Southeastern Turkey
I spent a week in the early summer of 2024 exploring Southeastern Turkey, beginning in Tarsus near the Mediterranean Sea and pushing eastward to the Tur Abdin, in the historic borderlands between the Roman and Persian worlds.
It’s a fascinating part of the world, full of cities famous in antiquity but largely forgotten since. I visited one of the world’s oldest human settlements (Göbekli Tepe), mosques associated with Old Testament heroes, two churches in different regions that claim to be the world’s oldest, and a community that still speaks and worships in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. I finished with a day in Istanbul, which included my first visit to the wonderful Chora Church.
Along the way I ate lots of wonderful local food (some Arabic, some Turkish) and met a number of fascinating people who are proud to call the region home.
I prepared four posts about my ramble, each describing a few days as I moved east: