it is a ruined house, passing from mad to mad…”
I am writing these words with the devastating earthquake in mind that struck on the night of 6 February 2023 and, as far as we know, claimed the lives of nearly fifty thousand of our people. Much is usually written on such subjects, and everyone will naturally have something to say from their own perspective. In recent years, with the rise of social media, we have seen the emergence of a rather talkative society in our country. People generally write about politics. Writing constantly and extensively in a rapidly changing ‘stream’ does not necessarily mean putting forward original views, but never mind… Those who wish to read what they please and reflect from whatever perspective they choose will do so anyway… How can a disaster-especially one from which we cannot separate ourselves, one that has, quite simply, become a part of us, fused with our very flesh and bone, repeated so often that it has almost become ‘one of us’-be addressed or named? The phrase ‘we are fated for such things’ comes to the tip of my tongue, but using expressions like ‘fate’-which imply resignation to destiny-has become commonplace in these matters. People react out of habit, and indeed, it is only natural that they fail to grasp what I mean by this phrase. Yet the ‘fate’ I feel and think of is something quite different… Right now, this ‘fate’ strikes me as a word that signifies something created (in part) by human hands, and that points to the intertwined, inseparable nature of humanity and the landscape. I remember feeling a shudder the first time I thought of it. After the earthquake, this word ‘fate’ was at the forefront of the concepts that troubled and unsettled me…
My memory takes me not too far back, perhaps just a few years. To one of those weekends when I went to visit my family. Back then, we hadn’t yet entered the ‘era of disasters’; we felt relatively freer and more at ease. As someone living in Ankara, I make frequent trips to İzmir. The flight between Ankara and İzmir is very comfortable and enjoyable; especially if you travel during the summer months and in the daytime, and if the sky is slightly overcast, you feel as though you’re in a fairy-tale land. All the contradictions of the country and the world you live in somehow fade away. The horizon where the deep blue sky meets the sun, the beautiful clouds below that resemble cushions upon which fairy maidens and sky sultans might sit and rest, the myriad shapes they take… As your plane approaches Adnan Menderes Airport in Izmir, it descends whilst making a turn of approximately 90 degrees. It will be a calm, safe landing; the ground beneath you is flat and lies where a plain meets the sea. At that very moment, a sparkling sea appears before you in all its beauty. You watch the line where the sea meets the land, the lorries and trucks on the roads, the houses in neat rows—in short, a grand reunion.
Unfortunately, what I am about to describe is not such a fairy-tale-like daytime journey. A dark, pitch-black night journey… A journey through Anatolia, where the ‘Anatolian Plateau’-with its majestic and lyrical expression-unfolds before you in a dystopian, bizarre manner, as if plucked from a nightmare or an allegory of hell: a journey that is utterly chilling and strange. Just like a cradle rocking in the middle of a sweet sleep suddenly tipping over… But I shall explain what this means later.
I have made dozens of journeys by night, and I have never slept on any of them. On night journeys, passengers usually sleep the sweetest of sleeps; the rocking of the vehicle, the steady rhythm of the engine, perhaps feels like a lullaby to them… As for me, I never sleep. Even in my childhood, when we often set out on such journeys, I would not sleep, but would simply gaze out of the window until the stars appeared in the sky. If it was a road journey, I would watch the road lines being swallowed up by the bus as if it were a ravenous child, the blue phosphorescent, bright kilometre markers by the side of the road, and the bus’s gleaming dashboard, which excited my childish world with its myriad colours. Sleep did not come during this night-time flight either. I don’t know how to describe that hour and a half spent gazing down upon Anatolia from the heavens, as if from a divine vantage point, the emotions it stirred within me, the tremor, the fear, the sorrow-and how all of these were experienced simultaneously, as if they were fragments of a single feeling… For those who do not know, let us write this down: at night, Ankara is a sea of lights. When you look down from above, you feel a sense of relief. As your plane approaches Esenboğa, unlike the landing in Izmir, the sensation is more akin to the pangs of childbirth as you circle like a bird of prey, searching for the ground amidst the mountains and hills. It’s as though you don’t grieve that a beautiful journey has ended, but instead, seeing the shimmer of these lights beneath you-resembling colourful beads-brings childlike joy; you take a deep breath and feel happy. It is as though you have left behind a journey that seemed never-ending, one that showed you all manner of dreams—many of them dark—passed through a sea of darkness, and emerged from a tunnel that evoked death and eternity, but above all, a profound void…
A deep void…
Sometimes I think how much Anatolian nights resemble a deep void. It’s as if a vast void, rocking like a cradle, has been left behind. That was exactly how I felt that night. The moment the plane left Ankara, I had entered a dark tunnel. Once we had reached a sufficient altitude and the cabin lights had gone out, all that remained below was a pitch-black ocean. A shadow so dark you’d be afraid to look at it, like the ghost of a dead man gliding past you. Yet I hadn’t stopped myself from looking down—as if gazing into a bottomless abyss, the bottom of a well, or perhaps a shore deprived even of a lighthouse at night. A sea of light and darkness beyond. Below lay Anatolia, and Anatolia was sleeping… what a strange thing. As if it were a no-man’s-land, devoid of life, where entry and exit were forbidden. Such places exist, where human access is prohibited. I recall it being in China; in America, there is Area 51 in Texas, where people cannot enter. When I was a child, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine had exploded, and the Soviet Union had quarantined and sealed off the area with a hundred thousand soldiers. I remember that journalists had wanted to go and film it, but they couldn’t leave the tarmac road; there was radiation, people couldn’t enter, and anyone who did would kill others and become a murderer. Such a void… as if it were a zone where human entry is forbidden.
