THE EASTERN EXPRESS. A SHORT JOURNEY THROUGH TURKEY’S EAST.

My friend Mike Eggers had been Living in Turkey for five years. Mike had been living in Istanbul for 5 years and was moving on to Korea. He was sad to leave, and I foolishly suggested a "hello and goodbye" tour of the interesting places he might not have seen. Much to my surprise he had readily agreed, and so we traipsed up from Tanzania, to explore some of the less well known, and arguably far more interesting parts of this great Nation. Turkey.

My Swiss airbus banged down onto the runway and turned off to the new terminal. I wandered through immigration, the Turks had already unloaded my bag, and then I took some cash out of the ATM and stood on the pavement. so I found myself standing on the chill tarmac outside Istanbul Airport. My wife Francisca would join us tomorrow, but here I was alone. I telephoned mike to make sure that he was in, and hopped in a taxi.

Two days later, we all left Mike’s apartment in Sisli at 0625hrs on the first of May. We managed to find a taxi and he took us to the Karakoy ferry stop. On the way, we passed hundreds of Riot policemen gearing up and standing in lines. They were waiting for the May Day Demonstrations that had been banned in Taksim Square. The Turkish left had vowed to demonstrate (read riot) and the Turkish Government had banned them from doing so in this particular area.

Our cabbie was cast in the Istanbul mould. “No ferries will land today” he said. “It would be more logical to take a taxi.”
“Lets just see” I said. And the cab drove on. At the ferry pier there was no boat alongside.
“See nothing” and he accelerated away.
“Let me just ask” I countered and opened the door. Reluctantly the cabbie halted.
“Is there a ferry today?” I asked the ticket vendour.
“Yes at 0700”
I strode back to the cab and took my rucksack from the boot. The driver looked sheepish, he knew that I knew that he had been lying. He was an Istanbul taxi driver, there was nothing more to be said.

We were all bit tired when we boarded the Istanbul Maritime lines ferry to Asia. The forty year old vessel’s diesel turbines shook the decking, the brass propellers churned the water and we surged away from Europe. Avoiding the occasional tankers, bulk carrier and numerous fishing skiffs we ploughed between two continents. The weak morning sun shone on Domabahce palace and the high rises of Taksim and Sisli. But all too soon, we were docking at Hadarpasa railway station’s ferry terminal. The station looked like a German Schloss parked on the side of the Bosphorus. This is because the Germans built it, along with Turkey’s initial railways in the late 1800’s. My experience with long distance Turkish trains has been mixed, sometimes trains would have a restaurant car and sometimes not. Just in case our information was wrong, so we had a reasonable breakfast at the station restaurant. This restaurant is one of my favourites in Turkey. It has blue tiled walls and carefully painted simple ceilings. It is one of those places that has existed for generations, and is well known to those who use it, but a secret gem kept only to the commuters. The last glass of Raki before the train home, the first bread of the day for in the incoming businessman. That sort of a place.


The Dogu Ekspresi is, I firmly believe, Turkey’s longest domestic train journey. It leaves Haydarpasa station at eight thirty in the morning and trundles down to Eskisehir, up to Ankara, down to Kayseri, up to Sivas and then finally purely east to Erzincan, Erzurum and halts at Kars, 30 miles from the old Soviet border. In previous times, the express would continue to Yerevan in Armenia for a direct connection to Moscow. But the train was never a deluxe orient express affair. I first took the Dogu in 1991, it was a grimy train with a few carriages of old but comfortable Pullman seats, filthy couchette compartments and, if you were lucky a snack bar. A lot has changed since those days. The train that stood before us was nothing like this. It then it was a fully air-conditioned seven carriage express. The Pullman seats were cloth covered, the couchettes spotless and an excellent restaurant car served hot meals all the way to Kars. Finally at the end of the train was an entire sleeper car, possibly the most luxurious outside of Moscow. We climbed aboard, stowed our stuff above our berths and wandered off to the restaurant car with its tea and large windows.

At exactly 0830 hrs, The Dogu clanged and banged and, with a screech, pulled out of Hadarpasa. The electric engine pulled the short train along easily along the coast for two hours. We sat at our table drinking Turkish cay and watching the small ports that border the Sea of Marmara slide past the window. This was, technically speaking asia, but it was no where near asia. This was the commercial arm of Istanbul. After Izmit, the train climbed into the rocky hills. Here we entered Anatolia proper. The people changed, their attitudes, dress and their demeanour became softer and more colourful. The train halted at small stations where headscarfed women would join the train or simply watch it go by.

After five hours, we slid to a halt at the Tatar speaking city of Eskisehir. This was the final straw for me, I had not slept properly in three nights, and so I took to my sprung mattress and snoozed until some one banged on my door.
“Sir, our carriage has blown a fuse. The fuse cannot not be repaired by the engineers here and so and we have to change carriage.” Said the new conductor.
“where are we?” I asked.
“Ankara” He replied and moved down the carriage banging on doors. This operation involved the entire sleeper car getting out of bed, getting dressed, get and moving to the platform. We sat around for about half an hour as our carriage was disengaged, and a replacement found. The Turkish railways team were on the ball, and while the express disappeared off without our carriage for a track manoeuvre a small shunting engine arrived with a fully made up sleeper and dropped it in front of us. The express came back on the next door platform and with a bang and his, the train was whole again. The entire process, from arrival in Ankara to departure had taken an hour.

