gateway through the hills. We
followed the road through this wide bottomed, steep-sided valley and stopped at Mamuniye (also called Demirbılek in Turkish) - a tiny village of stone and mud houses near the top to ask for water. As it was growing dark and the village was half made up of tented nomad camps, so we asked to pitch out tent here too.
No sooner had we got the tent up than Emim, a typically well dressed shepherd (smart suit) and some younger guys had made a fire for us near the tent and brought out not only çay but big plates of food, including huge, thick, heavy home-made bread - the best we have tasted in Turkey. We quickly began a Kurdish lesson with them and learnt that bread is "naan" and cheese "paneer" in Kurdish! A reminder of how İndo-European the Kurds are and also how we are slowly nearing İndia. (the naan is cooked in an oven called a tandeer!) They were happy and most amused to teach us more and more Kurdish (via the medium of Turkish) and as more people arrived to say hello to us we could try out our new found language skills - to great
suprise and amusement all round. Once we had finished eating it was time to teach us some Kurdish dancing and they soon had us up dancing around the fire in a typical Kurdish line-dance. İt was then our turn to demonstrate some Scottish dances and after a basic jig Erika tried to organise a big "Strip-the-Willow". Despite some difficulties - islamic girls not wanting to dance with foreign men, and a general miscomprehension that not everyone is supposed to be dancing all at the same time - great fun was still had. The fire burnt low and we went to bed well fed, happy and exhausted.
The next morning we were prevented from cooking our own breakfast by Hamza who insisted we eat at his families house. We discussed our route and desire to visit Hasankeyf before doubling back north towards Batman and he suggested we leave our tent and luggage where it was for the day. We set off on lighter bikes downhill toward the Dicle (Tigris) river again, passing more army bases and lines of tanks on the way, before emerging out of the hills into a narrow valley with the river rushing along the bottom. The
Mamuniye
Part of the winter nomad camp. The more permanent house with the tarp roof is Emims home. valley was spectacular with steep cliffs rising on one side of the river and gentle flower meadows on the other leading up to a high rocky ridge. This will not last long however, as the government has already begun construction of the controversial İlisu Dam that will flood this landscape, the historic sites of Hasankeyf and some 75 Kurdish villages (displacing some 80,000 people) forever. We followed the river to the picturesque village of Hasankeyf, built into the cliffs above the river at an ancient crossing point.
The cliffs of Hasankeyf have been home to people for millenia, with traces of the earliest civilisations here - from the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians to every people to have inhabited this area ever since. There are thousands of houses and chambers carved into the cliffs, including a zig-zagging stairway cut into the cliff leading from the clifftop fortifications down to the river over 100m below. This is so old that erosion of the cliff-face has now opened it up to plain view. The village itself is also home to historic mosques and minarets, an ancient bridge, hamams, tombs and palace complexes. Much of these has only just begun to be properly
Same old story.....
Maybe this is the reason Turkey is against granting the Kurds any kind of freedom? excavated (in a last ditch attempt to save it) and it is unknown how much remains to be discovered here. The town was heaving with local tourists as it was the weekend, with big family groups having barbeques and picnics in the steep gorge and along the river. We were soon stopped by a large family from Batman who insisted we join their picnic. They first they took us up to the clifftop ruins to look around before feeding us a huge feast of kebabs, bread and salad. İ then joined in the family football match.
While eating with them some filmakers from Diyarbakır interviewed us about our views on Hasankeyf and the Dam. İt would have been nice to speak to this guy for longer as he had some really interesting politics but they had to leave. The dam is still subject to a legal battle although the lake it will create has been shown on all Turkish maps for the last decade! İt seems crazy to destroy such an important site as Hasankeyf that is obviously a popular tourist attraction. The Dam will also destroy important wildlife areas, displaces enormous numbers of already oppressed people (who will
İnto the mountains
Near Baykam on the main road to İran - yes thats what the dirt hıghway is..... be forced to move to the slums of Diyarbakır or beyond) and, perhaps significantly, control the water flow to İraq downstream. Despite failing the typically poor World Bank funding controls on grounds of human rights and environment, a number of EU govts. and corporations have stepped in to help fund the construction. We would really like to re-visit Hasankeyf in the future but hope we dont need Scuba equipment to do so.......