The nearest place is Polatlı; there isn’t even a quarter as much light as in Ankara. Then, perhaps Afyon. From above, the scattered lights resemble shepherds’ fires in the mountains or helpless fireflies circling a tiny flame. Faced with this desolation and the hopeless struggle visible from above, one feels utterly crushed and despondent. One trembles with dread at the shame born of helplessness, horrified by the awkward, shapeless sight of a few electricity pylons or lamps—resembling crooked bones sprouting from the earth. Against the backdrop of other distant cities and seas of light—seen only in films, yes, but only in cinema—these crooked electricity pylons stand as if cursed by God, alongside a few small fires and the darkness that suffocates them. That is all. It suddenly occurs to me: if our plane were to crash somewhere in this sea of darkness and we were to miraculously survive the crash, ending up on a mountainside or in a ravine, what would become of us? Could we make it through the night without being torn apart by wolves or dogs, or freezing to death in the cold? Such strange thoughts come to mind... Then I realise I haven’t asked the simplest, most obvious and reasonable question: has no one ever lived here?
Indeed, in Europe it is not at all uncommon to come across houses, palaces and streets that are hundreds or even thousands of years old, or even coffee shops, restaurants, fountains and pubs with a history stretching back over five hundred years. There are houses where at least six or seven generations of a single family have lived. Their libraries have housed famous thinkers and scientists. I am left speechless by the question I’ve asked. Empty… maddeningly empty. As empty as a desert! The unique sensation, metaphor, texture, and bitter taste of emptiness… The indifference and audacity of emptiness that drives one mad with rage and incites rebellion. I think of the buildings and houses we have lived in and seen up to now, whose history is at most 50 years old! It is as if, before a single generation has passed, we will all crumble to dust like castles of sand! Dust and ashes! We’re going, going, flying at the highest altitude in the fastest vehicle humanity has developed-so high it’s enough to block our ears and constrict our breath—and as we look down from the cloudless sky, we can’t see a single light, not even a wretched yellow speck of brightness! Andrey Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker” comes to mind. The monotonous sound of that simple, functional locomotive-used on the journey to the ‘zone’, conceived as an antithesis to current reality-echoes in my ears; the misty image of a grey-white forest chills me to the bone; the road is long and stubborn, but we are stubborn too-we’re going, going, going… the road never ends!
In his novel “How the Steel Was Tempered”, Nikola Ostrovsky described how Komsomol students, defying nature, laid railway tracks in Siberia’s harsh climate, battling the cold and blizzards. The water tempering the steel was an expression of mastering nature, of ‘defying’ it. Defying nature? Defying the path, death-our inner enemy-and, moreover, time, which reduces us all to dust and ashes?
There is only one Ankara that has managed to change over the course of a century, cracking its shell-albeit slightly-and which may well endure into the future. Yet Ankara’s former self was no different at all from the rest of Anatolia. One cannot help but think, without questioning, whispering through clenched teeth and uttering it only half-heartedly: it is as though a perpetual disaster has cursed us. I cannot say what sort of disaster this is, nor which of our characteristics it has beset.
