July 15, 2016: Ruins and Ruin

July 15, 2016 was one of the weirdest days.

Eda and I were on vacation in Izmir, Turkey, a beautiful city on the Aegean coast. In ancient times, this city was called Smyrna, one of the churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Legend reports that the city may have been founded by Alexander the Great.

That day started as any touristic day would. We spent the morning exploring a castle at the top of the city, admiring a gorgeous view of the mountains and the sea. 

This city hosted one of the greatest battles during the Turkish War of Independence, which took place after World War I. A national song is named after the city. The face of the first president of Turkey hangs on a banner suspended from a structure opposite the beautiful Clock Tower. 

(Didn't take this one)

With a full day still ahead of us, we embarked on quite a journey, with the destination being another ancient city that John mentions in Revelation, the city with the greatest library in the Ancient World, after Alexandria…

Pergamon

Unlike the ancient occupants of this land, Eda and I had the luxury of modern technology. We rode a train, then two minibuses. A minibus in Turkey, called 'dolmuş', feels like a roller coaster without the seatbelts and safety bars - it’s a wild ride.

After nearly 3 hours, we made it to Bergama, the Turkified version of the ancient city’s name. These days, this little town is renowned for its baths and spas. When we exited, gasping for air, we landed on an empty road with the city center on one side and fields of tan grass to the other. It was burning hot, the strong Anatolian sun holding us down.

We found an ancient building called the Red Basilica. 

 

Adjacent was an open air museum, which had a few statues resembling the mythological creatures of ancient Egypt, among other representations of gods.

It was here where I bought a refrigerator magnet of Hippocrates, which rests on my refrigerator to this day. For reasons still unknown, he was decapitated along the way. 

After, we found a sign that said “Antik Kent,” or ancient city. Walking up an incline, we found something that neither of us expected: a cable car up a mountain. The path up the mountain and view of the massive valley remains one of the greatest natural sites I’ve ever seen. The pictures are no substitute for the real thing.

And when we left the tram, we began the walk on historical ground. The site of these ruins held one of the most powerful and respected settlements in the ancient, Hellenic world. 

After the death of Alexander the Great, his General Lysimachus inherited control of the city, where it enjoyed prosperity for centuries. Under the rule of the subsequent Attalid Dynasty, the city flourished as a center for commerce, knowledge and art. The city possessed an incredible library that rivaled Alexandria, apparently housing 200,000 volumes.

It’s no coincidence that this city famously produced parchment, the (at the time) revolutionary tool used to document and store knowledge; the word ‘parchment’ comes from “Pergamon,” and the word for parchment in Spanish is “pergamino”. So the legacy of this city and its innovations lives on in our vocabulary today. Even at my current job, a company called “Parchment” delivers us academic documentation.

Rome peacefully annexed the city in 133 BC, forever entwining the city’s destiny with the Republic-turned-Empire. John of Patmos identified Pergamon as one of the Seven Churches of the Roman province of Asia, along with Smyrna (which we saw that morning) and Ephesus, which we visited the previous day. 

Like other great ancient societies, Pergamon’s star faded overtime, subject to conquests and regime change. However, I was thrilled to walk among the remains of this incredible ancient civilization. I remember learning about its library and its influence in school, but seeing it was something else. History really came to life during our travels in Turkey.

My favorite site was the theatre, which is built into the side of the mountain, an architectural technique notably utilized by Greeks. It's able to hold 10,000 people in the seats. 

While at the top of the theatre, a man at the bottom shouted up at us. We were able to hear each other as if we were two feet apart. I miss that feeling from the pre-COVID era.

After a snack, we rode the gondola down and found a company that could take us home to Izmir. What should have taken 1 hour in change turned into almost 3 due to traffic. And once we were dropped off, we still needed to take a metro back into the center of the city.  The metro was old, looking similar to the Soviet-era ones you find in Budapest.

Finally, we were under the cover of night, and we enjoyed a nice dinner by the sea. We hadn’t eaten anything substantial all day, so we filled up. 

We walked back to our hostel, and thought our day was over. 

And that was true..... Our day was over.

But the night was just beginning.

It was around 10:00. Eda was on her phone. I was on my computer. Suddenly, Eda began receiving messages. 

“Garrett,” she said in Turkish. “There’s a problem in Istanbul.”

“Eda, it’s Istanbul,” I flippantly replied. “There’s always a problem in Istanbul.”

Then, she took out Google Translate.....

This wasn't just a problem. As you can see, this was an actual military coup.

We spent all morning and afternoon soaking in history, imagining what the ancient occupants of this land felt. Now, we were watching in real time.

1997

I began to google, and it was true. There was a military coup happening across the country, for the 4th time in Turkey’s history, not including a 1997 transfer of power through military facilitation (called a memorandum or a post-modern coup). I learned all about Turkey's experience with coups as a study-abroad student in Istanbul. Whenever the government strayed too far from the secular and democratic model that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk intended, the military intervened; it's like checks and balances, but instead of separate branches of government and explicitly written definitions, it's the military stepping up and balancing the leader.

It's been a while, and some of the scenes may have been seen a day or two later, but I remember a few unique images and moments from that night's coverage.

