Brought to you by Fetih Bey

Remember how Atatürk wore whole yachts as neck ornaments?
Fethiye does. Fethiye (formerly Telmessos, renamed after Fetih Bey, a pilot in the Ottoman airfoce, in 1934) is almost a typical Turkish-Mediterranean resort town with one twist: it is a natural harbor, so it feels more like a lake than a seaside getaway. Of course like any resort town it has its charms...the boardwalk stretches on for meters and meters and features cafe after cafe directly on the water's edge and also numerous illuminated pictures of Ataturk (see above). I had lunch at Cafe Mavi in the old town, where the owner asked me a few questions about myself and then gave me a free delicious piece of homemade carrot cake. Not everyone gets such generous handouts, as I was to learn...
(That box says "Help the Pelicans...For Fish, For Money".)

The best part of the town is the old amphitheater in the hillsides.
The director of Fethiye's adorable museum lived on the slope overlooking the harbor and decided one day that some work needed to be done on his house. In the course of some construction-related digging they happened upon the ruins, and then with the help of a sizable group of local volunteers they uncovered the well-preserved 6,000-seat Roman theater pictured above. The patrons of said theater would have had a miraculous view of the harbor. This is all simply in situ, as are a few scattered Lycian tombs (such as the one fenced in next to the post office, but also there are some in the hillside), and the aforementioned adorable museum has a lovely relic-filled garden to peruse. Fethiye is certainly more interesting than a typical resort town; it's not a must-see, but it's definitely not a bad place to spend a warm day.

Somehow this shows respect and admiration

Amasya: Fact or Fiction?

I think the Black Sea is my favorite region of Turkey so far. I have not been to the East yet, because I generally fear the snow and cold, but something about the hilly, misty, verdant Black Sea coast really appeals to me.

As that intro may have suggested, Amasya is more or less in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It is one of those places that has been inhabited for years and years, so its local ethnography museum has some great artifacts (and TERRIFYING mostly-exposed mummies of sultans in glass cases, shudder). It also has not one but TWO museums filled with historically informative wax mannequins in two Ottoman-style buildings along the river which are only mildly frightening but overall pretty awesome.

This is what Amasya looks like at night.

The below photo was taken from the bus stop outside of the Education Sciences faculty of Amasya University. Can you spot the reason that I took a picture of the side of a hill?

That's right, our favorite statesman's face is hewn into the living rock...of Amasya.

The below photo is of a statue on the side of the Yeşilırmak river. The river basically anchors the downtown area and makes Amasya seem larger than it really is. As an aside, one of the best breakfasts in recent memory was eaten along the banks of the Yeşilırmak river at a restaurant called Strabon, which I think deserves some kind of plaque for feeding as many Fulbright guests as it has, because if a Fulbrighter visits the Amasya ETA duo, they will probably eat at this restaurant. The gözleme (like a Turkish crepe, usually with cheese inside), which is available only on Sundays, is worth the trip.

So, the legend the statue is based on has uncertain origins, and obviously the Turks claimed it as their own. The nearby mountain Ferhat is named for the hero of the legend, who for love of the princess Şirin tried to win her father's favour and permission to marry her by tunneling through the mountain to bring spring water to his palace. While he was doing this, someone informed him that the princess had died and so he threw himself onto the rocks post-haste. It turns out the princess was not dead, but after hearing the news of her lover's death she also died. Turkish authorities put a fence and a sign by a small channel in the side of the mountain which basically reads "This is definitely the channel from that legend, although historians really don't know if the story is true or where it actually happened." That's how Turkey rolls.

Just like Whitney Houston sang....

Antalya, I will always love you. Antalya is kind of like the Florida Keys of Turkey, although there were no giant murals of undersea life painted on the sides of buildings, which is an important feature of the Keys. No, instead there where images of Ataturk and Turkish flags on almost every conceivable surface, because this weekend was Republic Day. Even though the town is incredibly touristy, one gets the sense of why-- it's also incredibly beautiful. The deep and incomparable blue of the Mediterranean is the foreground against a background of imposingly beautiful mountains.

To avoid sounding like a guidebook, I will just post some pictures. They are so postcard-like that they are almost boring.

A Fulbright friend made this awesome rock tower. Rock beaches are cool because you can lay on the rocks that have been warmed by the sun (like so many reptiles), but definitely bring some kind of sandals. The tower marked the site of my first swim in the Mediterranean, and an excellent afternoon picnic.

Right before I got on Antalya's tram system to leave town...

I stayed at the White Garden Pansiyon, which was totally reasonably priced (30TL a night) and was beautiful, "a good site for a harem", in my words, "beguilingly restored" in the words of the Lonely Planet.

Oh! We also managed to find an English-language bookstore, which was really kind of the front of the house with no back wall that opened into a garden, with shelf upon shelf of books that the owner, a man who resembled Beauregard the Muppet in speech and form, had read once upon a time. He offered to make us fish with fennel and white wine (sadly, we were leaving several hours later, so we could not accept) and then told us that next time we come to Antalya we should bring him English books, because he prefers trading to selling.

This is part of the parade for Republic Day. It featured a seemingly endless stream of high school and grammar school students, often in drum and bugle lines.

There was also a crazy rock concert thing that we did not get to on time in the main square in front of (what else) the statue of Atatürk, but we had the perfect vantage point for the Republic Day fireworks.

I personally am still a little unsure about what Turks think of Republic Day. Maybe the rock and roll and lazer light show in the main square would have helped me get a better sense of things (probably!). When I returned to Uşak, though, and asked about Republic Day, most people did not even acknowledge its passing, or so it seemed.

The Fulbrighters in Antalya thanked Atatürk during the fireworks for his many contributions to Turkish life that we have benefited from, such as an alphabet we can read. There was a surprise Republic Day gift awaiting us when we returned to our respective cities, as well - the ban of youtube was repealed that weekend! Now I can once again watch old Eurovision videos to my heart's content with no need to mask my IP address - truly, a Republic Day miracle.

The Founder of Modern Turkey

Are you looking at a picture of Atatürk right now? Have you seen a portrait of Atatürk in the last three to five minutes? Can you think of more than three places you could go to right now to be in sight of Atatürk's likeness?



If you answered "no" to any of those questions, then you are not in Turkey. For fun last night I counted as many Turkish flags as I could see from my balcony. The answer: around twenty three. This is not merely because Ankara is the governmental center of Turkey's secular republic, this is just how it is here. Nationalism is kind of a big deal.