Yesterday's 6 hour drive is followed by another 4+ today. Anakara, despite being the capital, is really just a convenient stopover between turkey's 2 main tourist destinations of Istanbul and Cappodacia. So I've got more time to kill. May as well capture some of these pearls rolling around in my brain :)
- Ankara was made the capital of Turkey by Ataturk (or general mustafa, depending who's talking) after the war of independence in 1923. It had a population of 5,000 at the time but is now 5 million. Makes calgary's "booming" population growth seem laughable eh?
- speaking of Ataturk, he seems like quite a great guy. I don't know enough about him to say what's accurate and what's legend, but the gist of what I picked up is he (a) led the country in the war of independence against Britain and France and (b) is the single most important reason turkey is a secular, modern country today. Instead of trying to reinstate the ottoman sharia law, he established a secular republic and guided the country through several reforms that became the basis of the relatively open freedom and economic growth (which has matched China for some time now) enjoyed by the citizens (and tourists) today. His reforms ranged from promoting science and technology over religious education, converting the country to the Phoenician alphabet (think of how that eventually impacts something as simple a thing as the ease with which your society can start using keyboards), adopting surnames (imagine the confusion of 80 million people without one), and women's rights (women were running for office here about the same time they got to vote in Canada).
- if you're as in-the-dark on Turkish history as I was, it goes roughly like this:
1) pre-historic (Early settlements and cities with no written record)
2) early vague history (Hittites, Greek, Persian, Sidionian, etc)
3) eastern Roman Empire (~4th century AD, Christian Era)
4) Ottoman Empire (1453, Islamic Era)
5) WWI (sided with the Germans, oops. Last sultan booted by British and French)
6) war of independence (1922/3, secular and democratic era)
- where yesterday we drove though the German Black Forest, today we drove through Saskatchewan. At least, you'd swear it was except that there's hills in the distance and the highways are in much better shape. Like WAY better. Makes you reconsider which country is actually more "developed".
- that said, we've driven through a lot of outdated farming practices like burning fields and summer-follow. So we're still a little ahead there.
- the language has been surprisingly unforeign. With the Phoenician alphabet, I've even been able to decipher most ingredient labels fairly confidentally (seker and askobrit akid are pretty easy guesses for example). It strikes me as half way between a Germanic and Arabic language, so you can pick up a bit of the meaning in signs and even sounds.
- Al Jazeer is often the only English Channel we can find, but I've always been impressed with their coverage - seems way less biased than the stuff you get in the west or US in particular. The access they get is outstanding too. Try watching their "Orphans of the Sahara" series if you can - I couldn't turn that off the other night.
- we just drove by Tuz Golu lake which is a huge salt flat. Didn't know it was here, but that was a fantastic surprise and saved me from having to go to the Bolivian ones.
- the countryside is turning markedly more arid. Our next stop is Derynku (sp?) and then Cappodacia for several days. This will likely be my last post until we do the next long drive to Konya. I haven't been hating the road trips so far - is that a side effect of getting older? It doesn't offset all the other aspects of aging, but it's something at least.
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