Lost on the Way to Armenia

It is well known to many and likely to you, the dear reader, that the lands that include the present country of Turkey were inhabited and occupied by many nations over the years.  Some of the more recent occupants have been the Greeks, the Armenians, the Kurdish, various Syrian Peoples and others.  While it is not the purpose of this post to provide a detailed history of what has become known as present day Turkey, I instead intend to point out what we have seen and what is relevant to our visit to the coastal Mediterranean city of Izmir. As you likely know from previous history lessons or from my recent post on our visit within Turkey to the ancient Greek City of Ephesus, you are well aware that the coastal portions of Turkey were occupied in whole or in part at one time by the Greeks.  Over time, and with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks were relieved of these places.  Present day Istanbul was once known as the Greek city of Constantinople and the ci...

May 3, Izmir. By Gary North along the coast is the city of Izmir, once called Smyrna, our next destination. Unfortunately we both have come down with flues, which hampers our ability to get up and get out and about in the morning. This too shall pass. Izmir is much bigger than Kusadasia, and is built around a very nice harbor. It too has ancient Roman ruins, and when the other two silted in, Smyrna continued on. Empires rise and fall, and after the Romans came the Ottoman Turks with a large empire over much of Arabia plus Turkey and other areas at various times. By the 1900s, their empire was dwindling. The final straw came when Greece tried to re-take western Turkey through the port of Smyrna, known as the Grecco-Turkish war. They advanced many miles inland but were turned back by Turkish forces. The Greeks were Christian, as were the Armenians, who lived in villages throughout what is now Turkey, so the Armenians aligned themselves with the Greeks. Around this same time t...

May 1 st . Gary's first post here. You should expect to read some inconsistencies between how I remember things vs Kristen's posts.  We have just left Kusadasia after spending three days there with our Couch Surfing host, Mesut. We enjoyed his company and hospitality and an introduction to the culture here in Turkey. For example, we didn't know that it is customary to leave your shoes outside and wear house slippers around inside, as they do in Japan. While there, Kristen figured out the public transportation system, and we visited the busy downtown shopping area one day, the ruins at Ephesus another, and ruins at Priene another. Downtown Kusadasia consists of a number of interconnected car-free streets and alleys not far from the ancient caravanserai, where merchants, traders, sailors, camel caravan drivers and others could find a safe place for the night. Like a campground surrounded by a high stone wall. We wandered past shops selling jewelry, shoes, clothing, hats (wes...

Just about 20 kilometers northeast of Kusadasi lies the ancient Byzantine City of Ephesus. This huge excavation has yielded nearly a square kilometer of well preserved ruins. With stabilization efforts having been made, they are even more impressive and draw tremendous crowds on an average day. It is well known that the strategic location of the town, bordered by mountains on two sides and what was at the time a natural harbor on the third side, provided excellent land to sea transfers of goods from the silk road. Here goods coming from China and Mongolia could be loaded onto boats bound for Mediterranean ports such as Greece and Italy to the west. Likewise goods could and did flow in the opposite direction as well. Ancient artifacts have been uncovered that point out that the location was inhabited several thousand years before the Greeks arrived and colonized it to a more sophisticated degree. A library was built on the site, an impressive one by ancient standards, and this one...