Dogubeyazit to Van, a journey of frontiers and meteors

Turk Hava Yollari Mehmet as he was known in Dogubeyazit, nudged his ford transit through the crowds, other parked transit vans and sheep to leave the town. We passed by the local tank battalion. In February 1993 I had stayed in a hotel opposite this camp. Every morning we were awakend, not by the muezzin, but by 250 battle tanks having a pre dawn “stand to”. This involved the crews getting inside their tanks and starting them up. On all subsequent occasions I have chosen a different hotel. As we walked past this camp all those years ago, Matt Golledge, my Australian companion had remarked.
“There’s more tanks in that yard than in entire Australian army”
If Matt were ever to read this, I could assure him that little has changed.

Back in 2009 we drove up the hill and found a tour bus of irate Belgians. The palace was not open. The gate guard had neglected to turn up. We walked up the hill to the mosque complex on the other side and took photographs of the newly restored palace. As I looked at the metal roof spars I remembered another visit to this place, in 1992, there was no lock on the door. Craig Heatherington, a lanky young chap from Cumbria (he pronounced it Coumbrreeaah) and I had just walked inside, and sat down. He lit up his pipe and chatted about life and his plans to hitch hike to Pakistan (which he did) and climb around the Karakoram range (Which he did). In some ways I wished I had gone with him, to walk in the Himalayas in Pakistan in 1992 would have been a highlight. The hikes are still possible, but Pakistan has changed.

By the time we had returned, the Belgians had disappeared and the Palace was still closed.
“Off to Noah’s ark then” he said chirpily, and drove us onto a dirt track that went over the hill. The track skirted the edge of the mountain and then brought us over another hill, and then deep down into a valley. The near empty transit handled the roads well as we crawled along the treacherous path. The weather was grey and occasional drizzle dropped onto the windscreen. We passed some flocks of sheep on the bald looking green hills.
“So are there wolves now”
“None here now, we only get wolves in winter”
“Where are they now?”
“The sheep have come out of the houses, they are now out on the grasslands and the wolves will have gone to follow them”
“Do the shepherds live in these villages?” asked Cisca
“Only in winter, now in summer, they set up tents like the ones you saw on the highway from Kars. They have just gone out in the last two weeks and will return with the first snows”

I looked harder at the nearest flock and could see a brown faced man with a huge thick coat across his shoulders, a flat cap on his head and a staff. He seemed to stand still, but two large Kangal dogs sat on the edge of the flock. We ground past him and climbed on up over the next ridge.
“Its just like Mongolia” Said Cisca “except the winters are shorter”
As she said this I realised that the rolling hills, jagged peaks, nomadic tents reminded me more of central asia. The architecture of Ishak Pasha saray and its surrounding buildings are classics from the silk road that exist into Iran and Pakistan. I would say that Central Asia starts at Sivas. The villages here looked poorer than Kars, flat topped stone houses, built to withstand the bitterest and harshest of winters. Here families and animals lived throughout the winter in relative warmth. The last village we passed straddled a small stream, we climbed up the path and arrived at Noah’s Ark. We hopped out and Mehmet pointed at a diamond shaped mound of earth in the hillside.
“See the ark” Said Mehmet.
“Where?” I asked
“The earth, see it even looks like a boat”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course not. Some foreign team came here and started digging, said this was it. The army stopped him from digging, and the government put this brown sign up. The American teams keep coming to Dogubeyazit and digging at Agri. They are convinced it has to be on the mountain. But tourists like it” He smiled. We dutifully took some photos until Mike had the idea of a group photo under the sign. Mehmet then wanted to get in on the act and we had a melee of photo taking.
“Don’t forget to get the towers in”
“What towers?”
“The army towers, see” he pointed at a small hut on stilts on the ridgeline above us, “….the army. Infantry protecting our border.”
“Why here?” asked Mike.
“That is the border with Iran. In fact, look over to our left” he pointed at the flatlands below us “That is the Gurbulak border gate, beyond that is Iran. To the left of the gate is a dark patch of earth, that is ours. All the rest is Iran. All those mountains are Iran”
“Wow” said mike, snapping away merrily. As an American serviceman, he would have enormous difficulty going to Iran.
“Now, my friends, the Meteor crater”
“What do you mean?”
“Somewhere close to Iran, you can take pictures!” He said as we wheel supun on the earth and slewed down a snake like path to the flatlands. We passed a funeral in a slightly larger village just before the Tarmac road.
“Someone is dead” Said Mehmet gravely. “Ah you, “ he shouted in Kurdish to a teenage boy “who is dead?”
“The old Muhtar Ali”
“Tell his family Mehmet said god rest his soul”
And with that, and a cloud of dust we drove off towards Iran.

