Dispatches from the Silk Road

by Tom Wheeler, Ankara, Turkey

"Gidemedigin Yer Senin Degildir"

The subtitle of this article quotes Halil Rifat Pasha, the Governor in 1928 of Sivas, an ancient city in Turkey. It means "The places you cannot visit do not belong to you".

From Ankara there are plenty of opportunities for colleagues to take possession of places from the south-eastern tip of Europe to the borders of north western China. This is the ultimate Eurasian mission, responsible for a swath of countries from Turkey, in the west, through Azerbaijan, south of the Caucasus, which is separated from Turkmenistan by one of the world's great inland seas, the Caspian, Uzbekistan, the Central Asian state with the largest population - 24 million, and Kyrgyzstan, where "only the sky is higher" adjoining the Xinjang Province of China.

By general acceptance the Bosphorus waterway which runs through the middle of Istanbul, the ancient imperial and religious capital first known as Byzantium and later Constantinople, is the southern meeting point of the European and Asian landmasses.

Yet the Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan which lie on the Eastern borders of Turkey are considered to be part of Europe. Perhaps Turkey could sort out some of its problems by declaring that Europe ends in the middle of the Caspian Sea and that it is consequently an exclusively European state, not part one part the other.

Many people have visited and know the amazing city of Istanbul with its 500 years old palaces, like Topkapi and its ancient churches, the Haghia Eirene (the Church of Divine Peace) and Haghia Sophia (now Aya Sofya Divine Wisdom), its beautiful mosques designed by Sirnan, like Suleymaniye and the Blue Mosque designed by one of his students, and the Roman aqueduct of Val ens which predates them all. On the other hand, Ankara is perceived as at most a remote place in the Anatolian highlands which is, for some inexplicable reason, the capital of modern Turkey

Seeing Ankara for the first time is a surprise to most of us. It is a .planned modern city of 5 million people which spreads outwards from its ancient entre and citadel up and over the surrounding

hills. It is a major centre of industrial production, education (7 universities), government and the military.

Alexander the Great passed this way in 334BC and in the process cut the Gordion knot a little west of the city. But even before him in 1200 BC it was a Hittite place called Ankuwash. For those with a New Testament background this is Galatia. Later it was also the Roman province of Ankyra; it is the place of origin of the Angora goat, source of mohair; it was the site of a battle in 1021 AD between the Ottoman Sultan Yildirim Beyazit and Tamberlane, grandson of Ghengis Khan and present day national hero of Uzbekistan, known there as Amir Timur. Amir Timur won, and locked the Sultan up to die in captivity just eight months later.

Thus runs the history of Asia Minor, Anatolia, Turkey, call it what you will

Much of the history of the great monotheistic religious occurred in Turkey Abraham was born in Urfa, South Eastern Turkey; Noah's Ark touched terra firma on Mount Ararat on the eastern border; St Paul was born in Tarsus; St John lived and was buried in Ephesus, just south of Izmir; the Christian church was organised at the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, now Izmit just east of Istanbul. Cappadocia, where early Christians built underground cities to escape from the Moslem invaders, lies just east of Ankara.

Istanbul's role in religious history fills a book.

The Ottoman Sultans were not only temporal rulers, but were simultaneously the Caliphs or heads of the Islamic religion until the Caliphate was ended in 1924.

There is so much history and so many visible remains of civilizations which have succeeded each other that a life-time of study, not a mere four-year posting, would be needed to discover all there is to know.

Turkey today describes itself as the only secular democracy with a population which is 99% Moslem. That in itself has political implications which are a source of endless fascination, confusion and frustration

F or those of us fortunate enough to be posted to Ankara it does not end there. Turkey is the Western end of tile Silk Road dotted with caravanserai which was Marco Polo's route to China. In spite of being part of the Imperial Russian and later Soviet Empires for over 100 years each of the Turkic speaking states of the former Soviet Union has a character and a mood of its own.

