Blogs from Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey, Middle East - page 6

We are heading to the city Birecik, where one of the dams of the GAP project is built on the river Euphrates. When we cross the river, we enter 'Mesopotamia'. Mesopotamia means 'between the rivers' It is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris. Building of the dams gains irrigation, hydraulic energy production and a lot of job positions. On the other side, many villages and argeoligic treasures are lost under the increased level of the river. Zeugma is one of them. We had a small stop at Birecik to see birds which are threatened species. They are called Bald Ibis. ( Kelaynak ) Bald Ibis is in the Red List of Threatened Species published by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources). These birds are almost being extinct as very few of ... read more

The way back to Gaziantep was not challenging as the way to Aleppo. Even crossing the border went smoothly. The taxi driver was a nice and honest. A real family man. He was living in Kilis and as work he was transporting people between Syria and Turkey. When we talked about the stay in Gaziantep he asked in which hotel we stayed. When I told him the name, he looked at me and said. "Sir, that is not really a hotel for you." I said that I already noticed that I saw some 'working ladies' over there. He said that there is a bar in the basement of the hotel, and asked if I wend down to the bar. I said no. "DON'T" was his answer. Then he told me that the bar in the basement ... read more

GAP Trip - (Guney-Dogu Anadolu Projesi) Southeastern Anatolia Project Day 1: After a small train trip to Amsterdam Airport, an international flight to Istanbul and a domestic flight to Gaziantep, we finally arrived to our nice hotel Buyuk Velic. After checking in and putting our luggage to the room we went outside to have a dinner and some sightseeing. The taxi driver from the hotel brought us to a nice restaurant were we had our dinner in open air. Nice when the weather here is still fine to eat in open air, while we had to start wearing our winter jackets at home. After our delicious Turkish meal we took a walk on the streets of Antep. It was about 23:00 and walking in this area didn't gave us a real safety feeling, so we decided ... read more

I think I spent more money crossing the Syrian border than I did the entire time I was in Syria. I wandered into the duty free out of curiosity and was shocked to see they sold iPods and accepted MasterCard. So basically I'll be eating rice and drinking tap water for the foreseeable future, but I won't have to listen to anymore God damn Arabic music on buses. Pretty long journey to Kahta and the border crossing was ridiculously slow. Everyone (our car included) was trying to smuggle in cheap Syrian cigarettes so the Turkish customs officers searched literally every car. Then after a few bus changes made it to Kahta, the main base for visiting Mount Nemrut. It's immediately obviously Turkey is a more developed country than Syria. With that comes much higher prices! The ... read more

We took the advice of Mr Kemal that traveling on small Dolmuş busses would be the cheaper and easiest way to get to Şanliurfa. Tages thought it would be smart to save money and head West to the Mediterranean where we could take it easy and relax for awhile since Turkey had been somewhat stressful for us, so far. However, I really wanted to travel to at least one more city in Eastern Turkey because I thought it was so beautiful and thought we could make it to Harran which is outside of Urfa and possibly stay in one of their famous bee hive hostels. So, we followed Mr Kemal's advice and headed toward the Dolmuş bus area. It was only supposed to take about 3-4 hours to get to Urfa from Malatya. However, Mr Kemal's ... read more