Rediscovering Turkey’s northeast: a journey from Trabzon to Erzurum

Fifty years ago, on a Black Sea beach near Trabzon, in Turkey’s far northeast, the fire from a hastily assembled pile of driftwood blazed cheerfully in the dark, warming a panful of locally bought vegetables mixed with tinned beans from the stock in the back of our Land Rover, along with the remains of several suicidal moths that had been attracted to our dinner by the light. Extra protein, we joked, four boys fresh out of school, opening bottles of Turkish beer to wash down the resulting mess. With typical teenage insouciance – and with 4,800km of driving across Europe from the English Midlands and many nights of illegal camping behind us – we felt invincible. Or at least we did until three men with large guns stepped into the firelight. Perhaps we should have expected this. At that time, the Black Sea was also bordered by several Soviet republics and Iron Curtain countries. Turkey had joined Nato, and had reason to be cautious. When our visitors proved to be official rather than criminal, we produced passports, pantomimed our innocence, and with broken German as a lingua franca, invited them to eat. They didn’t complain about the moths, and we parted on friendly terms. In the mid-1970s, tourism to Turkey was in its infancy. Istanbul was distant, expensive and exotic. Although cruise ships sometimes stopped at Izmir, on the coast of the Aegean Sea, to bus passengers to the extensive Roman ruins at Ephesus, that was about the limit of most foreign investigations. But we were nearly 1,450km further east, in territory that had been part of neighbouring Georgia until 1921, and travelling at a time when many of Turkey’s roads were still gravel at best. This was less a holiday and more of an expedition, partly inspired by British ex-military linguist Michael Pereira’s East of Trebizond, an engaging piece of long-form travel writing, rich with both facts and intimate observations, published in 1971. Turkey is now the world’s fourth-most-popular international travel destination, but except for the addition of the naturally sculpted stone spires of Cappadocia, conventional travel patterns have endured, and Turkey’s northeast remains little known. Turkish-speaking Pereira is now so forgotten that he doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia page, but as I look down from the sixth floor of a Ramada Plaza at a blue beachside pool surrounded by orderly palms, I hold the same copy of his book I brought with me 50 years ago, and wonder what he would make of the city now. “Trebizond,” wrote Pereira, “like many of the best places, grows slowly upon one’s affections: it hides its charms: they lurk in narrow twisting back-streets which the casual or taxi-borne visitor will never see.” These charms include ancient Georgian Orthodox churches with stubby towers of warm, creamy stone, such as what is now the Ortamahalle Museum, hidden in a tangle of steep uphill streets and containing displays of late-Ottoman-era domestic items – typewriters, embroidery, a tiffin box. Fine Ottoman mansions include a white-painted wedding cake of a house where the founder of the modern Turkish state, Kemal Atatürk, once stayed. It has been preserved in its early 20th century state, all moulded ceilings, chandeliers and gilt-framed mirrors in elegant reception rooms. Back on the limited flat space along the coastline, the 13th century Hagia Sophia church, now a mosque, its exterior scored with sailors’ graffiti, has a dignified Byzantine look to its interior marble columns. Since 2013, when it was deemed a Muslim house of worship once more, at prayer time, screens are lowered to keep its substantial psychedelic Christian frescoes out of sight. But in 1975, the main attraction to us was the Sumela Monastery, 48km inland on mountain roads, shown in Pereira’s black-and-white photos as clinging spectacularly to a cliff face high above a sheer drop. We found the rutted track to the site blocked by a broken-down lorry, but we hadn’t come all that way to be thwarted, and the Land Rover eventually scraped by, with much shouted encouragement from local people, although not without scratches. “At first,” wrote Pereira, “it appears to be a sort of mirage: for how any building of such great size could possibly have been constructed in such an improbable position seems little short of miraculous.” There was a narrow and slippery path that zigzagged up to the great battered curtain of a ruined 72-room outer building, screening an interior cavern dotted with chapels, monastic cells and a well house, all decayed and overgrown, connected by uneven scrambles up and down crumbling staircases. With teenage enthusiasm, we chucklingly photographed the toilets – simply holes in a floor jutting out over the abyss. The 4th century site, with vast views across the valley to thickly wooded slopes, remains just as spectacular, but there’s now a general sense of order, and a tactful restoration clearly labels hammam (bath house), library and accommodation for novices. The surviving frescoes covering the main church, which is part cave, are mainly 18th and 19th century, although there are remnants of those from earlier eras. They’ve been picked at by non-Christians, particularly around the faces, but remain remarkably colourful. We were often glad of our Land Rover’s off-road capabilities, but it’s now a smooth run eastward from Trabzon along the coast to Rize. Back then, the local economy was based on hazelnuts, and they are still plentifully available, but the staple today is tea. At Rize’s Çaykur factory, that crop is immortalised at a museum in the narrow-waisted shape of a Turkish tea glass, seven storeys high, that explains the leaf’s introduction and its management. There’s tea tasting, with explanations of the manufacturing process, and an inspection of the shiny machines that