December 09, 2005

09:21:39 am Thursday, December 8, 2005 - Istanbul, Turkey - Overcast, Mid 50s. and Cairo, Egypt.  

We took the double decker tourist bus tour around Istanbul on our last day here. We then had an early evening two-hour flight to Cairo on Egypt Air. Our first night is at the Mena House Oberoi with a view of the pyramids. We booked our week in Egypt through Abercrombie & Kent's London office. They are a high-end tour company that began by offering safaris in Africa over four decades ago. On one of their tours, everything is taken care of from the moment you land to the moment you leave. This is both good and bad. In poorer countries this can be almost a necessity as the country can overwhelm you. But the overhelping nature of the people you are paying to help you can be overwhelming in the opposite direction as well. It's nice to not have to worry about small details, but it can be annoying--especially for us, having traveled so much--to not be allowed to do anything for ourselves. Try to lift your own carry-on bag and you are going to have an argument--no, really, I am quite capable of carrying this bag the short distance to my room--how do you think I got it on and off the plane?

Our short time in Egypt so far is reminiscent of our time in India. Probably any country with a large population, low wages, and significant unemployment is this way. Far more people than necessary are employed in service industries. Everyone is extremely polite and tries hard to be useful, but often these extra people just end up getting in your way and slowing everything down. Our experience is that tour companies in developing foreign countries catering to Westerners often do not do a good job of training their locally born employees to judge when help is not wanted. Their MO seems to be help with everything, all of the time, and ignore any nonverbal hints--or any direct verbal requests--from the person you are helping, to the contrary. Men in these countries often seem incapable of listening, certain that they will provide you the best service by doing it their way. We try to seek out the women because they are better listeners and have a lifetime of experience dealing with the know-it-all, chauvinistic men in their country.

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09:05:06 am Wednesday, December 7, 2005 - Istanbul, Turkey - Partly Cloudy, Low 60s.  

We visited two sites--the Ataturk Museum and the Military Museum. Both were in Sisli, a more modern section of the city, across the Halic (Golden Horn) River from the old town area where we were staying, about a 20-minute taxi ride away. The Ataturk Museum, located in his former house, contained personal effects of Kemal Ataturk, the first ruler of the Turkish Republic from 1923-1938. He was a modernizer, dropping Arabic script for a Latin alphabet, and making Turkey one of the most secular of the Muslim countries. He is considered the father of modern Turkey--their George Washington. And with good reason. He had not led his armies against the post-World War I treaty, Turkey would have been sliced up among the victorious powers: the UK, France, Italy, and neighboring Greece. While these would-be Turkish colonies of the UK, France, and Italy would have likely gained their independence at some point, at the latest probably after World War II, the treaty boundaries might have remained, and today Turkey could be a patchwork of several different countries instead of one, unified country. This might have been better for some groups--such as the Kurdish minority who were destined to get their own country before the Ataturk campaigns--but overall the world is likely better with how things turned out. A modern, secular Turkey is a stable force in the Muslim world.

Turkey has wanted to join the EU for at least 15 years that I can remember, but their membership likely remains 10 years off at the earliest. The reasons are mainly political. Countries like Germany and France fear the addition to the union of 70 million people making relatively low wages. There is an unspoken unease with allowing a Muslim country--and a large one at that, only Germany has a larger population--into the Christian EU. These are valid issues, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. Further integrating Turkey into Europe and the institutions of the Western developed world will increase political stability in the world, I believe. Turkey can become a leader in the Muslim world, to an even greater extent than it is now, and it can be an example of successful, capitalistic, democratic and secular Muslim country. The world needs this. Europe needs this. I hope Europeans can put aside their narrow, and at times shortsighted and even jingoistic views, and make this a reality before several more decades pass.

Further, I think allowing Turkey to join the EU may help stem Turkish immigration to the rest of Europe. The more opportunity there is in Turkey, the less need there will be to leave Turkey. With the enlargement of the 10 Eastern Europe countries in 2004, Western Europe has learned so far that their own stagnant economies are not as attractive to Eastern Europeans as they expected. The people in Eastern Europe for the most part are staying put, content to work in the growing and familiar east versus the static and unfamiliar west. Finally, I think that Muslim Turkey could also become a magnet for Muslim immigrants from North Africa, who are now going to Spain and France instead. So I'm not sure Turkey's entry will increase the perceived problems that Europeans fear--it could help mitigate these issues instead.

We found the Military Museum as described in one guidebook--large and rambling. I think they had about every weapon ever discharged by a Turk in battle on display. Still if you can get through it all, there is a fair amount of information and it is in English, which the Ataturk Museum is not.

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December 07, 2005

01:36:31 am Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - Istanbul, Turkey - Sunny, High 50s.  

