A Little Island Time

Well, it's only been a day since my last post but I have some free time so let's do this. This morning I woke up early but then I slapped myself and went back to sleep. I'm not working here! Later in the morning I took my breakfast and then hitchhiked to the town in the center of the island, about 4km from my "beach" hotel. There's really no beach to speak of. The center town, that everyone calls Merkez though that's not what my map claims, has only 8600 people living on it, and it's about 80% of the island's population. It's small like I said, but not so cute.

I asked some people in a tea house which road to head down to hitchhike to the next town on my list, Tepekuy, but they advised me that there is no traffic to the eastern half of the island and that it's impossible to hitch. One of the guys in the cafe offered to drive me to the nearby Greek town of Zetinli for a few bucks so I did that. It was a short ride, maybe 5 km but I appreciated getting my bearings at least so that I could walk back.

Zetinli was a larger town in the past but a lot of people left the island in 1925 during the population exchange that I'll surely discuss later. Also, a lot more people left in 1993 when the military used eminent domain to take most of the town's olive orchards occupying flat ground so that they could build a small air base. There are only about 50 permanent residents left, and they're all old men. This was all explained to me by the owner of the local coffee house, a Greek man who moves here every summer to sell coffee to tourists. While there I had a few cups and also ate my lunch of bread and olives that I picked up from the store for $1.

Oh, I also hiked up a mountain behind the town, or at least I went up as far as I could. I foolishly went out in shorts and sandals assuming that there would be some shepherds trails but instead I had to blaze my own way through the thorny bushes. The goats cleared out some routes and a lot of the bush was flowering Rockrose which doesn't scratch so it was ok. We've got Rockrose in our garden back home, but I love they color they have here.

Half way up the mountain I found a small hut with a tree to rest under so I parked it for a long while enjoying the view. There was also a spring of fresh water up there coming out of a pipe so I filled up my water bottle. I've been drinking tap water for a long time now and I have yet to get sick. Still, I've got some antibiotics prepared for the fateful day that I do get struck down.

Like I mentioned earlier, there's not much traffic to the Eastern half of the island. That's because all that's there are some old ghost towns and only taxi driven tourists want to see them. There are ghost towns throughout western Turkey actually, and they all have to do with the Turkish War of Independence that ended in 1925. This is a complicated issue, but here's how I understand it. The Ottomans (Turks) were on the losing side of WWI and immediately after the war the Allies took over the the Dardanelles like they tried to previously in Gallipoli. Also, they promised a lot of Ottoman territory to the Greeks. See, the Greeks saw themselves as the decedents of the Byzantines and it was their dream to remake it by taking back Istanbul and western Turkey for the Christians. To that end, they invaded Turkey and tried to destroy the new Turkish Republic that was founded by Mustaffa Kemal. The Greeks lost however and in 1925 the war was ended with a population exchange. The Orthodox Turks were forced to move to Greece and the Muslim Greeks were forced to move to Turkey. That's the peace brokered by the UN. The Greeks got almost all the islands and the Turks got the mainland. There were a lot more Orthodox Turks than Muslim Greeks however, so many of the Orthodox tons in Western Turkey were left vacant and many are still abandoned to this day.

I'm finishing up this next post where I'm with Sam, and hopefully I'll be able to post that today.