In her book “The Turk’s Trial by Fire” (Adıvar, 2016), Halide Edip opens her account of her arrival in Ankara with this Bektashi verse: “Mecnun has gone, leaving me the house of the world; it is a ruined house, passing from madman to madman…” Despite all her cheerfulness, and her characteristic optimism that seeks a sign of joy at every step, the Anatolian Plateau stands before us like a furrowed brow, with its stern countenance… Adıvar walks through the streets of Ankara with Didar Hanım, her childhood friend who met her at the station and took her home (2016, 136);
We drove through pitch-black streets to her (Mrs Didar’s) house. The roads were a sea of stones and mud. I gazed at the lights in the windows of the simple huts lined up on either side. We passed the sheep market. The horses stumbled at every step. At last, we reached a narrow street. Of course, back then Ankara was little more than a village... At the well, women were filling their jugs with water, whilst around them, just as in any village, barefoot village children were playing. Despite its dilapidated appearance, Ankara is a very ancient settlement. It is an ancient place with a history stretching back thousands of years and boasting historic buildings. Yet it remains a narrow, closed and isolated environment.
Come morning, I can see my surroundings more clearly. From our bedroom at the back of the house, we could see the Cebeci hills opposite. A strange lilac hue enveloped these hills as they rose through the morning mist; in the distance, piles of bright yellow earth and patches of greenery were visible. Sometimes people refer to Ankara as ‘The Darkest’… (2016, 137).
This is what Ankara was like at the beginning of the last century. Halide Edip says that, at that time, the people of Ankara, driven by a peculiar parochialism, did not trust outsiders, kept their distance from them, and regarded them as ‘Yaban’. ‘Stranger’! What a striking, meaningful and familiar expression it is in the Ankara vernacular… Leyla Neyzi conducted an oral history project years ago; its title was ‘Strangers and Locals’. To say ‘stranger’ simply means ‘not one of us, not from here, an outsider’. Beneath this label of “Yaban” lies, hidden beneath the surface, a tension between Anatolia and Istanbul-perhaps the emotional weight of an entire history, of neglect, and of a sense of having been exploited. I imagine a similar emotional burden must have emerged during the War of Independence as I ponder Halide Edip’s writings on Ankara and the scenes she encountered. Indeed, on the one hand, a weary people who have been at war for centuries and live almost in a region of deprivation; on the other, a prosperous, magnificent armistice-era Istanbul with its Erenköy and Doğruyol…
Back then, the Unionists had converted the Grand National Assembly-which at the time was nothing more than a stone building-into an Agricultural College, just like the Model Farm surrounding it and the few scattered buildings there… In her memoir, Halide Edip writes that carriages could barely make it up to the Assembly building. In fact, everyone who came to Ankara and Anatolia in those days recounts similar stories. Inns converted from stables, infested with bedbugs and lice; epidemics of cholera and malaria ravaging the land; and relentless bandits roaming the mountains at night… I recall Muhittin Birgen’s memoirs; the journey he undertook from İnebolu to Anatolia for the War of Independence was, for him, nothing short of an ordeal, a torment. The same holds true for Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. The ground floor of the village house where Halide Edip stayed was a stable. At that time, Ankara was not a capital but a headquarters, whilst Anatolia appeared not as a settlement but as a road, a route. That same Anatolia was both ravaged by occupation during the war and engulfed in dozens of uprisings, large and small.
Let us continue with Halide Edip once more. The Anatolia depicted in her memoirs, despite her desire to portray it in all its joy as if it were a pastoral novel, seems instead to be a cold reality where historical shock and pain relentlessly confront the reader (2016, 255–256);
Sivrihisar lies at the mouth of a great volcano. The crescent-shaped cliffs overlook the Sakarya. As I travelled there with Major Tahsin, these cliffs seemed so high to me that their tips appeared to touch the sky. The largest village on the road to Sivrihisar is Mülk. It had never occurred to me that such a village existed in Anatolia. It had vineyards, gardens and two- or three-storey stone buildings. This time, however, it had been blown up with dynamite. Women were tending to sick children amidst the rubble. Some were trying to feed the children by gathering whatever they could find amongst the burnt crops in the fields. The Greeks had done the most damage here, burning and destroying everything, and eliminating the means of survival. There was not a roof over anyone’s head, nor any livestock or food left. We spoke with Fatma, the wife of Grandfather Kerem: ‘Oh, my child,’ she said. ‘Why are you sitting here writing? What use is writing to a people whose throats have been slit? This village had three thousand cattle and sheep. Now I cannot even find an egg to feed my wounded husband and my daughter.’ Not a single chicken remains. There isn’t even any salt! If only one could add a pinch of salt to the water whilst boiling the leaves and grass… As these thoughts flashed through my mind at lightning speed, our plane entered a patch of turbulence. That dreadful possibility I’d thought of just moments before-but was forced to banish from my mind-came back to me. What if our plane crashes? What if we were to crash here on these mountain peaks, on these desolate outcrops, in this arid landscape where not a single fire burns? The turbulence lasts so long and is so violent that some of the passengers begin to scream in the darkness. Just like an earthquake. Yes, an earthquake; with its eerie nature, its sudden onset, and its terrifying sounds-an earthquake in the sky…
There are images of earthquakes that never leave my mind. Anatolia is a cradle, but it sways just like a real cradle. The most recent one was the Marmara Earthquake. It happened at three in the morning, and once again at such a dark hour. Why do the big earthquakes happen at night? To suffocate people in their sleep? To bind their hands and feet like a nightmare? Screams reach my ears from beneath the rubble. People used to tell of a fireball shooting from the sea to the sky in Gölcük, and of wild beasts descending from the mountains at night to devour those trapped beneath the rubble. Has it always been like this? Has life always unfolded in this way? Is this why, for centuries, we have gazed hopelessly at these barren, mostly desolate lands like Mecnun? What calamity is it that casts these people aside from the world, abandoning them to their fate like strange creatures of clay in the midst of a desert, yet keeps them spinning endlessly within the same cycle of life?