variously ferment, twist and dry the leaves. Further east and inland, at the Çeçeva Tea Gardens, in Haremtepe, steep hillside plantations are laced together by tiny metal cable cars, used to transport the plucked product, and occasionally more adventurous pickers. A cafe offers views over hatched slopes where young Turkish visitors dress up for selfies in the colourful local attire, with its skirt of broad vertical stripes in red and black, carrying woven baskets strapped to their backs. The cafe serves sütlaç, Turkey’s custardy rice pudding deliciously topped with chopped hazelnuts, which reminds me that as boys, we often bought this dish roadside as a supplement to our own inept cooking. Still further east and a little up into the inland hills, efforts to diversify the economy include DoğadaKal, a collection of extraordinary steep-roofed bungalows of stone and wood set amid hazelnut trees, their doorsteps lapped by wild strawberries. Mine is fitted with a jacuzzi, electric blinds and a wood-burning stove, and a stream passes under the glass floor. In the 1970s, we camped wild, and Pereira stayed in primitive guest houses, writing of one mountain village stay, “I only woke once, at about three in the morning, and for some time lay listening to the noise which had disturbed my sleep: the howling of jackals.” But today’s quiet at DoğadaKal is broken only by a frog chorus that works in opposition to the motion-detecting lights, turning itself off as I approach, rather than on. A little further up the road, towards Georgia, at Caglayan, there’s a cluster of largely abandoned mansions belonging to the Hemshin people, of Armenian origin, built from a grid of blackened chestnut wood into whose gaps large, lightly trimmed river boulders are then inserted, giving the buildings a checkerboard appearance. Two centuries old, and set amid orchards of hazelnut, pear, apple and kiwi, they stand in sober, dignified clusters around central wooden storehouses that are perched on tall, rodent-proof wooden mushrooms. Towards Erzurum, the road up into what Pereira called the Pontic Alps, along an old trading route that once connected Persia and Europe, is now smoothly metalled rather than the gravel track of 50 years ago, but it still clings to the sides of a narrow defile above a rapidly running river. Bridges such as the 20-metre-high Çinçiva Köprüsü, completed in 1699, make stone seem impossibly light and airy. Irresistibly photogenic, they leap over foaming rivers in a single high and slender arch. But there are still corners of this region that roads do not reach, such as the village of Kendini Koruyan Mahalle, whose name means “the neighbourhood that protects itself”. Up a track, a smartly red-painted gate prevents tumbles into an abyss, across which a small cluster of ancient wooden mansions can be seen. These are reached by using an intercom to summon an oversized red milk crate of a vehicle with two wooden seats, suspended from a cable, which arrives with a whirr to offer a wobbling ride from one plunging green slope to the other. Most of Kendini Koruyan Mahalle’s few houses, up on stilts to baffle mice, are in a state of picturesque disrepair. However, one family of three remains in perfect peace, growing their own food, harvesting honey from a row of busy hives and entertaining occasional visitors in a small cafe, Çulina, with views of a narrow stream winding down the lush valley. The main sounds are the roar of a distant waterfall and the clucking of chickens. Onur was born in Izmir, but every summer, his father brought him back to his roots, and now they live here with Onur’s wife, Asla, and a lack of mod cons save for electricity. “How did you persuade her to live here?” I ask him. “Actually, she persuaded me. Because we were good in the city, but she said, ‘I want to live here, OK?’” Further inland, the ancient trade route is guarded by the ruin of the 700-year-old Castle Zil, its tower a threatening finger of stone surrounded by substantial battlements that once offered trade caravans overnight accommodation and storage of goods. Higher still, in the broader alpine Ayder Valley, the modern world suddenly intrudes, with offers of mountain tours in off-road vehicles or on quad bikes. There’s a hint of rural Switzerland in comfortable chalet-like hotels, a plunging waterfall and cows wandering the streets. Nearer to Erzurum, the Narman Peribacaları, or “Fairy Chimneys”, only recently opened to visitors and still unknown to most Turks, are weather-worn spires of stark red rock topped by apparently independent round boulders. They look like stone candlesticks, rivalling in their surreal and unlikely shapes those of infinitely Instagrammed Cappadocia. Erzurum is nearly 2,000 metres up on a plain surrounded by mountains. Although down-at-heel, it seemed something of a brash and busy metropolis in 1975 after drives on lonely roads through isolated villages, and the impact is much the same now. “Stern, rather sinister, yet in perfect harmony with its surroundings,” wrote Pereira. I remember the twin-fluted red-brick minarets of a 13th century madrasa and the squat bulk of a medieval fortress, both still standing. We parked beneath the castle’s walls and scrambled unaccompanied over its squat bulk, climbing for views across a now certainly larger city, and which now has a thriving modern ski resort, inconceivable 50 years ago. It’s a pleasure to see the ancient buildings again, but the city is stern no more. This return trip to northeastern Turkey was supported by GoTürkiye

Rediscovering Turkey’s northeast: a journey from Trabzon to Erzurum

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}After 50 years, a writer returns to Turkey’s far-flung northeast and discovers what has changed – and what hasn’t

After 50 years, a writer returns to Turkey’s far-flung northeast and discovers what has changed – and what hasn’t