Today we visited Phrygian burial sites in the Phrygian Valley and Midas Şehri (Midas City).  For those of you who don’t know anything about the Phrygians, you can find information on them in your encyclopedia of choice.  Just kidding! Don’t worry – I’m not going to make anyone do any homework!  The Phrygians were people who had migrated to Central Anatolia from Thrace in Greece about 3000 years ago.  They set up a kingdom around 1200 BC, and established a civilization that was influenced by Greek, Hittite, and Urartian cultures; however, the Phrygian culture was unique, as they spoke their own language and had their own gods and goddesses. 

One of the last Classical sites we visited was Aphrodisias. Originally settled in the Chalcolithic period (4350 BC), the site of Aphrodisias was continuously occupied until the early 1970s when the villagers living on the site were moved by the Turkish government since the area had become dangerous due to recent earthquakes.

Most people have heard of Ephesus. Ephesus (or in Turkish: Efes) was an Ionian Greek city in ancient Anatolia, founded by colonists from Athens in the 10th century BC.

The city of Pergamon was established around the 4th century B.C. and was soon after conquered by the Persians. In 334 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered the Pergamon acropolis. When Alexander the Great died, the rule of Pergamon passed to one of his generals, Lysimakhos.

Loren McFarlan, a Grinnell College alumna (’07) studied off-campus in Turkey her junior year, and wanted to return. With a bit of enterprise and some help from Craig’s List, she found a job as a copy editor at Todays Zaman, a new English language Turkish newspaper. Loren arranged for us to have a tour of the Zaman building, where Todays Zaman is produced, as well as the Turkish Zaman and some other publications. We were shown around parts of the building by Loren, Fatmah Dişli, one of her co-workers, and Emrah Ülker, the managing editor.

 

“The world is changed.  I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.  Much that once was, is lost, for none now live who remember it.”       -Galadriel

  The Bosporus is strip of water that connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, and splits the continents of Europe and Asia. This has been a major trade route throughout the centuries. As a result, the civilization with control over this body of water was likely to be powerful because of how useful and essential the location is. 

Fenerbahçe-Sivasspor Soccer Game, August 25

One of the most popular and important pastimes in Turkey is football (soccer for us), and it shows; fans decked out in jerseys and team colors are everywhere, and almost every bar and restaurant has televisions so their patrons can watch important matches while they eat or drink. We are fortunate in that our Turkish host students, Ertu and Özay, are both very big football fans, but we learned very soon that the teams they support are huge rivals. Özay supports Fenerbahçe, last year’s champions, while Ertu is a fan of Galatasaray, another powerful and popular team in Turkey. The teams’ fans are easy to mistake at first; their jerseys both prominently feature logos of Avea, a local cellphone company, and Cola Turka, a local brand of soda. However, the rivalry between these teams and their fans is decades old, and we learned quickly not to mistake one for the other at the risk of greatly offending our Turkish friends.

This year our Istanbul quarters are in dorms belonging to Bilgi University.  They are nice and new, close to the breezy waterfront of Karaköy. We can walk along the Bridge and then across to the old city of Istanbul, or up hill to the medieval Galata Tower and the busy boulevard of Istiklal Caddesi, lined with shops and crowded with Istanbulites and tourists shopping, dining and strolling during the day, and even more docks to Galata crowded in the cool of evening.
At the far end of Istiklal is the central hub of Taksim Medani, and our classroom is in a building on the Istanbul Technical University campus just down hill from there. Coming to class in the morning, we walk past nargile cafes and the ancient mosque of Kiliç Ali Pasha, the only Turkish admiral to bring ships back from the galley battle of Lepanto in 1571 (also witnessed by Miguel Cervantes). An effective tram system takes us part way, followed by a short funicular ride, a small train in a tunnel that carries passengers up the hill to Taksim Square, from which we reach our class.

Istanbul’s Adalar are nine small islands near the opening of the Bosphorus into the Sea of Marmara. Just 20km from the city, for centuries they were destinations for wealthy royalty of Istanbul—royal visitors sometimes on holiday, and sometimes on political exile. The largest is called Büyükada, often translated as “majestic-”, “grand-”, or simply “big-island” depending on how poetic the author is feeling.

~A glimpse of the still-wild part of the island (all photographs taken by Samantha)

Istanbul’s Military Museum is located on the Beyoğlu side of the city, in a large square building that was once a military academy. When Mustafa Kemal was preparing to join the army, this is the school he attended. The academy has since been turned into a museum of weaponry and warfare. In memory of the school’s most illustrious pupil, a schoolroom where Ataturk studied has been preserved, and it now contains a large bust of Atatürk looking out over the students’ table. The museum is now also the main site of the army’s Mehter band.