It reminds me of the story of Sarıpınar in 1914, as told by Reşat Nuri in “Değirmen”. In the district of Sarıpınar in Bursa, there was actually no earthquake; the only building that collapsed was one in which the district governor was also present. However, matters take such a turn, and events unfold in such a way, that a major earthquake (Zilzâl is Arabic; it must mean a great, terrifying tremor-it truly has a chilling ring to it. Just like ‘Sayhâ’, it is a word that fills one with such dread; it means ‘scream’, and its close and almost thematic usage sends a shiver down one’s spine), a report of an earthquake spreads to Istanbul, and even to the rest of the world. For this reason, the villagers and the district governor join forces to demolish even the sound structures. Creating the image of an earthquake in the village was by no means difficult; indeed, the whole place is in a state of ruin and desolation due to neglect. It is, in short, much like Ziya Paşa’s line: “I have wandered the lands of Islam and seen nothing but ruins.” This place is, in fact, a constant disaster zone due to deprivation, poverty, neglect and disrepair. For this reason, the people of Sarıpınar have no trouble at all in creating the appearance of a disaster. The local and foreign delegations that visit are also deeply moved by the scenes of devastation they witness.
How long has this perpetual scene of devastation existed in Anatolia? How many times has this place been destroyed? How long have we been here? Is it only earthquakes and natural disasters that have ravaged this land? It is said that Turks have been here for a thousand years. Even before that, it was one of the world’s oldest and most fertile settlements. The Neolithic Revolution took place here. Some even call it the cradle of civilization. A cradle. It is rocking. It is not just the places that have been rocked and reduced to ruins that look like rubble; even the places that do not rock appear as such. As if toys scattered around the cradle... Anatolia is a cradle, and we are all sleeping inside it. Either we are sleeping, or we wake up now and then and weep... A cradle. This allegory, this way of thinking, fills me with wonder. The ancients, the very oldest of them, tell of a Mongol invasion. I wonder, did we sway like this cradle beneath the elephants’ feet? It is said that the elephants were led over the ruins of castles and the pits filled with people. Have these disasters befallen us from those days?
