Current Events

Unfortunately, my conversations with Turkish locals so far largely consist of me smilingly but firmly declining their attempts to lure me into their restaurants or t-shirt shops.  “Please, come, come, I want to make service for you,” says the sweet owner of the over-priced restaurant EVERY day we pass him on our way to, and from, the beach.  So, to date, I have no insight to offer on what the locals think or talk about.  Until I can make headway on that front (soon, hopefully), I’ll get my news from nytimes and other online sources.  According to those sources, it’s not really very friendly out there at the moment. 

The US-led air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began today.  So far Turkey’s President Erdogan has refused to join or provide any support for the campaign.  I had read that the hostage situation one reason Ankara was refusing to lend military support.  In June, Islamic State militants raided the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Iraq and seized 49 Turkish people, including the Consul General, his family, children along with other diplomats.  It’s amazing to me that Turkey had a consulate in Mosul that recently.  Things have gone south fast in Iraq.

On Saturday, though, the Islamic State released all 49 Turkish hostages following months of Turkish diplomatic efforts.  President Erdogan said there was no ransom paid by Turkey for their release.  Why did the Islamic State give up their ultimate trump card that could keep Turkey in line??  One possibility is that that the Islamic State militants could no longer protect the hostages with the current US attacks, and feared severe retaliation from Turkey if any were to die.  Another possibility is that Turkey did make promises that it wouldn’t support the coalition’s military action in exchange for the hostage release.

Turkey has in the past (no longer) allowed Islamic State militants to convene in Turkish towns near the Syrian border in the effort to destabilize the Assad government (whereas the US tried to support the more moderate rebel groups).  I remember an NPR piece about a year ago, just after we learned we were coming to Turkey, where a reporter visited a border town and found that “jihadi tea” had been added to some of the menus of her favorite tea-houses there.   

Meanwhile, the refugees of the conflict continue to flow into those border towns every day.  I just read that 130,000 Syrian Kurds crossed the Syrian border into Turkey over the past 4 days!  They join the 1.4 million refugees that have already sought safety in Turkey since 2011.  Erdogan is in New York this week trying to win international support at the UN General Assembly meeting to establish a “buffer zone” inside the Syrian border (rather than in Turkey) to house the refugees fleeing the ISIS conflict.  If not, then the flow of refugees will continue into Turkey, which is not such a good thing for stability in its already shaky eastern region.

Of course, in my day-to-day, I never sense that there is anything is amiss out on the streets of Alanya.  The tourists party all day and night, and the local shop-owners clearly work hard to keep it that way.    

No pictures of my own today, for obvious reasons.  But here’s a map provided by the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) which, by the way, was a stop for Georgetown students while we were in Ankara.  As my dear family takes a close look at this map, I'd like you to notice all those very high and very impassable mountains that separate Antalya (basically where we are) from the dangers over there on the Syrian border.  I had really hoped to make it to Lake Van at some point, but looks like that is not in the cards for us this trip.

Sea Life

We have a good six more weeks of comfortable swimming in the Mediterranean.  The sea temperatures will slowly begin to drop from a toasty 81° in September to 75° in October, and on down to 70° in November.  With that in mind, we make a point to gear up, slather on the sunscreen and fall into the waves most every morning and again in the late afternoon.  Hiking around the beautiful mountains and in-depth exploration of the Seljuk, Roman and Ottoman architecture will have their moment when beach season winds down.

The sea here brings such simple and thoroughly satisfying pleasure.  After we settle our kanga on the beach, and I give the go-ahead, the boys invariably race in at top speed, falling or diving face first as they’re caught by a wave.  They then launch into their invented language to discuss their various wave jumping and body surfing strategies.  I, like the sensible adult that I am, linger for a while at the edge and admire the horizon while waters lap or foam bubbles around my ankles.  Twice we have seen brilliant day-glo rainbows arcing over the mountainous shoreline.   I’ve only brought my camera to the beach once, so I try to imprint images in my mind.  Hopefully they’ll stick around in there.

I've been struck by the fact that there are few to no other youngish children.  The beaches of Alanya are filled with either full-figured retirees or young couples with babies.  At first I speculated that there must be some other Turkish beach town that is the playground for northern European families with tweens.  This shows how off the grid I am.  Mid-September...school has definitely begun round the world.