“This road was built by the AK party (The current national government) “. Said Mehmet. “ Now we have the DTP (Kurdish Party) in power in the town council. Three terms they have served now, and they are totally useless. They do nothing that the Ak party used to do. No roads, nothing. At the next election I am voting for Ak again.”
“But you’re a kurd” I ejaculated without thinking.
Mehmet looked Grave. “One must vote for those who do the job, not on racial lines. We gave the DTP a chance, and they have proved themselves inadequate. I like Recep Tayip Erdogan, he’s a hard man, but he’s a good man Look at this Ergenekon thing. They are throwing Generals inside prison. Let me tell you something, I am a Kurd, but I think our army are super. Absolutely super. Who is the Turkish army? Its you and me. People like you and me. Did you not do your one month, like my brother from Switzerland, did I not do two years as a tanker. We all did it. Now the story is out, General Veli Turk had a deal going with the PKK. He wanted the war to contiunue, so during a ceasefire, he gave them information that lead to the deaths of 45 Turkish Soliders. People like you and me, dead because of a General”
“How do you know this?”
“Its on TV. They’ve got tapes of the conversations, and they’ve got some PKK man inside who’s squealing about how he knew all about it. Thank God for the prime minister, he’s having justice done, he’s digging up the civil dead who were murdered by the deep state.” He paused for breath and then looked serious again. “You remember the ten men killed in the Armoured personnel carrier in the south east?”
“Yes of course, and IED under the carrier”
“I went to a neighbours house and watched ROJ tv (the banned pro PKK channel that is broadcast from Denmark). I looked at this and the PKK said that they had nothing to do with it, and that the Turks did it themselves. That may not be true, but its interesting what they say. My wife was watching TV recently, she said to me <husband, why have no soldiers died since the Ergenekon scandal started?> I could not answer. I went to an Army officer I know, and asked him, he said he had no idea. He said where did I get the information from, I told him, my wife had noticed it. He became agitated and we dropped the subject. I tell you, Erdogan is the man”

At this I was incredulous. But it was a story that I was to hear again and again in the east of Turkey. In the west, I find that support for the Government is split, the rich vote left or Right but not religious right,(AK). The poor vote hard left or the AK. The middle class of Istanbul are not happy with this, they see the Ak as upstarts, who are not worthy of the mantle of the state. They often insinuate that the elections are rigged. But in the east of Turkey, almost everyone, to a man, that I met likes or says they vote for the AK party. It is now, that I realise how useful this man, and this administration is. The AK party under Recep Tayip Erdogan has united Turkey. Arabs, Turks and Kurds, all vote for the man, and he in turn, goes into debt to build roads, bridges, hospitals and railway lines. Added to this, he is taking the time to investigate the extra legal murders in the southeast. I now understand, why the armed forces do not oppose him. After the last general election, he has the support of the nation, and the army needs the nation. Ironically, by not saying anything, and by supporting the state, the armed forces are slowly garnering the support of the east too. To hear a Kurd say he will vote against the Kurdish party and vote for the government at the next election is unheard of in Turkey.