In his novel “The Hundredth Name”, Amin Maalouf identifies the Anatolian Plateau as the most arduous and disastrous stretch of the journey that begins in Lebanon and extends to Izmir. Although it is a novel, it paints a picture that aligns with the reality of Anatolia in the 1600s. Indeed, as the novel progresses, the journey reaches the brink of collapse due to epidemics and a breakdown in morale;
7 September. When the innkeeper told us of certain rumors coming from Konya, our joy turned to dread: according to the rumors, there was a plague in that city and its gates were closed to all travelers (…) The caravan leader is considering pressing on a little further and, if conditions become too difficult, changing course... 30 September. The rumors of the plague near Konya, alas, proved to be true. Our caravan skirted the outskirts of the city and headed west, pitching their tents in the Meram gardens (…) We arrived here at midday and, despite the circumstances, I was almost tempted to call it a ‘festive’ atmosphere, but it wasn’t; rather, it had the air of a carefree, resigned stroll (…) I cannot tear my eyes away from the city so close by, where I can make out the watchtowers, domes and minarets. From there rises another smoke, shrouding everything, darkening everything. Thankfully, this stench does not reach us, but we all sense it through our nostrils and our blood runs cold. The plague, the smoke of death. (Maalouf, 2011, 82–83)
The author continues to envision an Anatolian journey turned into a trial by epidemic diseases;
This quarantine lasted exactly four days, right up until I reached Afyonkarahisar. The Black Opium Fortress… It was a town with an unsettling name, from whose summit rose the dark silhouette of a truly ancient fortress. No sooner had I settled into the travellers’ inn than the caravan leader came to find me. He told me he had been mistaken, that it was clear I had not caught the plague, that he had observed I had recovered, and that I could join the caravan first thing tomorrow morning. My nephews were about to argue with him, but I silenced them (…) What I did not tell him, nor my relatives, was that, despite appearances, I had not recovered at all. I felt a scattered fire deep within my body, warming me like a pile of embers burnt in winter, warming me ceaselessly, and I was astonished that those around me did not notice the redness on my face. The following night was hell. I was shivering, fidgeting constantly, gasping for breath; my clothes and sheets felt as though they were soaked through. Amidst the chaos of voices and echoes swirling in my weakened mind, I heard the ‘widow’ murmuring at my bedside: ‘He cannot go tomorrow. If he sets out in this state, he’ll die before reaching Listana.” Listana was one of the countless names for Istanbul in the local dialect of Cübeyl: just like Islambol, Byzantium, Dersaadet, Constantinople… Indeed, the next morning I didn’t even attempt to get up. Most likely, I had exhausted my strength in the days gone by; the body needed time to recover (2011, 91)
At some point during the journey, the caravan leaders tell them the story of a cursed, ghostly caravan that goes missing in the region and is always seen around Konya. Like a terrifying tale of pirates on land… According to the story, those who encounter this caravan and speak to them are also cursed and are forced to wander here with them for eternity;
But at midday today, we did indeed come across a caravan. We had stopped by a stream to have our meal. The servants and attendants were rushing about gathering twigs and brushwood to light a fire when, suddenly, a caravan appeared on a nearby hilltop. Within a minute or two, it had reached us. A rumour began to circulate: ‘It’s them; this is the ghost caravan!’ We were all paralysed, as if a strange shadow had fallen over our foreheads; our eyes fixed on the approaching figures, we could speak only in hushed tones. They, however, were approaching amidst a cloud of dust and mist; it seemed to us they were drawing near very quickly. When they reached us, they dismounted from their animals; they seemed overjoyed to have encountered others like themselves and found a cool spot, running towards us. With huge smiles on their faces, they began greeting us in Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Armenian. Our people were in a difficult situation, but not a single one stirred from their spot; none stood up, none returned the greeting. “Why aren’t you speaking?” they finally asked. “Have we unintentionally offended you?” Not a hair on anyone’s head moved. The visitors were clearly annoyed by this situation and were just about to turn and leave when suddenly our caravan leader burst out laughing; from the other side, the other caravan leader’s even louder laughter answered him. “Damn you,” said the latter, walking with his arms outstretched. “Did you tell them that ghost caravan story of yours again? And they’ve all swallowed that tall tale! Everyone stood up this time; they began hugging and kissing, inviting one another to make amends (2011, 87)
It’s truly thought-provoking that such terrifying, sickening tales-almost befitting the deserts "should emerge from Anatolia. Gülten Akın’s lines come to mind;
The lord of Bolu cut off the light;
the moon fell between his eyebrows...
