Photo Album
Ankara (Feb 25th 2001)
'A walk on the wild side'
A long walk on a fine, cold day into the
hinterland near TRT Ankara
| I was walking quickly and
reached the small stream emerging from the end of the lake in half an
hour. TRT was still looking huge on the skyline. The only life that I was
aware of was of the feathered variety; magpies, skylarks and the
occasional buzzard. |
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The heavy
snow of Friday had virtually all gone. The sky was looking settled, so I
left TRT at the stroke of 9am turning left at the western end of the
complex into the lane which I knew went straight to the lake and then
headed for the hills. The track was un-metalled but reasonably smooth as
it descended quite steeply toward the valley floor. Apart from the odd car
whose occupants gazed at this Englishman in benign curiosity, I saw no
one. |
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The landscape was still
desolate and quite bleak. A few small conifers were planted here and there
but mostly I was looking at the greyness of land that was still only above
freezing for perhaps 8 hours a day. Looking more closely, I could see the
evidence of last year’s crops of wheat, which seems to be the life
support of the people inhabiting these sparsely populated fringes of
Ankara. An electricity pylon, clearly carrying high voltage supplies,
leaned at a crazy angle having been struck with force by some truck or
other. |
Strange low sheds on
rails puzzled me until I looked more closely. They were deep shafts with a pump
of some sort. The word Artesian came to mind.
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As I approached an underpass to Ankara’s 8 lane ring road, the surface
improved dramatically for a few hundred metres, but still all was
uncannily quiet, just birdsong and a breeze rustling the wind dried long
grass at the roadside. |
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Emerging from the concrete canyon a village began to unfold on my immediate
horizon. I had been walking for an hour and reckoned on continuing for half an
hour more before turning for ‘home’.
On
my right was a large and very elegant house with balconies, barbecues, an
orchard, summer house at the end of a huge garden. I saw several places like
this, clearly wealthy people who wanted to escape from the city, but this
moonscape would not have been my choice of surroundings, I have to say!
| The
tower of a mosque just visible over a small hill indicated the centre of
the village. I decided to at least go thus far. The dwellings were clearly
very basic, hens, goats and the occasional calf wandered through the
street. |
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Street was too grand
a word, the track was getting increasingly muddy. An elderly man was breaking
stones with a hammer to mend the track from his house to his animal enclosure.
His wife was cleaning a rickety table outside their tiny dwelling. A stream of
doubtful purity meandered in the gorge to my right. Low walls of rubble with
rickety wooden and rusty iron gates marked the perimeter of small farmsteads.
And in an enclosure to my right, noisy geese, chickens and at last, the
countries namesake, a turkey!
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I approached the
centre of the village, knowing that I would stand out like a very sore
finger in this most Turkish of villages. Ladies swathed in dark winter
clothing, colourful scarves around their heads were doing chores as
villagers had done for hundreds of years. Washing clothes in huge tubs by
hand, pegging them out on a line, or just hanging them over a fence. |
Another lady was
beating something with a wooden pole with a flattened end, I know not what!
Chickens were picking morsels out of a heap of animal dung at the side of the
track.
As I climbed
the muddy track toward the mosque I felt a total fraud in these mediaeval
surroundings.
| There I was, digital camera
in my hand, digital phone on my belt, earning a fortune by these peoples
standards, holidaying in countries they could only dream of. And yet, even
here, the occasional satellite dish fastened precariously to these rickety
buildings showed that at least they must be aware of the world elsewhere,
even if it is not to be theirs. |
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The Mosque
was built in 1990, that much I could see. As for the rest of the village, 1790
would be nearer the mark for much of it.
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I paused to take a picture
of some chickens by a gate when a lady emerged from the adjacent house
into my viewfinder. I moved the camera away from my face, smiled and said
“Merhaba” (Hello) and her puzzled face burst into a huge smile; |
“Merhaba” she
replied. I would love to have taken her picture, the lighting and atmosphere of
the shot were just right, but courtesy prevailed, and the image is in my mind,
not my camera.
| I retraced my
steps, the sprawling outskirts of Ankara on the horizon. I had sampled,
just for a few minutes, the life of the poorest of Turkish peasants who
inhabit this huge and barren landscape of Anatolia. 1000 metres above sea
level, the same latitude as Madrid, it suffers a bitterly cold winter and
a hot dry summer. |
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Not for me, I
thought, and then saw some young boys kicking a ball around on a piece of
ground. Their shrieks and shouts of enjoyment rang in my ears as I strode onward
toward my comfortable suite of rooms back at TRT. Happiness is always relative,
as I have found out myself in the darkest times of my life.
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These lads were as happy
kicking a ball around as some of our couch potato teenagers watching soap
after soap, or playing on their Sony Play stations. |
The
last part of my journey was up the long slog of the hill, I reckon some 700 feet
of a climb. On my balcony, I can just see the village to which I have just been,
nestling in the lower fold of the snow-capped mountains beyond. It really is on
the edge of nowhere; I cannot tell you its name, because there is nothing so
sophisticated as a nameplate to mark its existence. All I can say is, I’m glad
to have been.
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