Home » Turkey » Relgious tones, and sad going homes

Well, after our rest in Goreme, we finally managed to pull ourselves away, and plunge into Turkeys least visited region, South-East Anatolia, aka Kurdestan. The area is overwhelmingly Kurdish, with a couple of noticable Arab pockets, as you'll see. Turkish is spoken rarely here, as with English.
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Relgious tones, and sad going homes

Conor_purcell
2005-11-18 14:00:56

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obviously taught them just a couple of phrases of English, the most common one being "Hello tourist, money?". Giving them money does nobody any good, especially the next tourist who comes along.

Anyway, our last night in Urfa, we were invited to a home for dinner - our new friends, Mustapha (or 'Musto' for short) and Ismailplayed the gracious hosts, and we had an enjoyable night on a roof-top overlooking the city. However, when we left with the two of them, it became obvious that we were the cause of some unrest between the two friends - so the disapproving Ismaill went home, while we went with Musto for a beer. Well, a pint and a half in, and Musto was getting tipsy, no doubt helped by the copious amount of salt (I know, I know????) he was shaking into his glass. We bid him farwell, and set off for Mardin the next day.

Mardin is the Lonely Planets 'undiscovered gem' of south-east Turkey. We stayed in a really crap hotel - when I sat on the bed, it collapsed - and perhaps this affected our intitial view of the town. It perches atop a rocky hill overlooking the vast plains of Mesapotamia all the way into Syria, which we
could see from our hotel roof. This spectacular setting is its main asset, although the castle is off-limits, being in use by the Turkish army. In Mardin, we met a Basque journalist on his way to Northern Iraq to write an article about the Kurds, and specifically, the Yeidis, who worship the fallen angel Lucifer, who they believe was saved and forgiven by God. He explained to us in detail the 'Kurdish problem', and pointed out that Kurds live much more happily in the Islamic Republic of Iran next door than they do in secular, EU-aspiring Turkey.

I liked Mardin after a time, but we soon discovered south-east Turkeys 'real' gem - Hasankeyf. Once the capital of the region, Hasankefy is now a spectacular little village, with over 5000 cave-homes cut into the cliffs which ...