In “The Man in Search of Water”, Şevket Süreyya Aydemir recounts a journey through Anatolia. It is a complete disaster. The author, conscripted from Edirne and sent to the Caucasus Mountains, writes that he has never undertaken such a treacherous, exhausting, desolate journey-one that drives a man to despair-neither in the East nor in the West;
The mansions, stately homes, gardens, vineyards and villages nestled against green hillsides in the Istanbul suburbs were soon left behind. Then the train plunged into the heart of the night. As dawn broke, I opened my eyes in the corner of the compartment where I had curled up. The train was travelling through the middle of a steppe. This steppe bore no resemblance to the lands I had seen and grown accustomed to until then. As the journey continued, the barrenness only increased: bare hills, parched, arid fields scorched under a harsh sun (…) You see villages where people live underground. Using tools akin to prehistoric pickaxes, capable of piercing the ancient volcanic ash deposited over geological eras, man had carved out niches beneath a hill for himself: a roof, a room, a stable, a barn. Within these niches, you find a heavy yet perpetually cool air. Separate spaces have been hollowed out within the walls for jars, vats, rugs and containers. You can sometimes pass from one of these underground dwellings, these cave homes, to another. In these subterranean passages, where a dim light seeps in through openings to the air, you wander like a cave dweller from prehistoric times. You find yourself wondering, ‘In which era, where am I living?’ Everything is separate from you; everything is alien to you. This world seems to have been torn from another planet. It is a remnant of another age. On this dead, barren crust of earth, where not even a bush grows, oxen, cows and donkeys are as scarce as goats. What is called ‘crop’ on the mountain is a scrawny, scattered thing that can only be harvested with calloused hands. You imagine that both people and animals make do with their share of this parched vegetation. Just as parched as black stones, just as black stones, having withered away in the cold and heat of the centuries, a wretched human existence that has completely forgotten the vitality called beauty stirs painful thoughts within you. When you sink onto an earthen bench on the ground, these people try to appear courteous as they offer you their sour buttermilk in a scorched earthenware bowl. Children, women and men surround you. When you look at them, you feel ashamed of your brand-new clothes, your shoes that haven’t yet worn out, and even the fresh, healthy colour of your face. As for the young men, they have been sent to foreign battlefields to protect this very life and to pay their dues for the bounties of this world. Those left behind in these caves cannot even bring themselves to utter the names of those who have gone, or even the names of the lands they have gone to. (Aydemir, 1965, 81–82)
Aydemir describes the tension between Anatolia and Istanbul implied by the regionalism theme in Halide Edip’s writing, contrasting it with this landscape that already appears as a ‘ruin’;
The salt steppes are vast plains, their horizons fringed by bare mountains, where patches of salty earth glisten like silver lakes in the golden sunlight from afar. Just as one thinks they have crossed one such salt steppe, they find themselves entering another. Here, the horizon appears to the traveller as if it were endless and despairing, as though it could never be reached (…) These lands are the bed of ancient, now-dried-up seas. The dark shape visible in the middle of the steppe or beneath the horizon is the roof of an earthen inn; even if you do not enter it, you must reach it to find a sip of bitter water in its well, which is reached by a ladder. Your lips are chapped. Your knees are raw. The salty particles swept up by the winds mix with your sweat, enveloping your body in a sticky, increasingly slimy film. In your mind’s eye, you picture the fountains of Yakacık, Maltepe and Soğanlı village-where you were just a few days ago in Istanbul-with water gushing from their spouts like streams beneath the shade of their towering plane trees. Now it feels as though years have passed between you and these things that come to life in your imagination. You long to kneel, to stretch out into the cool shade of your imagination, even to die. But we must not lose our resolve. You search within yourself for support and explanations. The sense of God, the sense of homeland, the paradises promised to every Muslim whose foot is touched by a single speck of dust on the path of jihad, the victories awaiting you on the fronts you will reach, the ranks of martyrdom and heroism-all these come to life in your soul, one by one. And if even these consolations are not enough, you say: ‘On these paths, we are paying a debt.’ We are repaying the debt for the sins committed by Istanbul, with its gushing fountains, against this exhausted, unknown Anatolia-which has been plundered and exploited for centuries, sought out for nothing but tribute in the form of wealth and lives. This explanation seems to you even more compelling than all the other justifications. You bow your head and now crawl rather than walk. The day draws to a close, the sun sinks behind you, and a wild, desolate silence settles over the salty desert. At last, in the solitude of the desert, you reach the thatched roof to which you had pinned all your hopes from afar. But you see that the earthen dam has collapsed, and the well’s waters have receded and dried up (1965, 83).
Nâzım Hikmet’s Human Landscapes are much the same;
Land as far as the eye can seeDead straight
Completely naked
And as hot as a chilli
A single tall poplar tree in the west
Even though it still roams the steppe, the scent of the withered thyme
The cornflowers had long since withered
And the thistles were nothing but thorns. (p. 271, 2015).
