It still feels wrong to spell it “Türkiye” instead of “Turkey” but that is now what it is called, so we should get used to it. We timed our trip to this country to coincide with a big political mess. The mayor of Istanbul has been arrested on corruption charges and everyone is blaming the long-time president Erdogan. It came the day before the mayor was going to be named as the candidate to challenge Erdogan’s party in the next election. Erdogan has been moving away from Democracy and has gradually become a more authoritarian government. Thousands of people are marching and protesting in Istanbul and it looks like that city is going to be messy for a while. Over 1400 people including journalists have been arrested. Luckily, we were staying on the coast in the city of Antalya and we didn’t see any unrest. Antalya is a city of 2.6 million people but we stayed mostly in the old town of Kaleici which was blocked off to most vehicles. Kaleici was right in the center of town but because it was pedestrian only, it felt like a much smaller town.
We have been talking a lot about how Airbnb doesn’t seem like the best choice anymore. Too many cities have large companies buying up multiple properties and using them for short term rentals. I want my tourist dollars to go to locals not to corporations. The Airbnb that we stayed in made me feel better about staying in short term rentals. We talked to the host who said it was her grandmother’s grandmother’s house. It was probably 200-300 years old. There are still other reasons to look at alternatives to Airbnb but we felt good about this decision to spend a week in built during the Ottoman Empire.
There is actually quite a bit to do in Antalya. We went on a free city walk tour. We ate a lot of fantastic Turkish food which is much more than the Doner Kebabs that I was excited for. We saw several small museums. There was an ethnographic “cultural” museum that showed how people lived in the past. We found the Whirling Dervish museum about the followers of Rumi, where they dance in circles in a trance looking at the sky. We also found a toy museum which, as expected, was a collection of antique toys.
The archeological museum was particularly impressive. It contained a lot of Roman sculptures and artifacts that were collected from the nearby Greek and Roman ruins of Perge. Of course we also took the tram out to Perge to see the ancient city itself. We have seen a lot of Greek and Roman ruins but the size of this old city really impressed us.
Antalya also has some excellent waterfalls. The Düden river has the upper falls on one side of town which cascade over some impressive caves in a river canyon. The Düden river then continues on to the coast and empties over a cliff into the Mediterranean Sea. We haven’t seen too many waterfalls that end up in the sea. It was really cool.
It was really cool just to be back in Türkiye. We were in Istanbul years ago when our kids were teenagers and this trip reminded us that it is a great country to explore (M went on a Rick Steves Turkey tour almost 20 years ago, and has fond memories, also). There is so much more that we would like to explore in this country and we are hopeful that the political situation will stabilize. We did not feel like we were ever in danger but the country is on the edge of a possible revolution. Nobody really knows what is going to happen next. Everything could calm down… or we could see a regime change. Our next stop is a smaller Turkish beach town – Fethiye.