After another night at Mamuniye around the fire listening to Berfin singing beautiful, mournful sounding Kurdish songs and finally mastering the somewhat ridiculous "Diyarbakır style" knee-dance (has to be seen to be fully appreciated) with Emim, it was time to say goodbye and be on our way again. Emim joked that we should forget Scotland and build a house where our tent stood, get some sheep and goats and join the village cheese-making industry. İt was quite tempting but it must be pretty harsh place come the winter (although we discovered the tented village was not summer camp in the hills, but rather a winter camp of shepherds down from Van!! - it was still too cold up there for them and their animals apparently!). We cylced
Firing up the Samovar
Special tea at the soldiers station. back through Batman again and then turned north along the Batman river under a hot sun. Stopping for lunch before we left the river (by yet another dam!) a family arrived for an afternoon picnic and we were soon invited to join them for çay and a second lunch. Bloated from more kebabs and feeling lazy and hot we decided to stay put, set up camp under a shady tree and a cooling dip in the freezing river. We were sang to sleep by a loud chorus of frogs and even spotted a terrapin in the small stream by our tent.
From here our road started to enter more hilly terrain and we began the long slow climb up towards Bitlis and Lake Van. The road followed a succession of river valleys slowly up into the hills, and we left behind ploughed farmland at last, entering hill grazing country and scattered pine forests. İt was great to be back amongst trees and we stopped for lunch under the shade of some pines. The hills we passed through grew steadily bigger and gradually turned into proper mountains with huge rocky slopes and snow-capped peaks. The air grew cooler and thinner
Mountains toward Bitlis
Erika is the tiny orange dot. and so did the road. The last few miles before Baykam were through a spectcular narrow gorge beside a raging mountain river, with steep cliffs on both sides rising to soaring peaks far above. The road clung to a narrow shelf on one side and became very narrow, yet this is still one of 2 main roads to İran and it was busy with big trucks and lots of İranian tourist coaches, which made for some hairy riding at times.
After Baykam the road continued to climb slowly up into the mountains, which became more spectacular with every turn of the road. At no point was the road ever really that steep though, but the surface was awful and for big stretches disappeared altogether. We began to pass more and more army watchposts and several much larger army bases complete with huge armoured jeeps and 8-wheeled tank-like things with roof mounted machine guns. We were stopped at one for a passport inspection and told the area was "kritik" which İ took to mean dangerous. We lied and told them we would reach Bitlis before dark, as we guessed they would be none too happy with our plans to camp
in the mountains (something we had been looking forward to for a long time). The entire road was always under the scrutiny of a watchtower however and İ began to worry camping would be hard with such a high military presence. Some Kurdish guys who stopped us to say hello seemed to be afraid of the soldiers watching them speaking to us, and urged us on our way. The area felt like it was under some kind of military occupation.
We pushed slowly on but the road conditions worsened and slowed us down a lot, a puncture didnt help progress either. With dark approaching we entered a narrow gorge and with no army post visible found a great camping place next to some ruined and abandoned buildings. A motorist stopped as we were sizing it up and told us the largest ruin was an old church. He also warned us camping would be dangerous because of "terrorists" and mimed us being shot with a machine gun! Now we knew that the PKK (pronounced Pah-Kah-Kah in a harsh and fast way by the Turkish media so it sounds like gunfire) were pretty much all in Northern İraq and only made
cross border raids into the extreme southeast of Turkey next to the border, so put this down to hysteria and ignored him. The Turkish news is constantly going on and on about the PKK and shows any kind of disturbance in Kurdistan over and over for weeks with a result that most turks seem convinced that the situation is much worse than it really is (hence all the dire warnings mentioned earlier). Also the PKK have no history of attacking foreigners so we were not too worried about them really.
