Category: Turkey

This post is mainly photos, but it’s what I felt was a proper clothing market that we walked by in Ankara. It had all the hustle and bustle of a truly vibrant traditional market, with traders usually standing in the centre of their displays haggling with customers around them. I wonder whether markets like this can survive the perhaps inevitability of something like Primark…..

Before we boarded what was to become our epic rail journey, we opted for a Turkish meal in Ankara.

It all looked rather agreeable and we were given a table by the window, with the team members seeming friendly and helpful. Note the jar of biber turşusu, or pickled peppers. More UK restaurants should perhaps do this….

The drink of Gods….

Other than the salad which I ordered and paid for, all of this was provided free of charge. More UK restaurants should do this as well….

I ordered a chicken kebab and this absolutely surprised and delighted me. The chicken was tender and had a depth of flavour, the salad element was fresh and the bread mopped up the juices nicely. A very agreeable little arrangement.

We were made to feel very welcome and the atmosphere was inviting and relaxed. The food was all well presented, it had taste and flavour to it, with the pricing being relatively low. This was a decent meal to have before what we thought would be a 22 hour rail journey, but that’s for another post.

The whole set-up of the mausoleum has moved a little towards hero worship towards the Atatürk, but perhaps that’s fair enough for the effective founder of the modern republic.

In that vein, here’s Foks who was the Atatürk’s loyal dog, a brown-and-white terrier-like mix. Foks became a permanent fixture at the Presidential Residence, famously waiting outside meeting rooms and even accompanying Atatürk during the high-stakes 1925 hat reform tour. The dog’s transition from pet to museum exhibit was a somewhat macabre comedy of errors as after Foks passed away, well-meaning staff had him stuffed to surprise the grieving leader, only for Atatürk to be visibly disturbed by the sight of his preserved friend. Despite Atatürk’s request for a burial, Foks was kept in storage for decades and eventually found his way into a glass display case.

In a rather lovely gesture of gratitude toward the educational foundation of the Republic of Turkey, Professor Aziz Sancar donated his 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry medal and certificate to the Anıtkabir on 19 May 2016. Sancar, who received the award for his mechanistic studies of DNA repair (which sounds really rather complex to me), chose this specific date, a national holiday commemorating Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, to emphasise that his scientific success was made possible by the reforms established by the country’s founder. He explicitly stated that the medal belongs to the entire Turkish nation rather than any single faction, and it is now permanently exhibited in the Atatürk and the War of Independence Museum. While replicas were provided to Istanbul University and the University of North Carolina, the original gold medal remains at the mausoleum.

And here it is, you don’t get to see a Nobel prize every day…..

This painting rather tied together something for me that relates to the Gallipoli campaign during the First World War. The sinking of the French battleship Bouvet on 18 March 1915 stands as something of a masterclass in the lethal consequences of predictable habits. While the Allied fleet was busy redecorating the Ottoman shore batteries with heavy shells, the Bouvet struck a mine laid by the minelayer Nusret. The Ottoman crew had noticed that Allied captains possessed a rather repetitive preference for pivoting their massive vessels in the exact same patch of Erenköy Bay, and they politely provided twenty mines to facilitate the manoeuvre. Of the 710 men aboard, 639 perished, including the very brave Captain Rageot de la Touche (1858-1915), who stayed with his ship to the end.

The loss of the Bouvet, alongside the HMS Irresistible and HMS Ocean later that day, effectively convinced the Allied command that the Dardanelles would not be won by boat alone. This failure successfully traded a naval headache for the catastrophic (from the allied perspective) land campaign at Gallipoli, something which is very much part of the story of World War One.

I haven’t really read much about Turkish history in the past, but I’ve had the opportunity over the last few days to get a better understanding of the country. What a delight for blog readers….

Kâzım Orbay (1886-1964) was the quintessential ‘fixer’ of the early Turkish Republic, one of those characters where it seems that it’s the case that by staying in the military long enough, he was able to become part of the state furniture. Having survived the Balkan Wars and the First World War, he climbed the ranks to become the third Chief of the General Staff.

His tenure in that role was from 1944 to 1946 and was a masterclass in staying neutral, while the globe was tearing itself apart, Orbay’s main strategic challenge was more deciding which side’s telegrams to ignore first. Turkey had joined the Second World War in early 1945, which was arguably just a little late than was perhaps ideal.

Orbay eventually resigned following a high-profile murder scandal involving his son, proving that even though he could manage an entire national defence force, he was ultimately defeated by a teenager’s poor life choices. It’s still not entirely clear what happened in this case, but it was rather damaging to his career.

He re-emerged from retirement after the 1960 coup to serve as the Speaker of the Constituent Assembly and he presided over the drafting of the 1961 Constitution with what was likely a weary patience. He died in 1964, very much a soldier statesman who is now being remembered as one of the heroes of the Republic.