Nevertheless, Booker and Seamus have managed the lack of kids their age pretty well.  They've recently adopted the very adorable children of our fellow-faculty neighbors:  Ruby, age 2 and Brewer, age 5.  I am grateful to see them ramp down their risk-taking behavior a little as a result of playing with these two younger ones.  Yesterday Booker was the Patient to Dr. Ruby, who gave him a clean bill of health after an examination with her plastic stethoscope.  And this morning, tough-guy Seamus was caught holding Brewer’s hand while walking down to the bus stop.    

Bugs and butterfly-babies

The various bugs that swept through the Georgetown student group during the 9-day Orientation have taken our family down domino-style since our arrival in Alanya.  Bryan, Booker, me.  Seamus is the last man standing, for now.  The good news is that Booker and I got the mellower version of Bryan’s flu-like virus.  We are able to go about our day, slowly and with brains full of fuzz.

I admit that there are a couple unpacked bags lying in corners and I have not done a good job cleaning the grime from our floors, but I can say that a nice daily routine is starting to take shape.  Here’s what a good week day might look like: 

I wake up before Bryan and take a run along the beach promenade before the scorching sun streams out from behind the 6-story pastel apartment buildings and hotels that line the seafront.  Back for breakfast at the apartment with the family, which so far had included a 35-cent (!) oven-fresh baguette from the little bodega downstairs and bit of nutella. 

At 8:30am, Bryan, Betsi and Alan catch their ride to teach for the day up at Georgetown’s Ottoman-era villa up on the rocky promontory (which I can’t wait to explore and photograph).  Meanwhile, the boys and I walk a block to the beach with only a kanga, flip-flops and water bottle.  They body surf while I watch them from farther out in the ocean, bobbing gently in the waves with the other bobbing heads who can be heard speaking German, Turkish, Russian and various Scandinavian languages.  The Mediterranean, by the way, is apparently saltier than your typical sea, and your body is really buoyant.  Laying on my back (when Bry is there to watch the kids) with eyes closed is the closest I’ll ever come to zero gravity. 

We arrive back to the apartment by 10am, where I spend 3-4 hours juggling the 3^rd and 6^th grade studies for the boys, hoping I can keep up with the hard-driving curriculum of North Chevy Chase.  While they read, I manage to squeeze in some work for HIP every day.  Wednesday and Friday will be my big work days. (Bry often has those days off).  Back to the beach at 4:30pm for an hour more of body surfing and wave bobbing.  We all have enormous appetites with all this beach-going, so I spend a lot of time firing up our propane cook-top.  The best home-cooking discovery so far is Turkish red lentil soup, which is easy, healthy and the boys actually love it.  Another great discovery is that children are willing to wash dishes when in a Turkish apartment with no dishwasher.  No doubt this is context-specific behavior, but I can’t help but entertain fantasies about a new kitchen routine back home. 

I’ll close out this post now, and since I haven't take the camera out on the streets of Alanya yet, I leave you with this picture of the 3-D wall art that hangs on our bedroom wall here in our Alanya apartment:

And so it begins...

We made it.  Yesterday afternoon, we finally arrived to our new hometown:  Alanya.  Before dropping altitude, our plane circled out over Mediterranean and then flew north toward land for the downward approach to the tiny airport of Gazipasa.  Bryan and I shared the little oval window to see arid rolling hills dropping suddenly down into the turquoise waters of the sea.  Those reddish cliffs pushing into the ocean were far more breathtaking to me than the sandy stretch of beach we passed over just before landing.  The Gaziposa airport is just a couple years old, and is basically a landing strip next to a small building containing exactly one baggage carousel, five smart carts, and two bathrooms.  All our needs were met. 

The quick transfer of our group’s 50-plus suitcases onto the chartered bus was also seamless, thanks to our in-country coordinator Nese.  And with luck, the seams on our own motley collection of suitcases, long patched over with duct-tape, held tight as we hauled them up two flights to our apartment.