Is Yakup Kadri’s “Vatan Yolunda” any different? All of them feature the same desolate, heart-rending landscapes of Anatolia. In his memoir “Zeytindağı”, Falih Rıfkı recounts his journey to the Yemen front as an aide-de-camp to Cemal Pasha. The worst part of the journey is, once again, Anatolia. They cannot find any respite until they reach the plains of Aleppo. The Empire had even developed Arabia and built railways, yet Anatolia remained just as desolate, retaining its ‘ruined’ appearance. So much so that, whilst returning by train from the abandoned front, Cemal Pasha told Falih Rıfkı that if he had the chance to be born again, he would work only in Anatolia and serve here. Indeed, the collapse of the Syrian front demonstrated that the Empire had lost all hope of winning the war. Even throughout all these years, the gulf between Anatolia and the other regions of the Empire’s territory remained glaringly evident (Atay, 1938, 43);
We had filled the vast desert with buildings and gardens. We were too late. Neither Syria nor Palestine belonged to us any longer. Just as we had lost Rumelia in material terms, so had we lost these lands in spiritual terms. We were driving ourselves on, not out of a sense of reality, but out of a sense of history. Anatolia had to be rebuilt from top to bottom; cities, villages, houses and fields had to flourish; the Turks had to become fully Westernized; and then, from Aleppo to the Red Sea, we had to move with population, technology and capital. Yet when we crossed Anatolia and knocked on Aleppo’s gates, we began to see civilization and crowds. Aleppo was a great city, Damascus a great city, Beirut a great city, Jerusalem a great city; the atmosphere of Lebanon was a hundred times more alien to us than that of Dobruja. Yet everywhere we went, we would say: ‘This is ours.’ Damascus was as much ours as our own home, Lebanon as much ours as our own garden... There was no doubt that this sense of ownership and authority flowed through our veins like blood. And to explain ourselves to the hotelier, the restaurant owner, even the post office clerk, we were slowly learning Arabic. The train leaving Damascus takes three days and three nights to reach Medina. We would not even leave Medina behind. Turkey without Medina? That would have been the suicide of imperialism. What is Medina? We had come down to greet a single ‘bear’ that would pass by one day. Whilst the train was there, they had been walking on foot all the way from Adana. Some three thousand frail, pale and ragged Turkish children passed before us, weary and exhausted. Do you know where they were going? To Aden!
As I ponder all this painful, wounded past, this disastrous landscape that seems to be nothing but a heap of ruins, and the words written as if in unison, I cannot help but ask myself whether it is this dark sea we are flying over, or we ourselves, who are the ‘Strangers’. The Wild. Indeed, now we are becoming the Wild. Yakup Kadri’s work comes to mind. Our plane is perhaps leaving some place near Uşak behind. Faint, feeble lights. As if a fire had been lit on the mountain and the embers remained…
Yaban tells the story of Ahmet Celal, the ‘son of a pasha’ and a veteran of the Great War who has lost one arm, and his period of convalescence in a village in Anatolia. Just as the novel “Ankara” resembles an unfinished utopia, the Anatolia depicted in “Yaban” can be seen as realistic-and in some places even exaggerated-a dystopian version of it, or indeed its antithesis. In “Yaban”, there is no trace of Halide Edip’s cheerful, optimistic style, nor of the love of nature, innocence, or peace drawn from poverty and deprivation. The people here live in almost animal-like conditions and, over time, become crippled in a human sense. Admittedly, the one described as ‘Yaban’-the one bearing the epithet ‘Yaban’-is the one-armed war veteran himself; yet, much like the term ‘crippled’, these usages carry an ironic undertone and are employed to convey the opposite.
It was my second week here when I asked Mehmet Ali: ‘Why do the women run away from me alone?’ ‘It’s because you’re a stranger, sir!’ That word ‘stranger’ really annoyed me at first. Then I realised that the Anatolian villagers, just as the ancient Greeks used to call everyone else ‘barbarians’, call every stranger a ‘stranger’. One day, one day, will I be able to prove to them that I am not a stranger! The blood in my veins is the same blood that flows in theirs. We speak the same language. We have all come together along the same historical and geographical paths. Will I be able to prove that we are all servants of the same God, that the same political destiny and the same social bonds have bound us together in a bond of brotherhood, parenthood and kinship? But with what words, with what voices? I can barely find the words to express even the small, everyday needs of life. How can I possibly discuss such general topics? With each passing day, I understand it better. The Turkish intellectual, the Turkish enlightened one, is a strange, solitary figure within this vast and desolate world called the Turkish nation. A hermit? No! I should call him a strange creature. Indeed; imagine a person whose race or gender is unclear. As he moves deeper into the land he calls his homeland, he feels himself drifting further from his own roots. Even if he does not feel it, the void that forms around him, the cold and repellent air, tells him that he is an aberration, a strange plant torn from his own soil.
