Cycling in Trabzon?

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Bryan Keith

When cycling started to get popular in England and France in the late 19th century, people were stuck in the cities.  Transportation to the countryside was expensive, but the bicycle offered a relatively cheap alternative.  There was an extensive network of back roads beckoning the cyclist to explore.

I see a parallel in Turkey today.  There’s an incredible network of deserted back roads, deserted partly because cars and petrol are rather expensive.  People don’t travel around in private cars like in North America.

DSCN1076 by bryandkeith on flickr

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Cycling the Eastern Black Sea Mountains

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Bryan Keith

Doğu Karadeniz Dağları.  The Eastern Black Sea Mountains.  Spectacular.  Unbelievable.  In order to get my mind around the magnitude and magnificence of these mountains I try to compare them to other places I’ve been.  Maybe Kaua’i.  The climb up Waimea Canyon is lush, green, full of good views if you’re lucky enough to get it without the clouds.  The same description describes the climbs here from the seaside, but at 1200m Waimea Canyon is small.  Also Kaua’i has perhaps 3 or 4 four roads that climb similarly.  Here there are dozens if not hundreds.

Another phenomenal campsite in the Eastern Black Sea Mountains; of course I couldn't see a thing when I put my tent here by bryandkeith on flickr
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A small corner of Kurdish Turkey

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Bryan Keith

I’m not sure where everyone started speaking Kurdish.  If it wasn’t Ardahan, it was certainly Kars.  Kurdistan on our route continued through Kars, Iğdır, Ağrı, and onto Karayazı and Tekman İlçes in Erzurum.  Back now in the city of Erzurum, it’s nice, given my language skills, to hear Turkish spoken on the street.

Being Kurdish for some people is specifically not being Turkish while others are happily Kurdish and Turkish as part of the Turkish Republic.  Still other Kurds will barely even acknowledge that they’re Kurdish instead insisting that everyone is Turkish, and it doesn’t matter.  I’m not sure how directly these attitudes correspond to political support.  I certainly felt more comfortable dissing Erdoğan in the Kurdish parts of the country.  No one seemed very fond of him.

The Kurds are mainly represented by the Barış ve Demokrasi Parti (BDP; Peace and Democracy Party) in parliament.  Some folks in Kurdistan (a term that Turks generally disapprove of) voiced support to me for the PKK, which is officially a terrorist group according to the Turkish government and has no members in parliament.  How analogous the BDP and PKK are to the PLO and Hamas is unclear to me.  In Dağpınar I happened to meet the only member of parliament to represent Kars, a tall, skinny woman, dressed in pants and not wearing a headscarf.

The superb, famous Turkish hospitality continued.  However, there was a twist, a dichotomy, let’s say.  No where else in Turkey have I been greeted with “money, money” by the boys.  Telling them it was shameful (ayıp) almost always got them to stop and often look embarrassed.  A couple times adults even asked me for money or, once, for chocolate!  If others folks heard this, they would often apologize for their neighbour’s behaviour.

On the other hand people would give us food and once even a beautiful bottle of olive oil, cheese, bread, basil, homemade jam — I can’t remember what all was in that bag.  That in the same village where young men had persistently followed us pestering us for money.  In one tiny village, Işıklar, a small boy offered me one of his treasured cakes that he was carrying around.  How touching!

In Karabağ a couple kindly invited us to stay at their house where we enjoyed iftar (breaking the daily Ramadan fast) together at the end of the day.  In the morning, however, the man wanted us to fill his motorcycle with petrol — not an inexpensive treat with petrol running around US$9.33/gallon.  Such odd behaviour.

DSCN0915 by bryandkeith on flickr
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The highway to Anı

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Bryan Keith

After our epic crossing of the Kaçkar, Sage and I took some mellower roads to leave the Black Sea.  Like highways.  Certainly the most highway riding I’ve done in Turkey has been the last couple of weeks.  I am reminded that highways have advantages:

•  You meet other cyclists on highways.  Climbing out of Artvin we met Tomas and Patrick, French and British, who are returning to Europe after riding through Central Asia.  Near the crossroads at Dağpınar we met a young Swiss couple from Basel, Timon and Nicole, on their way to Central Asia.  And climbing out of Iğdır, we met Vahid, an Iranian from Tabriz, spending a couple months meeting his neighbours in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.  Ironically Sage and I also met cyclists on the train to Erzurum.  That was Céline and Philippe, a young French couple on their way to India.

A Frenchman and a Brit one their way to Europe after a tour of Central Asia by bryandkeith on flickr
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Erdoğan, kids, and development

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Bryan Keith

It’s time for Erdoğan to go.  Power corrupts.  He’s been Prime Minister over nine years.  Tayyip, as he’s commonly and respectfully referred to on the street, was initially elected with the support of Turkey’s educated middle class by promising not to touch the country’s relatively liberal (for the Middle East) lifestyle.

Like the erosion of our personal privacy, small changes have occurred gradually perhaps barely perceptible on a day-to-day basis.

Erdoğan’s decade of power has been undeniably cruel to Turkey’s women.  A 2011 World Economic Forum report comparing the situation for women in 135 countries ranked Turkey 122 along side shining examples like Nigeria and Iran.  You can download the Global Gender Gap country rankings from a link on this page (March 2018 update: that link is dead. Here’s the 2017 Global Gender Gap report (pdf).).  Both the New York Times and Der Speigel have less quantitative reports (from 2012) on how women have fared during the last ten years in Turkey.

A week or two ago Sage and I stopped for some water on the side of the road in Tortum İlçe near a small mosque (mescit).  A man piled out of a minibus with 15 of his buddies.  There was not a woman in sight.  They were at home in Çorum with the kids while the men played tourists for the weekend.

After a bit of introductory banter, “do you have kids?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Never wanted them.”

“Ah, Tayyip — you know Erdoğan, our Prime Minister?”  I nod.  “He wants our women to have 3-5 kids.”

Ha!  I had read this comment in the paper but hadn’t had the chance to talk to Turks about it.

“Is that a good policy?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Turks love kids.”

“But what business is it of the government’s to tell us how many kids we should have?  Couples should decide for themselves.  It’s a bad policy. Why do you think it’s good?”  I would have liked to use some stronger words like sexist and oppressive, but my Turkish isn’t that good.

I had made him uncomfortable.  By this time a small crowd had gathered — partly to hear a foreigner speak Turkish, partly probably to hear a foreigner rant against their prime minister’s sexist remarks.

“Gelişme,” he was able to spit out before being overcome by a sudden need to use the facilities.

Development.  Like the Çoruh River Project.  It’s Turkey’s version of the US Army Corps of Engineers Colorado River disaster.  Seven dams on the lower Çoruh, hundreds of kms of canyons submerged.  Farms, orchards, and villages flooded.  Most displaced people flee to the cities.

Industrial Artvin by bryandkeith on flickr
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