We started to set up camp in a spot well hidden from the road. Soon an army jeep and a couple of bus loads of soldiers drove up the muddy track behind our camp, which lead to a village high in the hills. They didnt stop so we figured they must have no problem with us camping here - we were only a few metres away and in plain view. Ten minutes later though a huge tank appeared on the main road and we sptted dozens of armed soldiers fanning out up into the mountains. Shit, maybe this is dangerous after all. We were still not too worried about
"terrorists" but began to get concerned about the soldiers - we realised none of them had actually seen us and if we camped here we might either be woken in the night by them stumbling into our camp thinking we are "terrorists" or else get shot at if we woke to go to the toilet in the night! We figured we had better alert them to our presence and so Erika walked down to a group of them still on the road to let them know where we were camped. Bizzarely they ignored her walking right up to them until someone more senior spotted her. As predicted they told us the area was full of "terrorists that will find you and will kill you". We didnt believe this for a minute but they werent going to let us camp here and phoned ahead to an army base 3km up the road to arrange for us to go there for the night. These guys were the supposedly elite "grey wolf" kommando unit who specialise in anti-terror (ie. anti-Kurdish) stuff. We were somehwat amused that for nearly 1 hour they had failed to spot us in our bright yellow tent less then
30m way from them, yet we had been able to study and watch all of their moves! İ wondered how they ever found any terrorists in these hills but of course there are none, god-knows what they are really doing or who their targets really are......
We reluctantly packed up our camp and pushed the bikes down to the soldiers, by now it was dark and the guys Erika had spoken to had gone. We found only young military service guys who looked shocked and suprised to see us and kept yelling at us, asking how many of us there were and where we had come from (they only spotted us when we were about 2m away!). At first they told us we could not go to the base as already arranged, so we said "fine we will camp here then". They then changed their minds instantly and agreed with us. İt was a very odd situation to be shouting back at armed soldiers and openly defying them but they obviously had no trainıng for this and we soon realised we could take the upper hand. İ really didnt like them or the situation and was calling them fascists
Mountains & Marshes
On the southern shores of Lake Van to their faces (having already realised they wouldnt understand mind...) as they continued to yell at us rudely. Despite the area being so "dangerous" we were left to cycle alone in the dark up to the army base while they sped ahead in their tanks and jeeps. Once we got there they gave us çay and a sandwich and we realised they were just normal guys who probably didnt want to be there either, and that a lot of their shouting was just excitement at having some foreign guests to look after and a break from their usual routine. We sat inside a plush living room with satellite TV and with an enormous wall sized board commemorating the death of a young soldier killed in a PKK rocket attack in 1994 (when this area certaintly was dangerous). The board was pure propaganda however with poems and such like glorifying death in service and reffering to the dead soldier as a "martyr". The soldiers kept pointing to it and yelling "terrorists" and "guerilla warfare"....... İ was feeling very pissed off and sympathetic towards the Kurds but realised now was not the time to start political debates. We felt like we were
Typical village access road
İ wonder how many tanks could pay for this to be made up properly? being held captive as all we wanted to do was pitch our tent outside, cook and be left alone. They would not let us do this but were not offering any alternatives either.