Soil… roots… a strange plant, and moreover, uprooting. How strangely thoughts, associations and images intertwine in my mind. Like the riot of colours on the horizon, they merge into one another until they become unrecognisable, indistinguishable. Just like a cup of tea that has been steeped for too long, bitter yet with an aroma of immense power… The peculiar taste of Anatolia lingers on the tip of my tongue. These thoughts carry me back to years ago, to a spring afternoon, to my late grandfather’s vineyard. After a long journey between cities, we find him resting beneath a tree opposite the vineyard cottage. The sun is setting behind the opposite hills. A smile plays on his lips; a gold tooth glints. “How are you?” I ask eagerly, perhaps with a touch of fervent curiosity… He looks at my face, laughs at length, and says not a word. During this long, meaningful smile, the gold tooth in his mouth glints brightly in the sun. At first, his silence startles me, but then, for some reason, I’m reminded of Raif Efendi’s inexplicable silence in Sabahattin Ali’s “The Madonna with the Fur Coat”. Clearly, he too has those black-bound notebooks where he keeps his life and emotions locked away, but he remains silent, simply smiling. A moment later, still smiling, he says, “Thank you, my boy, you’re a good lad, showing such thoughtfulness, asking after my well-being…” and there is silence. “What can a cultured man do amidst such people who know nothing of manners or consideration? We spend our days talking to the vineyard, the garden, the plants, and the animals.” I feel startled at this answer, which lands on my face like a slap. Just as I feel right now, at this hour of the night, whilst flying over the pitch-black, lightless expanse of the Anatolian Plateau-which resembles a desert-and thinking of Yakup Kadri… time stands still. Time does not exist here. How else can one explain the sameness of the feeling from ten years ago and the feeling of the present moment, this existence in the infinite?
Why is there no trace of the concepts of time or distance in these? As the days go by, I find the answer to this question within myself. For my own sense of time has grown rather faint ever since I arrived here. In the early months, I used to forget the names of the days. Now I confuse the months and merely sense the changing of the seasons. Who knows how at ease I shall be on the day I forget my age and the past behind me.
Ahmet Celal Efendi, a stranger who grew up in a palace-like home and lost an arm in the war, wanders through the heart of Anatolia, sometimes venturing into the market with his missing arm, hoping to be understood and even, in some places, to be appreciated. But having been understood in that place where time stands still and having set aside the notion of ‘becoming one of them’ for later, he has gradually begun to question life, the values he believes in, himself and the world, and indeed, time itself. Indeed, what is time? On my own long journeys across our country, whilst circling the foot of a mountain or a river, or the shore of the sea, and gazing at an ancient and majestic tree whilst pondering its history, this question has often crossed my mind. This tree-or let’s take a stone, for example-what has it witnessed, whom has it observed, and how? How does time flow in different parts of the world? What is the meaning of distance? I recall Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now”. That sort of unconscious kingdom established by soldiers travelling along a river from Vietnam into the depths of Cambodia… How a person, faced with these deepening distances and time reaching into nothingness, drifts away from themselves-or rather, by intensifying within themselves, repeatedly loses and then rediscovers their meaning and purpose in the world, and why they are there… I’d heard it’s the same in the desert. I recall David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”. People who lose themselves, playing like small children with the dust swirling from a sand dune, and who are ‘held’ by the desert’s desolation-by the audacity and harshness of that desolation-surrendering to it, losing themselves within it and finding themselves anew. The desert as the unconscious. A place of desolation and the loss of meaning…
A village in Central Anatolia is a frozen mansion. Here, distance has swallowed you whole. You stand frozen in horror within that distance. Truly, in this village that resembles an ancient Hittite ruin, what distinguishes the people from the broken statues unearthed from the ground (…) I walk, and walk. I want to walk like this for hours, days, months on end, without ever stopping. I know that these barren waves of earth have no end. Once you cross one, another appears; once you cross that one, yet another. I shall leave this village behind me. In three or four hours, another village just like this will appear before me. I shall flee again, I shall flee again…
This is an earthquake essay, yes. It is not an essay that addresses the debates surrounding the earthquake of the present day-the sort we will mourn for three days and then forget, the sort we will drape in black and then cast from our minds. It is an essay that describes, as it comes from within, the sediment left behind by a history that centuries have swept over us like grains of sand in the desert. My thoughts as I passed over the Anatolian Plateau one night, a pitch-black, pitch-dark night. My thoughts on the people who lived here for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years yet left nothing behind-not even a standing stone—and on the crops, on the wheat. Our thoughts. What we have fled from, what we have left behind. What we have forgotten. What we cannot account for. We too shall come and go. Who knows what will remain in our wake? These barren lands-frozen, muddied, reduced to rubble, turned into a heap of ruins-with the serenity and lament of a dervish?
Is this really all that is left for us-or rather, all that is in our ‘fate’-of this truth? A ruin that spins endlessly outside of time and the world, constantly crumbling?
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