The Civilization and Ruins of Turkey
For every excursion to the archaeological sites, I still carry Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey by Ekrem Akurgal. First published in 1969, the book was the essential guide for an enthusiast, especially when ‘classical archaeology’ was concerned. By the time it was compiled from many different excavations around Anatolia, Akurgal was like the big boss of archaeology in Turkey, having taught several generations and directed PhD thesis on especially the Greek and Hellenistic sites. He had access to research and material produced by his former students on site and had good relations with the American, German, French, Austrian and British teams formally conducting various excavations in Turkey. By that time, pre-historic research was relatively new, James Melaart had just carried out initial digs at Çatalhöyük with impressive results, and Göbekli Tepe was probably barely known to exist. With all its material, including site plans, drawings, reconstructions and photographs all contributed by the responsible parties, Akurgal’s book was one of its kind. In the following fifty years, it has been superseded by the new guide books and publications specific to each site, produced by the chief archaeologist and (mostly ‘his’) team working in situ for many ‘seasons,’ one for each summer. Still today on the info boards on the sites, one can find exactly the same drawings that Akurgal acquired for his book. Authoritative and informative as it is, the book lacks the personal observations and impressions on the physical and human environment that surrounded these ‘ruins.’
Meanwhile, in between late 1940s and early 1970s, George E. Bean had traveled extensively in west and south of Anatolia. A lecturer on classics at İstanbul University all throughout this time, his four books on classical sites were published before and around the same time with Akurgal’s. Intended as guidebooks, Aegean Turkey, Turkey’s Southern Shore, Turkey Beyond the Meander and Lycian Turkey were based on his own observations, often including directions to sites and singular edifices, distances, local transportation and some other hurdles in the remote parts of the country before the advent of tourism. Bean was essentially a scholar and a traveler, sometimes accompanied by colleagues and later his wife, making friends with locals along the way who acted as hosts, informants and guides to this tall man traveling with a Land Rover, but often on foot and sometimes mounted on donkeys and mules. Among other informants were Strabo, Herodotus and Pliny in order to imagine these cities of the antiquity in their prime more than 2000 years ago. For the relatively young (and poor) Turkish Republic, his extraordinary effort paved the way for an inventory of the riches of the country and his books guided generations of students of archaeology.
Some years earlier, roughly between 1952 and 1957 Freya Stark made similar journeys on the western and southern shores of Anatolia, including Cilicia and Pamphilia, the coast between Antioch and Antalya. A prolific writer and traveler, her account on these landscapes of antiquity is more than a descriptive archaeological treatise. As a travel writer, she was primarily interested in both ancient history and the contemporary inhabitants, rural folk and nomads she met on the way, as well as the flora. Stark’s books on Turkey (Ionia: A Quest, The Lycian Shore and Alexander’s Path from Caria to Cilicia) as the ones she wrote on Southern Arabian peninsula, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and other places of the Middle East and Asia are full of insight and compassion she felt towards the people, customs, lores and other aspects of human condition. Guiding her were also the ancient writers of geography and history, as well as the accounts of travelers, archaeologists, amateur archaeologists and other European adventurers on the Ottoman lands from 19th century, some of whom were responsible for the artifacts that found their way to European museums by the crate-loads. In a reverse journey from Antioch to Xanthus (and to Ionia before that) along the shore, Stark followed the path of Alexander’s campaign from 4th ct BC, closely examining his chronicler Arrian and other writers. In this sense, it is as though she wanted to bring back the beginnings of the ascension of the western world in close focus, looking towards the East, as Alexander did. By trying to understand the young conquerer’s motives, Freya Stark’s achievement was to bridge the gap between ancient history and the human faces that she had encountered on the way. And in this quest, the catalyst was the landscape that myth and Homer were intertwined, and the cities, towns, battlefields and legends were embedded in. She walked up to the hilltops that Alexander stood, who gazed down at the rivers, forests, plains and the shores to make his next move. History of colonialism is rich in literature that is warped to fit in a complex (and foreign) humanity and an impossible past, as Edward Said wrote down in many books. But then, in the middle of 20th century and after two wars and the holocaust, we assume that the colonial (and orientalist) discourse had subsided in literature and humanities, if not in politics of the empire. As mentioned, Stark, as a highly informed traveler (and not a tourist) was a keen observer of the natural and human geography, in order to understand history and the material remains from antiquity (and sometimes vice versa…) Only vaguely can we discern bits of commanding tone in her writings when faced with unfamiliar customs.
The natural landscape induce sensations (sometimes hallucinations) when coupled with myth and history (and sometimes with miracles, as in the holy lands.) The Romantic (European) garden with artificial ruins, the paintings and (neo-classical) architecture emulated these sensations, mostly in the lush and wet forests of Northern Europe, minus the olive tree and the thorny bush. It appears that only when the specific location is accompanied with people that till the land, cultivate trees and herd the animals, not in ‘representation’ but in reality, as Stark observed, that the sense of the distant past solidifies on the faces (or so she thought.) She was amazed how little had changed after 100 years (since, for example, Charles Fellows wrote on Lycia in 1850) in the sparsely populated countryside (before tourism) of the Republic of Turkey. Enlightened as she is, she must have known by the time she traveled that Anatolia was devoid of its Greek population mostly by ‘exchange’ and of its Armenian population by genocide.