As Mehmet finished speaking he stopped at the gates of Turkey. “See the border” He smiled.
“We don’t want to go to Iran Today” I said.
“No of course not” and with that, he slipped the van down a slippery bank and onto another dirt path. We wizzed along parralell to a fence.
“See that post there” he said pointing to a turban on a post three hundred metres away “that’s Iran”
“Are we allowed to be here?” I asked nervously.
“Of course we are, is this not Turkey?” he said, speeding along. In front of us a stone tower appeared. It looked a little bit like a Martello tower on the south coast of Britain, only smaller and rougher. It was made of stone and had holes in it. Outside it stood three Turkish soldiers next to some piles of sandbags. They had rifles a large machine gun, and full ammunition jackets. But all of their rifles were unloaded and magazineless. This was the protocol for the Turkish Army when you stood right on the border line. Rifles were always unloaded to prevent misfires, misunderstandings and small wars. Jackets of ammunition were always kept full, in case of invasion, illegal immigration, smuggling and small wars. This stone tower was the fire tower that held the border a few metres away. The soldiers were accompanied by an enormous dog called Sabrina who lay on her back and had her belly scratched as often as she could manage. Mehmet speeded up and aimed for one of the soldiers, who again jumped out of the way and flagged him down in an agitated manner.
Another one, grinning from ear to ear at his games came up to the van with a large book. Sabrina rolled on her belly expecting a belly rub. He son came up and tickled her belly.
“Hello and where are we off to” Asked the Soldier.
“The meteor crater of course”
“Well your sign says “THY servis to Kars”, and this is not exactly Kars. Whats your name big brother?”
”Turk Hava Yollari Mehmet. And I’m just taking my friends around”
“That explains everything” sighed the soldier as he entered our registration number in his book.. “Passports please” And he took them all. “I’ll give them back when you return”
“You might want to sneak into Iran” Said Mehmet conspiratorially.
“How close are we going?”
“You’ll see”
And with that we left Sabrina and her three armed guardians and trundled down to a pair of fences. One was the border with Iran. An infantryman was pacing up and down by his tower 100 metres infront of us, right on the fence. The other was a three strand barbed wire fence around the biggest hole you can imagine. 35metres deep and twenty metres round in a perfect circle. Next to it was a yellow sign explaining that in 1892 a meteor had hit the earth. By a quirk of history, the crater had ended up 150 metres inside the new Turkish Republic in 1923. This was of course a security zone and the crater had to be secured by the Turkish Armed forces. In 1997 the Turkish Army decided that the crater might be of interest to International tourists, and so, the zone was opened for those who wished to view the crater.
“People come from around the world to see this. In summer you cannot move here for cars and people having picnics” Explained mehmet.
“Looks like the crater has been jailed.”Said Cisca looking at the three towers and the army border post just to our north,” I mean this has to be the most heavily protected crater in Turkey”
Mehmet thought this was very funny. “Ha ha, the jailed crater!” he sniggered.
Mike insisted on a photo of him with Iran in the background for his army buddies.
”See those hills over there, Ive been to all of them, and looked into Turkey” Said Mehmet.
“What were you doing, having a tour”
“Well err no, adtually we were smuggling TV sets.” He looked at Iran and back at Turkey and said” I have just thought of something.. why do the Iranians not protect their border? I mean our border has towers and guards, On the Armenian frontier, the Russians have their towers, but the Iranians have nothing. This is so strange”
“There are three possible answers” I replied thinking quickly” one, they want people to smuggle stuff into Turkey. Two, They use Intelligence to capture smugglers and not patrols, three we are scared of something and they are not, four they are just bone idle”
Mehmet spat with laughter at the fourth option.
“Well we know they don’t use intelligence because you smuggled here” I mused “so its one of the others- probably lazy”
“Very strange” Mehmet shook his head, unconvinced. Very strange indeed. Its not right. But we climbed back into the magic carpet one last time and headed back into Dogubeyazit.


Dogubeyazit is an almost sleazy sort of place, The Kurds there seem very Persian in their outlook on life. Lying cheating and stealing where necessary. Indeed half of our hotel staff were either very Persian kurds or refugees from Iran. There were some Gems, and this was why Mehmet was such a good find. He was as honest as the day is long, a good driver and one of life’s thinkers. He dropped us off at the Hotel Tahran and we exchanged addresses and had dinner.

I slept well on my pristine clean sheet, in my small room. The cool clean mountain air made me sleep immediately and I was not woken by the sound of MAN diesel engines. After a hasty breakfast we boarded the half coach to Van. The bus was underpowered compared to Mehmet’s ford, but it did not stop. We drove in horrid low clowd over mountain passes around the edge of lake Van into the city centre. We walked for a few hundred metres until we arrived at the Hotel Bayram.
“Hello, you’ve been here before, welcome brother, for you 10 lira off” said the receptionist, and we were in.

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