After Ankara the scenery changed into the flat of the Anatolian plateau. We watched the sun go down while we had a dinner of salad, kofte, chicken kebabs and cacik. We slept early and I slept well. The train bed was a little narrow, but very comfortable. I bounced very gently on the mattress as we made our way into the night.


“This train is as comfortable as anything in Europe” said mike.
“More comfortable I would say” I replied. “Its just slower.
It was 0800 and we had re assembled in the restaurant car. Central Anatolia gave way to eastern Anatolia. The rolling hills became more jagged and the train line started to follow the course of the river Euphrates. The hills became steep cliffs and the panned out into a wide valley that led to the city of Erzincan. The station had a beautiful view of the snow covered mountains around the city.

We halted only long enough to re-fuel the engine and then carried on east. The Erzincan valley was wide, but the mountains were perpetually snow covered and had a magical look to them. We arrived and departed Erzurum in twighlight and then climbed up to one the highest points of the train journey, 2200metres. The lights failed in the restaurant car and so we ate in darkness and went to sleep. I woke up with a jolt when the train bounced to a halt. It was midnight and we had arrived in Kars. I silently cursed the sleeping car attendant for not waking us. By the time we got our bags together , the train had started to manoeuvre into the sidings. The sleeping car attendant and the manoeuvre man would not change the system and so we were stuck in the train for a further 25mins on top of our fourty hours. We were not impressed. When we did manage to get off, I asked a polite tramp in the heated waiting room where I could find a taxi. He told me to ask the station master. Surprisingly he and his security guard were wide awake at 0100 and directed us to walk into town and find the police at such and such a crossroads and ask them. This sounded ridiculous, but we shouldered our backpacks and walked into town. Three hundred metres later on we came to a cross roads with a busy grocery store, and a police minibus parked outside. I asked in the store for directions, and a policeman immediately offered to call us a taxi, the taxi arrived in 5 minutes. A few minutes after that we were in our pleasant but slightly overprices SIMER hotel.

In the ten years since I visited Kars, the entire region had been transformed. We hired a taxi who took us to the ruined city of Ani and a small castle near Georgia. While travelling in Kars Province we noticed that the people did not seem badly off. The rich earth was being tilled by new looking tractors. Sheep and goats wandered in large flocks, as flat cap wearing shepherds and kangal dogs looked on. . The houses of the villages were made of stone, but all had satellite dishes. I asked Semsettin, our cabbie whether these people were poor.
“Never, they are nice and rich. Look at the soil, and their crops, they are doing well”
“But their houses look basic”
“Look my friend, “ he started “the houses need to be simple to keep the snow out, but now these people are in sunshine and doing very nicely”

When I looked more carefully, the stone work had a marked similarity to the older houses I had seen in the more mountainous regions of Switzerland. But these people were not Swiss, they did not walk to their sheep, they walked with them for days and set up nomadic camps. We could see real, moving camps of yurts that could withstand the summer rain storms and still provide comfort. The entire scene reminded me of a combination of Mongolia, but with Massey Fergusson tractors. Central asia most definitely started somewhere near Sivas, and yet access was possible in a Renault taxi.

The City of Ani was interesting enough with its ruined churches, but more interesting was the fact that the second half of the city had been destroyed by Stalin. He had been anxious to remove any vestige of Armenian culture from the Soviet ideal. If anyone had any illusions about Russia’s influence on the Caucasus, one only had to look through a pair of binoculars at the Armenian frontier. (luckily I had thoughtfully brought my bird watching glasses with me ). The guard towers were manned and the border posts, while filthy and disorganised, were active. At the main base two flags flew. One Russian one Armenian, but at every other post only the Russian flag flew. The Turks were still facing the same Russian Army that they faced for the past centuries.

There is however a change in the air. The Russians showed their primacy in the Caucasus by invading Georgia. Ironically Armenia, has been rather worried by the Neo Soviet invasion of Georgia and is leaning towards Washington for support. President Obama chose this moment to visit Turkey to show support, and try to repair a relationship damaged by the rhetoric of his predecessor. The Turks had found themselves rather caught in the middle of the superpowers Caucasian clash. They have had to look at who their real allies are in the region. I suspect the Government, and most of the populous have come to the realisation that the Turks had no friends in the region, but, they could do business with the Armenians. The Armenians are tired of being blockaded by a moribund Georgia, pro Moscow Azerbaijan and sanctioned Iran. And so as I looked at the Russian Soldier in the old Soviet tower facing Turkey, I thought that perhaps he mighty go home and this closed border might well open.

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