The Road to Elazığ

After feeling like I had discussed politics with nearly every moustachioed man and played with nearly every child in Diyarbakır, the time came to regretfully leave the city.

The road north from Diyarbakır to Elazığ is arid, as one might expect of Eastern Turkey. No trees, just barren, brown scrubby hills visible in all directions -- the only truly distinguishing features are the ones left by the Turkish security forces: Large, friendly signs painted onto the hillside reminding the local Kurdish population that Turkey is ''one country, one flag, one nation'' -- assembled security forces of adequate numbers of course exist in the environs of said friendly reminders should the local Kurdish population wish to discuss over 'tea' some of the socio-economic issues that arise from the mentality created by such large and friendly signs, but, alas, there was no 'discussion' during our journey today. About the only object of discussion was the rather blatant misadvertising by one roadside stall purporting 'to sell every type of vegetable' (printed in large, friendly letters on the stall's roof), but which in fact contained only a few diseased looking tomatoes and eggplants.

No, misadvertising aside, the bus journey was relatively uneventful. With little traffic to worry about, the only hindrance on rapidity was the (Eastern) Turkish custom of public-transport-musical chairs: While Turkey is officially a secular country (...but not really, I assure you), most Eastern Turkish bus companies practise a tacit policy of ensuring Islamic modesty on buses. This means, among other things, that unrelated men and women cannot sit to next each other, lest shenanigans arise. In practical terms, this means that every time a new person boards the bus, substantial seat rearrangements need to take place to guarantee a modest gender balance --- today's seat rearrangement, meanwhile, took somewhat longer because of one man's desire to bring on a weedeater. I'm not sure if carrying a weedeater onto a Turkish bus necessarily affects the gender of its bearer, but the discussions about what to do with the weedeater and the man who was holding it where sufficiently long enough to suggest that future weedeater carrying bus passengers might be entitled to a gender (and thus a seat) all of their own.

Weedeaters, gender politics and political messages scratched into the harsh earth aside, I was somewhat apprehensive in coming to Elazığ. Tunceli Alevis had told me stories before about how Elazığ residents used to stone their buses when they passed through Elazığ.

The entrance into the city wasn't particularly promising: Large billboards advertised the newspaper 'El-Aziz', a local radical Islamic newspaper. Other leftover political party posters admonished the city's residents to choose ''either nationalism or surrender'' (to whom, I'm not sure, but it was probably a heinous combination of Christians, Zionists, Armenians, Americans, Kurds and Communists (always a traditional hectagonical axis of evil)) in the election.

However, first appearances can be deceiving: The city might not have much to look at (although the city does possess one of the thousands of ruined castles that litter the country), but its inhabitants were not the radicalized, nationalist mob as so advertised.

After spending a few hours kicking old stones at Elazığ's once imposing fortress, my time was taken by Reşit, a 47 year old Elazığlı who introduced himself by saying that Turks weren't the brightest people in the world: ''Why else,'' he asked, ''would we mine chrome, sell it to foreigners for 5 dollars, have them refine it for us, and then buy it back at 50 dollars to make a license plate?'' Words for contemplation certainly, but not particularly ones of militant nationalism.

His philosophizing (or marketing) didn't finish there: ''When you go to Tunceli, you can say that Elazığ people are good. In the end, God is one, we are all humans, and we can't be prejudicial.'' It would certainly be trite and cliche if it came from a politician, but the cheap cigarette smoking Reşit wasn't into political gamesmanship, while the unfolding arid surroundings trailing off into the great resevoir below us had me inclined to believe him.

So yes, the moral of the story, as amply demonstrated by Mr. Reşit, is that Elazığ is full of helpful, friendly people, even if its castle isn't quite as impressive as something in Transylvania...

Elazığ: Friendly place, although a difficult away fixture. At left, a local football ground for only the most athletic of players