The region west of Istanbul, better known as Thrace, is the only province of Turkey that is entirely in Europe. It is less “Turkish,” less exotic than Asian Turkey, and in many ways, it reminds people of Greece or the Balkan countries. Sunday, 11 of us decided to venture out of Istanbul for the day and caught a bus heading northwest to the town of Edirne.
Edirne was the Ottoman capital prior to the liberation of Istanbul, and home to many mosques and other historical entities. The old palace, unfortunately, was blown up by the retreating Turks before they surrendered the city to the Bulgarians during the 1st Balkan war (1913). The city was later retaken when the Balkan nations fought each other for more land during the second Balkan war. Despite said destruction, the city is like an open-air museum, with mosques, covered bazaars, hamams, and old houses everywhere you turn. The ancient portion of the city which resided between the city walls doesn't contain a single mosque although it includes a synagogue, a Greek church, Armenian inscriptions, and multiple Greek-looking structures and at least one area which I believe was a Christian cemetery of sorts. Most of the non-Muslim population has since moved (voluntarily or involuntarily) elsewhere, and the churches as well as old houses are falling into disrepair.
When Atatürk established the Turkish Republic in 1922, a grand-scale population exchange between Greeks and Turks followed. This population transfer was used to resolve the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). It was agreed that the Turkish inhabitants of Greece moved to Turkey and the Greek inhabitants of Turkey to Greece. This may be one of the reasons why Thrace feels less Turkish.
The highway from Istanbul to Edirne follows the Via Egnatia, the Roman road that connected Rome and Istanbul during the Roman and later Byzantine Empires. Rivers were spanned with extraordinary architecture and some Roman and Byzantine arched bridges still remain in use today.
Edirne is located 17 km from the Greek border and 22 from the Bulgarian, and as visitors cross the borders it is often visited as a rest stop before heading on to Istanbul, but nothing more. After a busy morning of traveling and visiting the famous Selimiye Mosque and the Bayezid Complex we considered flipping a coin and crossing whichever border resulted only to realize that we would have to stay 24 hours outside of Turkey to be allowed back in. As this was not an option due to Monday classes we decided to continue with our explorations and make plans for Bulgaria another weekend.
The Health Museum in the Sultan Bayezid II Complex was one of my favorites from the trip. Unappealing though the name ‘health museum’ sounds, it was fantastic. The museum makes up the hospital portion of the complex and shows what treatments were used in the Byzantine days. Later, the complex served as an insane asylum and patients were treated in domed cells with therapy such as the sound of water, occupational therapy, music, and the sweet aromas of flowers from the surrounding gardens. Currently, six rooms and a music hall have been beautifully restored. Water runs from a fountain in the central courtyard and wax dolls in the rooms represent patients and doctors to give visitors an impression of what daily life looked like.
If I haven't mentioned this before, Turkish paving is awful! Never again will I complain about bumpy roads that need to be repaved in the States. No matter where you are in Turkey, be it Istanbul, Cappadocia, or Edirne there are 4 easy steps for paving a road:
1. Knock down trees, villages, etc
2) Spread Tar
3) Find the biggest rocks in your regions and drop them on said tar
4) Open road to traffic
1 comment:
We'll come back.
Constantinople is Greek.
Post a Comment