Turkey Trek

In a country where two continents meet and some of the world’s most powerful empires began, Adam Daff found a place even the locals find extraordinary.

There are some stretches of earth that have seen more action than the area now called Turkey, but you could count those places with about three fingers.

The land of the Turks lies on the pathway between Europe and Asia and if there’s been a conquest, campaign, significant message or invasion – almost all of them, since the start of mankind, have passed through and/or started in Turkey.

A quick look at my diary entry after the second day of this year’s Chrysler Jeep jamboree revealed that sometimes you simply can’t overuse adjectives like “stunning” and “spectacular”. The Jeep jamboree is an annual event held in places where their off-road vehicles are sure to get a workout. Utah in the US is a favourite location because of the massive smooth-rock formations, while the Russian reporters often come back with great stories of testing cars in the Siberian wilderness during their harsh winters.

This year, however, the Chrysler team completely out did themselves, not only with the location for this jamboree, but with the choice in the selection of vehicles. For the first time at a major event, all the Jeep models were rolled out into one location.

We smashed the Compass, Patriot, Wrangler, Unlimited Wrangler (4-door), Cherokee, Grand Cherokee and Commander models in harsh, but incredibly different surrounds that resembled scenes from movies like the Dark Crystal, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars - Episode 1.

Cappadocia in central Turkey was ground zero for the off-roading segment and is well kept secret for tourists, although this secret won’t remain so for much longer given the work that has already started there. The roads to the most recent hotel in the area, Les Maisons de Cappdoce, are still being built, which was perfect for the purposes of this trip because it meant we were four-wheel-driving up to our hotel in the evening and away in the morning.

Les Maisons de Cappdoce is just one of several boutique hotels being built into the incredible rock formations in the area. It’s a French-owned hotel with Turkish managers and it’s got to be one of the most brilliant hideaways in Eurasia. Give it five years and there should be 10 more four and five star hotels in this area, particularly if Turkey is finally brought into the European Union.

Our Jeep trek began in Istanbul, however, a place that was the centre of the Roman Empire when it was Constantinople. It’s a city of huge bazaars, churches and mosques that are regularly filled with a population that prides itself on being Muslim, secular and democratic.

The city is a grand reflection of how the region has also hosted the birth of major civilizations such as the Hittite, Byzantine, Armenian and Seljuk. The most recent was the Ottoman Empire, which was one of the world’s most significant and longest running civilizations.

The Ottomans were only ousted after three consecutives wars at the start of the 20th century, the last of which was World War One.
With all these civilizations having a stake in the area, Istanbul is undoubtedly one of the most diverse cultural centres on the planet (similar to Brazil). There are cafes and buildings with influences from Syrian and French architecture. The Roman influence is also clearly still visible is sectors of Istanbul. Indeed, the city has retained its nickname given to it during the Roman era as the “The City on Seven Hills” because the oldest part of the city was built on seven hills (just like Rome). The hills are represented in the city’s coat of arms with seven mosques, one at the top of each hill.

One of the oldest monuments still surviving from the Roman era is the Serpentine Column, a monument built originally to honour Apollo for the victory over the Persians in 479BC – that’s 479BC, as in almost 2500 years ago. The column was moved by Constantine the Great when Constantinople became the new capital of the Roman Empire, and has stood at the Hippodrome, which was a chariot racing arena, ever since. The area is now a bustling market between a group of amazing mosques and churches. There is still a strange feel about the place though – the locals still say that on the right night you can almost hear the feel the life-and-death ambiance which once dominated the Hippodrome, in the same way it did at the Coliseum in Rome.

The religious buildings around Istanbul in many cases defy belief. The San Sofia church, for instance, was built by the Roman Emperor Justinian, supported by his legendary wife Theodora. Justinian built the San Sofia church in the sixth century well before civilization was thought to have had the skills to build such magnificent structures. The church was later added to and converted into a mosque by the Ottomans in 1453 and is now a fascinating museum.