Freya Stark was especially impressed by the manners, hospitality and cleanliness of women and their houses on the countryside, complained here and there as every traveler would of the conditions of hotels and transport, and would write on the total ignorance of the local population facing the dismal conditions of the ancient ruins, in amazement. Among the people she met, nomads (Yörük) excited her the most. Dividing their time in between lowlands, the Taurus mountains and the high plateau according to seasons, landless and with minimum posessions to move light with their animals, and in tune with nature, the nomads have inspired Stark, the lifelong traveler. We can say that she also sensed she found the missing link in between the distant past and the natural landscape in observing Yörüks, who are the long time inhabitants of the lands and the mountains, refusing to be tamed by authority or religion, untouched by the scourge of nationalism. They are the shamans and sages of Anatolia, were there when crusaders pillaged the territory and sailed the seas. They are the relatives of the ‘mountain people’ of the greater Mediterranean that Fernand Braudel wrote about.
That was then. By the time Freya Stark traveled, the population in Turkey was around 20-25 million, only 20 percent of whom lived in cities and towns. As of 2020, with 83 million people, the demographic distribution has reversed to 20 percent for the rural country. In the meantime with a rough estimate, half the population of Turkey now lives the on the western coast, from Istanbul to Antalya, in 40-50 kilometer proximity to the sea and within the itinerary of Stark’s travels. That is, on possibly 10 to 15 percent of the land area of the whole country where also the majority of the opposition to the ruling A.K.P. live.
The sons and daughters (and grandsons and granddaughters) of the peasants that George Bean and Freya Stark have met on the way now enjoy a different kind of existence. Having sold most of the land in their possession (usually relatively small lots that they farmed for subsistence) they have experienced a kind of prosperity, live in modern houses with modern amenities. The lots that they have sold, especially closer to the sea, have for a long time been developed into vacation homes (by the thousands) for middle class Turks, luxury houses (for a few), resorts, hotels and luxury hotels in an unprecedented boom for tourism within a few decades. Some younger locals (i.e. the third generation) have higher education and moved away, some of them started businesses of their own and stayed, and some are already idle, if the money from the sale of land had trickled down (or if there is land left to sell). Even today in the western and southern coast, the local men are usually embedded in a network of of property deals, with inside information in a close-knit community where almost everybody else is a relative, close or distant. All involved parties want a cut from a sale that one initiated, a kind of pastime-cum-business usually carried out in the coffee house in the village square: farmland for sale is still the talk and gossip of the villages all over. Due to laws of inheritance in Turkey the women are also empowered, where each descendant gets an equal share of the land. And highly complex situations on the land registers (sometimes with more than ten shareholders on a single plot) are settled with a go between, of course a local entrepreneur with his dues paid. After the coastline is saturated, today the activity moves inland and to highlands, where ‘back to nature’ fantasies of city dwellers are focused.
As to the ‘ruins’ (harabe), this generic term is already discarded from the educated circles, left to be used by others, and for the lay person it designates any settlement that is not in good shape, and which belongs to ‘old’ times (which is usually not clearly defined). Today, most archaeological sites in Turkey are well tended, with fences, parking lots, entrance fees, information billboards in several languages, scale models on site and, some with guides and audio guides and accompanied by a museum and lodgings for the excavation team. In-situ finds and pieces of civic architecture, (columns, friezes etc.) are being put together again, bottom up, and most of the sites are cleared of the vegetation and overgrowth that was a challenge for Bean and Stark. In that sense they are sanitized and devoid of the pastoral sensation that the travelers have experienced almost 70 years ago, and possibly look slightly closer to their original selves when in use before the birth of Christ.
If the engine of ‘civilization’ in Turkey for the past two decades is the construction works, then we must expect an original bang when modern ruins meet nature in this mythological land. The mines, stone quarries, hydroelectric dams, wind generators, highways, viaducts, bridges, tunnels, gas stations, other roadside attractions, aquaparks, five star hotels, holiday villages and down to the sheer number of vacation homes and half finished and abandoned building construction have been interlaced with clouds, vistas, horizon lines, seashores, rivers, olive groves, cedar trees, gorges, valleys, hills and the maquis. For now, the conservatives do not conserve and the social democrats are not democratic. The past (any past, be it Turkish, Muslim, Greek, Roman or Ottoman, distant and near) have no correspondence whatsoever with the physical realm that surrounds people in present time, in the collective consciousness. If one is old enough, he/she may still have reminiscences, soon to melt into air. One expects a future cataclysm to bring the current scene into clear focus to call it the ancient civilizations and ruins of Turkey. I will not be around…
October 2020