Our apartment is essentially a short-term beach rental for vacationers, suped-up with a gas cook top, washing machine, and our own freshly connected high-speed wifi modem.  It’s quite spare and we hope the kids don’t break what little furniture we have.  But two very short blocks away is the warmest sea I’ve ever waded into.  The boys have endless waves to jump.  We have other faculty and their families living in our building, with whom we’ll share this adventure.  And on a steamy Saturday night we can hear muffled conversations from the pedestrian boulevard below drift in through our balcony doors. 

Last night a not so muffled rendition of the chicken dance song drifted in.  From the balcony, I could just make out a two blond children, along with a few waitstaff, flapping their chicken wing arms and wiggling their tail feathers down to the ground while their parents filmed from the table. 

Da dadadada da da, da dadadada da da, da dadadada da da, clap clap, clap, clap.     

A scoop of chocolate, please

After the long Hagia Sophia tour on our first day in Istanbul, when Seamus declared he’s never, ever, going on another tour in his life, it seemed like a good time to treat the boys to some ice cream from the vendor in the Hippodrome.  As the boys selected their flavors, the vendor was intermittently whacking his three-foot long scooper around the edges of the ice cream cart.  We’ve since seen some vendors with cow-bells hanging overhead that get whacked as well.

Traditional Turkish ice cream is particularly gummy, and the vendors slap a scoop onto the cone and extend the end of the scooper with the entire very sticky ice cream come hanging off it out to the customer.  Customer grabs for the cone, and vendor yanks the scooper (and attached ball of ice cream) back leaving customer with an empty cone.  These antics go on and on.  Vendor sneakily puts the ice cream ball into a double cone, and when customer grabs tight to the outer cone, the inner cone with ice cream ball is yanked back.  Vendor adds a napkin to the cone and customer is left clinging to a napkin.  It’s really great fun, and we all get a big laugh every time.

The best moment came last night though, when we were walking around Ankara with an entertaining recent Georgetown Phd grad, Önür, who is now teaching Russian history here in Ankara.  After two days of bumbling around the city with not more than 10 Turkish words to my name, it was a relief to be accompanied by Önür who could talk, joke and finesse his way with all the locals along our route.  He said a few words to and ice cream vendor we passed and Booker and Seamus received another hilarious show.  Finally, they were each presented with a four-scoop ice cream cone.  Seamus was laughing but also not very happy about the chocolate scoop that was layered into the mix.  He is NOT a fan of chocolate ice cream, see.  Önür consulted with the vendor, who said it’s too late, impossible to remove.  As we were huddled trying to console poor Seamus, I looked back and saw the vendor with a special surprise for Seamus hanging from his scoop.   

Fener

There were some streetcar trips we took in Istanbul where I’m certain that all 14 million residents were crammed together into our car.  It is a crowded city.  At one point, we were emerged from the covered Spice Bazaar in the historic Eminonu quarter of Istanbul to find this scene. 

People were calmly making their way through that crush.  Bryan, Booker, Seamus and I waited for a few minutes and made the brilliant decision to look for a different exit.  After flowing through rivers of people everywhere we went in the first six days of our Istanbul stay, it was a welcome change to arrive at the quiet neighborhood of Fener. 

Fener is situated inside the Byzantine city walls, and became a thriving hub for Istanbul’s Greek population after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453.  The Greek Patriarchate, which is the Greek Orthodox Church’s equivalent of the Vatican was located in the neighborhood. 

Georgetown group in front of The Patriarchal Church of Saint George

For four hundred years, the Greek Christian community flourished in Fener maintaining a complicated but working relationship with the ruling Muslim Ottomans.  Wealthy Greek merchants built grand houses during the 17^th century.  The Greco Turkish war marked the end of that era, and during the “population exchange” of 1923, huge numbers of Greeks were moved out of Turkey into Greece.  According to Claire, who led our Georgetown group through the neighborhood, fewer than 100 Greek holdouts remain. 

Church  of Saint Mary of the Mongols

It’s now a relatively poor area attracting immigrants from rural areas of Turkey.  Aside from the well-preserved Greek Orthodox churches that still attract many devout visitors from Greece, we mostly saw small bric-a-brac shops, laundry lines strung across the alleys, and men with bread and fruit carts wandering quiet streets.