Competition with a movie star (Batman)

According to Wikipedia this town in the valley of Tigris in times had some fun with the movie character of the same name. One politician came to the idea to sue the filmmakers for using the name. I do not think that the whole thing was a serious act.


The town is in no need to make money from suing foreign corporations for abuse of name rights since they found oil here and made a development out of their own powers. From our first impression the whole region made big steps into a better economic situation – good roads from Van on, the towns on our way with the typical series of small shops, open till late seven days a week and brightly advertising the local products but as well all sorts of consumer goods that the Great International Bazaar (as Fukuyama calls it) supplies, Carrefour-magazines even Burger King fast food.

Buildings are under construction, most of them with a solid concrete framework that is later filled in with brickwork. The whole of Turkey has always been threatened by earthquakes and one hopes that the concrete frames are laid out in a way that they can stand a quake.

Our tour guide says that the water projects brought money to the region. The upper valleys of Euphrates and Tigris were locked with numerous dams to create artificial lakes that are among the biggest in the world. A system of tunnels distributes the water in the whole area. Our guide has no ear for the complaints of Syria and Iraq at the lower course of the two rivers – they get their full share of water, only with a delay, as he says. This is obviously not true, the newest project is in the meanwhile protested worldwide. We will visit the valley where it is planned, Hasankeyf lies in it, one of the oldest cities in Turkey. It would be completely flooded, if a further dam was build. That makes even many Turks protest the project.

Turkey vs. Armenia 2 - 0

Van, site of the old Armenian settlement, destroyed after 1920

Ever since I read Franz Werfels Fourty Days of Musa Dag some 20 years ago I have been convinced that the cause of the Armenian people against the Turks is right. I read the 800 pages of the novel breathlessly, during a short sickness in bed and almost without a pause. I have later searched other books and more recently the internet for the full truth. What I found is that Werfel was right and the killings should be called a genocide.

Nevertheless I came to discover a new truth. It says that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who died in 1915 need a different form of reconciliation compared with what the Jews and my history-haunted Germans achieved after 1945. Three things are different.

First, not too important, but not to be overlooked: the time factor. Germany could begin to regret what it had done immediately after the war. Turkey did something similar in punishing people who were made responsible for the atrocities, even sentencing some of them to dead. But soon after those trials time began to run out for any kind of deeper insight in the nature of the crime. The result was a deep and painful unrest all over the world and also in Turkey, at least for those who were not deaf to morality and international complaints.

The second difference: a more complicated historic truth. Some of the Armenians were openly fighting for an independent state, a re-birth of the great Armenian Kingdom in East Anatolia around the year 900. Turks were killed by Armenians, whereas the Germans never shed a single drop of their own blood from Jewish hands.

The third difference came out only recently: the Turks can support the newly born post communist Armenian State in a very unique way and are obviously about to do so. Armenia is geographically locked in between an unloved post soviet Georgia, some even more unloved small Muslim neighbor states – and Turkey. Turkey could be a natural partner for all kinds of trade, it could even be again what it was before nationalism broke out: a second home for those poorer Armenians who seek work abroad.

The number of illegal Armenian workers in Turkey is estimated to be 70.000. Now a benevolent fate put Turkey and Armenia into one qualifying group for the next Soccer World Championships. Both did not qualify, but both were happy to send their Presidents Sarkissjan and Gül to the two matches in Yerevan and Bursa (that both ended with a Turkish 2 – 0 victory). They used their informal contacts to kick off a treaty that will open the borders and find new forms of cooperation.

In Werfel's novel there is a noble old Turk, the Agha Rifaat Bereket in Antiochia who is an old friend of Gabriel Bagradian, the Armenian hero, and his family. Bagradian turns to him for help and the Agha promises to travel to the "atheists in Istanbul", as he says, the Young Turks that have given up the idea of a government based on faith in favor of nationalism. The Agha knows: nationalism is hatred and thus against the Quran. He recites a Verse from Sura 16 saying that God has "created in different colors".

Maybe the return of faithful people into the Turkish government will help to reconcile two nations whose history has been narrowly connected over the centuries, most of the time peacefully.

Paradise for tomorrow, this city for today (Van)

The city of Van is known for the beauty of its surrounding. "Van in this world, paradise in the next" is an Armenian proverb, dünyada Van, ahirette iman say the Turks similarly ("Van for this world, faith for the next"). Mt. Ararat (5.165 m) and Mt. Süphan (4.058 m), in the photo below seen from the incoming plane, watch over it with a solemn might that reminds of Mt. Fuji in Japan.



Many nations have fought to own Van. The long row of emperors dates back to the mythic people of Urartu with their name connected with Mount Ararat, which lies 50 miles from here. The Medians and Persians and Alexander the Great owned it, before around the time of Christ King Tigranes of Armenia was the first to put it under Armenian control. The name Van is Armenian and means village.