Toured the Old Istanbul sites today: Hagia Sophia, cathedral built by Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor Justinian in the 6th Century, then turned into a mosque once the Muslims took over Constantinople in the 15th Century, and finally made a museum by Ataturk in the 1930s; Blue Mosque, an active Muslim mosque--we could not enter as it was prayer time, so we may return another day; Grand Bazaar, with hundreds and hundreds of shops; and the Archaeological Museum, which despite poor lighting and no maps as to its layout, was phenomenal--one of the best archaeological museums we have been to.

While all of our time has been in tourist-heavy Old Istanbul, and thus not necessarily representative of the country as a whole, the prices we've experienced are higher than what I would have expected. Food, drinks, museum fees all seem high for a country with a per capita GDP under $3,000 ($7,000 on a purchasing power basis). Taxi and hotel prices are okay, but not a bargain. I think the currency, which is up about 5% against the dollar over the past year, needs to depreciate a bit from its present level of 1.36 new Turkish lira to the dollar to account for the 7.5% annual inflation here (although the US inflation rate of 4.3% over the past year through October is not that much below this due to higher energy prices).

With putting much thought to it, I might rank Istanbul second (with Rome first) in terms of most important cities in world history, due to its 1000-plus year legacy as the successor to Rome and its 400-plus year run as the capital of the Ottoman Empire and the center of Islam. Here some of the key dates in its history:

Key Historical Dates in Late Roman/Byzantine/Constantinople/Istanbul History

313 Roman Emperor Constantine legalizes Christianity. Previously it was illegal. Pagan religion and Christianity now co-exist in the Roman Empire.
330 Constantine moves the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which is renamed Constantinople after him.
383 Theodosius, the last Roman emperor to rule over both the east and the western parts of the empire, makes Christianity the official religion of the empire.
476 Demise of the last Roman emperor in the west. Only the eastern empire centered in Constantinople remains. This becomes known as the Byzantine Empire.
527-565 Under Byzantine Emperor Justinian, east Roman rule spreads back to the west, recapturing many of the lost territories of the western empire. This is the final hey day for the Romans in the west. It is short lived--the territories are lost after Justinian dies. In Constantinople, Justinian constructs the Hagia Sophia.
1204 The misguided 4th Crusade from Europe diverts its attention from Muslims to fellow Christians, sacking Constantinople. A Latin Empire rules Constantinople until 1261.
1261 Byzantine rule returns to Constantinople.
1453 The Byzantine Empire, a shadow of its former self, ends as Ottoman ruler Mehmet the Conqueror takes Constantinople and converts the city to Islam. The Ottomans make Constantinople the center of their empire that eventually spreads from Iran to southeastern Europe, including much of the Middle East and Egypt.
1918 The Ottoman Empire, after decaying for several centuries is on the losing side in World War I and is reduced to a small, insignificant state in the post-war treaties with much of modern Turkish land designated for the victorious powers.
1923 Turkey is declared a republic by Kemal Ataturk. His armies nullified the post-World War I treaty and expanded Turkey by force from the small territory designated for it in the war treaty to its present-day size.
1930 Constantinople officially renamed Istanbul.

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01:35:32 am Monday, December 5, 2005 - Athens, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey - Sunny, High 50s.  

Arrived in Istanbul mid-afternoon on a short flight on Turkish Airlines. Checked into Best Western Empire Palace where we will stay for three nights. Location is good, right in the heart of all of the Old Istanbul historical sites. Went to Topkapi Palace, the compound of the Ottoman rulers. It reminded me of the Forbidden City in Beijing--completely different architecture and smaller than the Chinese royal compound, but it had a similar feel.

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01:34:50 am Sunday, December 4, 2005 - Athens, Greece; day trip to islands of Aegina, Hydra, and Poros - Sunny, Mid 60s.  

We wanted to see more of Greece than just Athens, so we took a cruise to three islands in the Aegean Sea. The islands were pretty, but by this point at the end of the trip, natural beauty is losing its appeal to me. As are boat cruises! We have three days in Egypt cruising the Nile; I'm hoping to be more enthused for that.

With apologies to my relatives of Greek descent, I have to confess that I did not find Greece that interesting. After it peaked in the classical period some 2300 years ago, it does not seem to have done much that is unique or noteworthy. Athens has grown tremendously over the past 175 years of Greek independence from a small village of a few thousand people to a city of several million, yet--aside from the ancient sites--it is utterly nondescript. There is not a single prominent or interesting modern building on the skyline. The city has a tremendous ancient focal point in the Acropolis, but the modern city offers nothing, content to rely on its past glory. This is not a total surprise--most travel books pan Athens and praise the countryside and the islands. We did not get to see much of the countryside, but we did spend a day visiting three islands. They were pretty as I said, and I can see why people like them. They have a decidedly unmodern, unhurried pace of life that is appealing when you need to get away from it all. But if you are at the end of a two-year period of being away from it all, having seen beautiful places all over the world, you long for something more.

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