It's been five days since my last report, and I figured it was time to update what I have done in Turkey.
The first two days of the program involved lectures on Turkey, including discussions of the Turkish Republic, Turkish national identity, Turkish political parties, human development, issues relating to religious and secular minorities in Turkey, and the European Union. All of the lectures were given my lecturers at Middle East Technical University (METU), except for one by the head of Amnesty International Turkey and another by a member of the AK Party (the largest party in the Turkish parliament).
On Friday, we had a chance to escape the classroom and visit the Olgunlasma Institute. This institute has an enormous collection of traditional handcrafts from the past 200 years or so, and it also trains women how to produce them today. Then we went to Tuzlucayır, a lower income region of Ankara. We visited a community center that provides education, training, and support for women who are in failing or abusive marriages. We also visited a cooperative that sells items made by the women at the center. Finally, we went to a restaurant that showed us how to prepare Turkish foods like grape leaves, kofte, cracked wheat salad, baklava, and a few other things that I had more fun eating than making!
Saturday started with a visit to Atatürk's Mausoleum. If you know nothing about the formation of the Turkish Republic, you owe it to yourself to do some research on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. His contributions to modern-day Turkey are substantial, and his mausoleum reflects how revered he is, even today. There is also a museum as well as exhibits of some of the battles he commanded, including the battle of Gallipoli. Then we traveled to Ulus and saw the Bayram Mosque and the ruins of the Temple of Augustus. We spent the afternoon touring the Ankara Citadel and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
Today, we left Ankara for Ürgüp, stopping in Hacıbektaş. We explored Capadoccia briefly today and will do more tomorrow. We just returned from a Whirling Dervish performance about 10 km outside of Ürgüp. It was incredible.
As you can tell, our days have been full, so there has not been much time to write. I will try to update the report again on Wednesday, after we arrive in Istanbul.