after iraq i got to hang out in turkey for a few days, also a very fascinating country! i arrived at a deserted bus station on the turkey-iraq border in the late evening, to find that there was only one more bus leaving that night, and it wasn’t really going where i needed to get to by the next morning. so i got on it anyway, and we started driving west, right along the border with syria. later that night i learned that there were rockets fired from syria into turkey that very evening, and it stirred a lot of talk about a possible turkish invasion of syria. obviously that has not yet materialized, but they keep talking about even to this day. all i can say about syria right now is God help them.
i arrived in a tiny town called kizeltepe in the very early morning, and then found my way to a pleasant mountain-top town called mardin where there is an amazing view over the plains of mesopotamia! then a minibus to diyarbakir just barely in time for my flight. southeastern turkey is kurdish. everyone wears little bracelets with the kurdish colors, and there is a very popular independence movement. decades of anti-kurdish policies by the turkish government (like until relatively recently a ban on the use of the kurdish language) have fostered a tremendous amount of resentment. this has resulted in much local support for the pkk, or kurdistan worker’s party, considered a terrorist organization due to their history of bombing public transportation in istanbul and the like. the turkish government’s war against kurdish nationalism rages on, whether it be in the form of water-cannoning peaceful protestors on the streets of istanbul just the other day or bombing pkk-supporting villages in northern iraq. it is a rather complicated situation, obviously. someone told me that the pkk had tried planting a bomb on the runway at the diyarbakir airport just days before i was there. until recently, the far southeastern corner of turkey was so dangerous that it was off limits to foreigners – now one can go anywhere but there are still countless military roadblocks and the like. i’d love to go back and spend more time there.
i then got to spend two days in istanbul! what an unbelievably amazing city, definitely one of the best in the world. i got to spend a week here a few years ago during my college semester in the middle east, so i skipped straight to the second tier attractions that the tourists don’t think about, like the largest shopping mall in europe! also, because i love malls! i spent a day studying cardiology there and it was amazing. also, “istanbul hostel” exceeded expectations. then it was back to israel for some serious studying and a big cardiology exam.