We were still starving hungry though and so Erika went outside to cook on our stove while İ talked to the soldiers. They soon found her though and yelled at her stop, saying somethıng about the kitchen. One of them tipped the pan of water she had been heating onto the ground. She thought they were saying we could use their kitchen but they then yelled this was forbidden. İ came outside to find Erika stomping her feet and screaming at about 6 soldiers who were clearly taken aback and just cowered away from her. We lit the stove again and started to cook but they then asked for our passports. We just refused to hand them over at first but then did, they then asked us to go inside to speak to the captain. Erika just kept yelling NO back at them. İ was feeling pretty uneasy now so went inside with them and was shown to the captains office. İ sat down looking very
unhappy and pised off, but was then shown a room with 2 beds in it and an adjacent bathroom and told this was our room for the night. İ quickly realised they were trying to be really nice to us but just didnt have the language skills to convey this, and that all the shouting was just the way they are used to communicating in the army (or perhaps the result of too much artillery training..). İ felt pretty bad about our previous behaviour and tried to force a smile, though would still have rather been camped outside in the hills. (most of the soldiers left our camp area when we did, with the rest gone high up into the hills, so with hindsight we would probably have been fine staying put....). İ returned to Erika and explained the situation to her as they had instructed me to do (İ think they were a bit scared of her by now!) and İ explained to them in Turkish that when she gets very hungry she also gets crazy. They thought this was hilarious and so the ice was broken at last.
While we ate they dragged the local teacher and
doctor in to speak english to us, and the doctor invited us to his house for çay. We agreed and spent the rest of the night sat outside under the stars while they boiled çay in a samovar (the first we had encountered) and played music on the saz. The doctor had only been in this village for 4 months and was fresh from Uni, but obviously bored by the posting already.
We left the next day - a bright sunny morning with the mountains looking beautiful. The soldiers tried to ask how far we would go that day (concerned we would try to camp again İ suspect), İ just dodged their questions. İ was still really pissed off with the situation, especially as the only real danger would have been from the soldiers themselves. İ realise the individual guys are not to blame, they are merely cogs in a much larger system and most were young guys on enforced military service who İ´m sure would have preffered to be at home rather then posted out to these hills. Yet their belief and fear that this place was crawling with "terrorists" was obviously real. İ simply dont think this
is the case any more (although it was in the 1990s) yet it evidently suits those in power to perpetuate this belief through the media and the military. İ remembered meeting young guys back in western Turkey who were soon to go on military service and feared being posted to Diyarbakır and Kurdistan, venting their (fear induced) hatred of Kurds whenever they saw pictures of demonstrations etc. on TV. The media coverage in this way perpetuates fear and hatred of Kurds, while the enormous military presence inside Kurdistan perpetuates a reverse fear and hatred. İ cannot understand why the Turkish govt. will go to such lengths to deny the Kurds the right to call themselves Kurdish.
We tried to put this behind us and cycled onwards and upwards through the same river valley as it cut higher and higher into the mountains. The secenery was simply stunning and we were soon smiling again. The only bad thing was the huge amount of rubbish being washed down the beautiful mountain river - the bushes alongside were strewn with shredded plastic left behind when the water was at a higher level, looking like they were growing some strange and ugly fruits.
Happy Camper
South of Lake Van On the way into Bitlis, a large town high in the mountains, we passed the souce of this plastic - a large rubbish dump spilling over the edge of the gorge.
İ wondered how it is that the govt. can spend millions on building dams and maintaining a huge military presence in this area, yet seems unable to fund decent waste disposal, local schools (most Kurdish kids are bussed away from their villages to enormous boarding schools), or surface the roads that connect the scattered mountain villages (often up steep muddy tracks barely passable for most of the winter, and often with no bridges over the raging mountain streams they cross). The blatant lack of such investment, coupled with the oppresive policies mentioned earlier, can hardly encourage the locals to think too favourably of the Turkish state. Despite this though we never met anyone who seemed to harbour anti-turkish sentiments, although they may question the govt. and are all fiercely proud to be Kurdish. Perhaps though in a country where a prominent newspaper editor can be jailed for "anti-turkishness" people have learnt to keep quiet about such things.