The Imperial Sultanahmet Mosque or Blue Mosque built by Sultan Ahmed I is another unforgettable structure on the Istanbul peninsular. It was constructed between 1609 and 1616, which is incredibly fast considering the tools these people were working and is called the Blue Mosque because of the rare and invaluable blue and white iznik tiles used on the interior. Several of these tiles were taken from the mosque and only a few years ago some of them appeared at an auction in London where it’s rumoured they fetched around $10,000 each to an anonymous bidder. Speculation abounds as to whether the Turkish government is in talks with that bidder to have the tiles anonymously returned to the patrons of this magnificent mosque. In the mean time, it will remain a strong tourist attraction and a place of prayer for thousands of Turks.

Turkey’s geographic location is also hugely significant as it’s surrounded by eight countries – all of which have seen political revolutions, strife and great change of their own in the recent past and some are still dealing with it. These include: Bulgaria (to the northwest), Greece (to the west), Georgia (to the northeast), Armenia, Azerbaijan (the Nakhichevan exclave), Iran (to the east), Iraq and Syria to the southeast. Indeed, in the past year the Turks have reacted with a show of military force after several developments on Iraq border.

And if its land borders weren’t enough, Turkey also borders three different seas: the Mediterranean Sea (to the south), the Aegean Sea (to the west) and the Black Sea (to the north). Moreover, the Sea of Marmara inside Turkey is universally considered by geographers as the border between Europe and Asia – which also makes Turkey one of a few countries that is transcontinental. Mind-boggling isn’t it?

One man is accredited for keeping such a diverse country together as a democratic and secular state and that’s Mustafa Kemal, who was later given the name Ataturk. Ataturk was a decorated war hero, but he made his name as a General in one of the most devastating battles of WWI – Gallipoli – where the Ottomans were all but wiped out by the Australians and New Zealanders (ANZACS). Ataturk arrived when the Ottomans were out of ammunition and in retreat. The ANZACS were winning what was an impossible battle up sheer cliffs and the British later made good ground along the peninsula. Ataturk and his aides instructed what troops he had left to set up timing devices on the end of their rifles to fire automatically at intervals.

This tactic gave the impression Ottoman soldiers were still in the trenches and prepared to fight when most of them were either dead or well behind the lines trying to bring forward ammunition. As it turns out, this tactic saved the Ottomans from complete annihilation as the ANZACS realized, at the same time, they had actually landed in the wrong place on the peninsula and retreated over the course of a few nights back onto their ships. The goal of the operation was to control to the Dardanelles, the piece of water that links the Mediterranean with the Black Sea as well as the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea. It was being used as a supply channel by the Ottomans and Germans, and they certainly weren’t the first to do so.


The ancient city of Troy was once located on the entrance to the Dardanelles. It was also the same area Alexander the Great and the Persians led by Xerxes 1 had once fought over as they crossed into Asia and Europe. The Russians and Napoleon also had a steak in the area at one time.

After World War One Ataturk proved he could be just as wily on the political scene, which allowed the Turks to retained control over the area. His first step was to appease the foreign powers (mostly by respecting the sites where so many of their soldiers had died). He then set about flushing out anyone and any group who didn’t want to part of a united and secular Turkey, which resulted in some hardship for minority groups and the exact ramifications of these changes continue to be a great source of debate. What is undeniable, however, is that Ataturk managed to bring together a huge swathe of people from different backgrounds and get defined borders in what was almost an indefensible country. And his legacy is something many groups in the Middle East, especially the Lebanese, often talk about.

The residents of Cappadocia also witnessed first hand their fair share of action with the Christian Crusades and also the Arab incursions during the spread of Islam. The people there endured with a variety of beliefs and customs largely due to an incredible network of caves, tunnels and hideouts that were carved from the volcanic rock.

It’s the kind of network that makes the tunnelling the Vietnamese were famous for during their conflict with the US look rather amateur. The Cappadocians dug more than 200 kilometres of tunnels through rock and joined them under the town to shield them from invaders, local warlords and the extreme winters.

The wind and other elements in the area helped shape the lava into huge Flintstone-style rock homes, which the locals call them “fairy chimneys”. They also created a landscape full of trails with loose stones, water and high walls – perfect for testing the capabilities of four-wheel drives. Perfect Jeep country.

In Cappadocia it was easy to see why the Jeep brand has succeeded, it has stuck to a theme of off-roading and all but perfected it across a range that has expanded from three in 2005, to seven cars in the last two years.