I saw a video of a bunch of soldiers standing with their guns at the main bridge in Istanbul, the Bosphorus Bridge, connecting Europe to Asia. 

I also saw a video of a tank at the airport, an airport that ISIS had bombed less than a month before.

And I saw a video of what seemed to be a helicopter, shooting down at some buildings. It looked like an airstrike in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. 

I began receiving text messages and Facebook posts from family and friends. “What’s going on in Turkey, dude?” “Stay safe out there!” “Are you okay?” “What’s happening?” “We’re thinking about you!”

I read an article about a media office. Some soldiers had stormed the studios and forced an anchorwoman to read a statement, claiming they had taken over government buildings in Ankara, Istanbul and other cities around the country.

I heard that the President was on a plane trying to get permission to land in Germany or the United Kingdom. Not sure how true that was.

At some point, I heard that a lot of people were gathering at the Bosphorus, the ancient strait that divides the city between Europe and Asia, which has significance in Greek mythology; Hera found out that Zeus was cheating on her, so he turned his mistress, Io, into a cow. Hera sent a swarm of flies to chase her, forcing the cow to wander Earth. The cow found safety after crossing the Bosphorus; this is why 'Bosphorus" means "ox ford," or "cattle passage."

The president connected to CNN Turk via FaceTime, and told his people to go out onto the streets and fight for their democracy.

I walked outside to the hostel’s common room, and people were reading, playing cards, chatting, as if nothing major was going on in their counry.

These kinds of news updates plagued our night. We couldn’t sleep or rest easily knowing that pandemonium had broken loose. We had tickets to go to Bodrum, a coastal city further south, in the morning, and we considered staying put. Around 2 in the morning, we went to bed. 

When we woke up, we saw a video of soldiers dropping their weapons, placing their hands on their heads, and walking away from the bridge in shame and surrender. We also saw a video of a bunch of people beating a soldier. We saw the president in Istanbul give a speech about how the traitors will pay. He even called the event a gift from God.

And we were the lucky ones. My friends in Istanbul were giving updates, about how they heard people outside screaming “Allahu akbar”, among other things. 

To this day, people are still trying to figure out what happened that night. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories and scapegoats. We know that almost 300 people died. When we returned to Istanbul, we saw posters of deceased hanging in the metros - beautifully shot portraits, as well as biographical information, such as age, occupation, and their location on that infamous night. 

The Bosphorus Bridge was almost immediately renamed the “15 Temmuz Şehitleri Köprüsü,” or “The 15 July Martyrs Bridge.” Flags flew on skyscrapers, hung between minarets on mosques, and were suspended outside of apartments. 

Turkey has changed a lot since then: laws, livelihoods, and even their system of government. 

That morning of July 15th, my goal was to visualize history. By that night, even though I wasn’t in Istanbul or any of the other hotspots, I feel like I did. I certainly witnessed the changes on the ground afterwards. Police presence increased, demonstrations happened, and the value of the lira bounced back and forth, plummeting dramatically after a few years. Furthermore, lives and reputations were ruined. Many universities and media outlets were closed. Business assets were seized. Civil servants, academics, journalists, and judges lost their jobs, and thousands were stripped of their passports.

1 dollar equaled around 2.8 liras in June '16.

Upon watching the events and aftermath unfold, life as an expat felt more real than ever before. I was not on a vacation, which a lot of people may assume living abroad constantly simulates; I was among people with lives, families, livelihoods, savings, assets, and a national identity tied to a volatile situation, in a country with a unique and proud history, but also (in simple terms) a complicated economy and political system. The coup happened right smack in the middle of the year, but both sides of 2016 were rough: a stadium bombing, an airport bombing, a city center bombing, the coup, escalated tensions in neighboring Syria, and a refugee crisis. Barely an hour after the clock struck midnight on Janury 1, there was a shooting at a night club. 

Commemorative 1-Lira coin

And 9 months after the coup, a referendum took place to change the country's constitution from a Parliamentary to a Presidential system, and it narrowly passed by less than 2 million votes. Even though this constitutional change had been discussed and entertained for a while, one could say the coup provoked massive institutional change. To this day, though, Turkey has never truly recovered to what it was before the coup.

The 3 largest cities all voted against, and yet the changes still passed.

So in that one day, we experienced both old and new, ancient and modern, the past and the present. My visit to Pergamon and that devastating coup somehow felt connected. And there are certainly lessons from that day about history. 

We must not forget it. We must preserve it. We must continue to talk about it and report it honestly. We must find a way to celebrate humanity’s accomplishments (such as the innovating of parchment) and learn from its mistakes. We must share the stories so that the people who are lost to catastrophes (like the coup) do not die in vain.

And for personal reflection, in moments of crisis and tragedy, like this coup, as well as moments of peace, like our trip to Pergamon, let’s remember to express love, gratitude and value to the people closest to us. At this point in time, May 2020, all over the world, we can respect that.

Cafe in Ankara, Turkey named after the date of the coup.

Sources:

https://www.ancient.eu/pergamon/

https://www.britannica.com/place/Pergamum
https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Zeus's_Lovers/Io/io.html
Photos were used from sites such as The Guardian, BBC, and CNN.