AZERBAI.IAN

Azerbaijan is entering its second oil boom. At the turn of the 20th century the Nobel Brothers made the fortune that finances the Nobel Peace Prize from the oil fields of Baku on the Caspian Sea. Now Baku is coming alive again Beautiful early 20th century and other buildings are being cleaned to show the golden glow of the limestone facades Gradually the grim tumbledown apartment blocks of the Soviet era are giving way to a new wealthy Baku, set beautifully on the hills above the Caspian Sea. The almost unliveable government guest houses with grass growing between the bathroom tiles, and Intourist hotels which Andre de Munnik described so vividly to me are giving way to Hyatt

Regencies and Intercontinentals admittedly at no small cost - across these countries.Flying, as we did early in 1998, in daylight on a clear mid-winter's day to·Istanbul over Baku from Ashkabad in Turkmenistan on a Turkmenistan Airlines 737 is a breath-taking experience. After taking off from an airport which boasts South African glass in its windows, on a runway which runs parallel with the mountain chain that forms the Iranian border, and crossing the Caspian, you fly next to the snow-enveloped straight line of peaks which form the Caucasus, a truly majestic sight.

They eventually give way to Lake Van and Mount Ararat on the left. Below too is Yerevan, capital of Armenia, an ancient Christian civilization, which has yet to find an accommodation with its Moslem Azeri and Turkish neighbours and therefore is not readily accessible to us Ankarites.

TURKMENISTAN

Turkmenistan is quite different. It is a vast stretch of desert, the Karakum, which overlays one of the greatest gas fields in the world. Ashkabad, the city of love, straddles a fault in the earth's crust and gets wiped out by earthquakes from time-to-time. The last big one was in 1948.

The Turkmen are nomadic tribal people of the desert who are only starting to develop a national coherence. The unifying figure is Turkmenbashi, the President of the republic, who has been elevated to a cult figure Almost every building is decorated with a portrait of the great man and one of his sayings in Turkish, like "Vatan, Halk, Turkrnenbashi" - The Land, the People, Turkmenbashi meaning leader of the Turkmen..

Turkmenbashi is too important to receive credentials from mere ambassadors and the current SA ambassador and his predecessor had to be satisfied with the Speaker of Parliament. The country is the source of our karakul industry and the traditionally dressed man walks around in headgear made of 

unprocessed karakul skins. Wonderful handcrafts, carpets and also horses come from Turkmenistan.

In Embassy mythology Askhabad is best known for an aborted landing which caused Johan May to think that his promising career in the foreign service was about to end in the wastes of Central Asia. Surface turbulence caused [he pilot of the ancient Soviet-built Yak to head up and out across the desert moments before touchdown. Fortunately a second attempt 20 minutes later reassured Johan that there was a future for him even if it took a while to restore his composure.

UZBEKISTAN

Stalin's divide-and-rule policies caused the boundaries of the republics which constituted the Soviet Union to be drawn with scant regard to the ethnic realities of the populations. So Uzbekistan finds itself the inheritor of a population consisting of 103 different ethnic groups, ranging from Germans and Russians to real Uzbeks and Koreans sent there from Vladivostok in World War II.

Uzbekistan also contains some of the most mystical, ancient cities of the Silk Road: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva and the more functional Tashkent. Tashkent, once the centre of the Soviet Union's African diplomacy, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1966 and was rebuilt in six months in a dull uniform Soviet style. Slowly the city of 3 million, which has tree-lined streets to relieve the monotony, is undergoing a transformation with new high-rise buildings giving the first signs of variety to the six-storey skyline. Its efficient underground rail system with magnificent stations out there in the middle of Central Asia came as a great surprise

The Islamic monuments of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva and the fortresses of the Emirs have survived all the violence nature and conquest have thrown at them. Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan and the Imperial Russian Army all did their damnedest here over the centuries. The tombs of Tamberlane