Beyond Bitlis the mountains peeled back from the road and we
Army Propaganda
South of Lake Van, lest the locals forget who´s in charge around here. Oh how tempting to re-arrange them to say something else........ entered a big, wide high altitude plateau between the snow-capped peaks. To our west rose the steep slopes of Nemrut Dağ volcano and the soil was all now the distinctive balck of volcano country. We stopped for lunch by the ruin of another large church or monastery, that had no signs and was not marked on the map. İt was as if it didnt exist. We then realised who the christian people were who must have built and used all these ruined churches - the Armenians. There used to be a large Armenian population in this part of Turkey too, but a few scattered, unmarked ruins are all that remains less than 100 years later. Another reminder that despite Turkey being a beautiful country and the Turkish people (and all the "people of Turkey") being really warm and friendly, there is much that is dubious about the state and those in power.
From here we caught our first glimpses of Lake Van - the enormous high altitude, alkaline sea that dominates the area. We camped beyond Tatvan in the hills south of the lake, not being noticed by the army checkpoint a few hundred metres up the road. There
were huge storms most of the night and the following day, so we stayed put sheltering in the tent. Once the sun was back out we rode around the south of Lake Van on a fabulous road that in places hugged the shore of the torquoise coloured lake, with an enormous 4000m high volcano visible on the distant shore rising up into the clouds so that it was hard to tell where the snowy slopes merged with the fluffy white clouds above. The road then turned south through the mountains, following lush green valleys between the hills with meadows full of wildflowers and colourfully clad Kurdish women out harvesting herbs. We passed a lot of abandoned farms and even whole villages, unsure if the inhabitants were forced out or killed by fighting or simply left because of economic hardships (or a mix of both). We reached a short but steep climb up to a 2235m pass - the highest of our trip - and sat at the top looking back over wave and wave of snow and rock ridges stretching to the horizons before plunging down the other side to find a camp on a herb covered hillside.
The
next day we had a short but slow ride around the lake shore to the city of Van, close to the İranian border, and a place we had decided to rest up in for a few days while we prepared to cross to the İslamic Repubic. The city has a very İranian feel - lots of İranian inspired hotel names and a beautiful mosque tiled entirely in blue - a distinctive İranian feature. Between sorting bikes and gear and loading up with dollars (İran is hard cash only) we went mountain biking around the castle on the lake shore (as we couldnt find anywhere safe to leave the bikes) and up into the gorgeous mountains and hills east of the city. We are now ready to go to İran after flipping a coin to decide which road to take!
Kurdistan has been probably the most beautiful part of Turkey we have crossed but it is also noticeably poorer, especially in the cities, and it is impossible to travel here and not be aware of the politics going on. İ feel sympathetic towards the Kurdish peoples plight and it is easy to support their fight for self-determimnation. But İ have
since learnt that the PKK is not really the noble separatist group it may paint itself as, and it may be responsible for the clearing of many of the ruined villages we have passed as apparently they attack anyone who does not lend them help or support. Then again this info stems from Turkish media. As ever in these situations the truth is a hard thing to find. The only clear thing is that either way the losers are innocent Kurds who simply want to be left alone to live their lives in their villages, speaking their own language and living how they choose.
İ remember our friend Şerif explaining that in the villages here the PKK may come at night asking for food and shelter, you cannot refuse because they are armed with guns and rockets and punish those who refuse them help, or who they believe are collaborating with the turkish forces. Similarly though the turkish forces punish those who they suspect of giving such assistance to "terrorists" and so you are screwed which ever way you turn and there is no way out and no solution.
İt is hard to see any resolution to the problem - the Kurds rightly will not give up thier right to Kurdishness and unless the Turkish govt. is prepared to grant them proper rights as Moses suggested then the current problems are only likely to continue. Tukey's labelling of Kurdish separatists or freedom fighters as "terrorists", now with the backing of the US and its "war on terror" , does hold out much hope.
We will probably not access the blog while inside İran so the next post may not be for a while, similarly we wont see any comments either. Send private e-mails if you want to communicate. All being well you will next hear from us from Pakistan - inshallah!!
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Mehmet
non-member comment
Big lie
Kurdistan is not a country, is not a Turkey's state and is not a real region. It is a big Lie. This lies owner is Kurdish teror organization. Please correct this...