After the conquering Romans the Persians (Sassanides) came again, followed by the Byzantines and for a short time by the Arabs. The Armenians also came again, around 900 and founded the kingdom of Vaspurakan only to be followed by a wave of people from Central Asia. The Mongols took Van from the Seljuks, the Timurid Turks took it from the Kara Koyunlus, the only stable reality from than on was the government of Central Asians and from around 1400 on also the Muslim faith.

The Ottomans, a fifth Central Asian party, finally held Van for almost 400 years. In Turkish they are called Osmans a name taken from their first leader Osman I who lived in western Anatolia from 1258 – 1326 as the head of one of the local Emirates.

He and his family gained an ever increasing control in the West that, under Osman’s grandson Murat I lead to the famous victory over the Serbs in Kosovo 1389. Murat died there but his children and grandchildren went on fighting and finally in 1453 conquered Istanbul. Mehmed II “the conqueror” was the seventh Sultan in the row beginning with Osman.

The series of victories in the West went along with problems in the East – fights with other Sultans, Mongols, Persians. It took the Osmans another 100 years from Istanbul until they could install an undisputed government also in Van.

The Osmans / Ottomans did not ask their people to convert to Islam. At the end of their reign Van had about as many schools for the Muslim Turks as it had for the Christian Armenians, both nations obviously not too much interested in a clear concept what Turk or Armenian meant after centuries of migration from in and out Central Asia and also from the various regions that Armenia did possess and loose in the course of history.


The much contested paradise finally turned to hell when democracy came and claimed that freedom can only exist in a national state with a clearly defined national character. Some people would later say, simplifyingly, that a State is a language with a police. From that it was obvious that Van had one language too much, the Armenian.

Ethnic cleansings, to say the least followed. The Treaty of Sèvres 1920 (after Versailles 1919) to end World War I was rewritten by Attatürk’s Army that took Van by force from what was planned to be the Democratic Republic of Armenia but had problems to come into a short-lived existence before falling into the hands of the Russian Communists.


The Kurdish boys that help uns to climb the old city castle are proud to be Turks, so they say. But new problems arise in the East: illegal workers from Iran and Afghanistan come into the town and "cause problems" by working for lower wages as the local Turks. This is what the boys say. Are there also illegal Armenians in town? The boys say no.

We will leave the city with a fresh sun tan on our skin and the mountain wind in our hair. Paradise is as far away from here as it is everywhere on earth but Van in ggod days certainly is a place where you can get an idea how paradise may look like.

Cuneiform and Kyrgyz riders (Van)

A bright day with Mt.Ararat shining in the distance, when our early morning plane from Istanbul took a long curve over the lake and then landed in Van. With an altitude of almost 1.700 m the lake is situated as high as the lakes near St. Moritz, Switzerland in the Upper Engadin.

The bare mountains around the town are impressive, we went some 20 km east to see the remnants of an Urartian stronghold, witness of one of the oldest cultures in the region, giver of the name Urartu/Ararat.


An old man sold stones with tiny inscriptions in the writing of the Urartians (and later the Hetites, Assyrians and others). Yes, it is “Keilschrift”, he knew the German word for cuneiform, and he was an expert. He had neatly carved the stones himself and claimed that he, Mehmet Kuşman, was among the only 36 people in the world that could fluently read and write this ancient kind of scripture. Some years ago they were still 38, when Mehmet Hoca followed an invitation to California for a gathering of experts. Two Russians had died since and now 36 of the wise and learned men remained.

The stronghold was beautifully placed over a wide fruitful plain behind which higher mountains rose. They were close to Persia from were in the course of history many invaders came to claim their ownership of this rich mountain country near the big lake.

Later, in a visit to the old castle that overlooks the southern part of the town of Van, we were happy to get into a televised Kurdish wedding. It was a real wedding except for bride and

bridegroom who were actors. The colorful gowns of the young people, the horses, guns and horseman of the Kyrgyz riders, the muttons roasted over an open fire, everything was real.


The Kyrgyz faces obviously were part of the feast, and not strange, although for us almost belonging to a Chinese kind of people. The only strangers here were we. Happy strangers in the golden light of a warm setting sun.

Great Expectations (II)

Apart from looking forward to see paradise (which, of course is not a serious expectation) my wish is that our journey will take us to fresh waters of Green Democracy, that is: to people that are likewise pious Muslims and modern citizens of this world. Our tour is guided by people of the Gülen-movement and the hosts that will open their houses for us will be part of that movement. They are believers inspired by the philosopher Fethullah Gülen. In 2008 the readers of the US-Magazine Foreign Policy put Gülen as Number 1 among 100 world’s top public intellectuals.

Gülen is 68 years old and lives in Pennsylvania/USA. Gülen's inspiration is leading my friend Nureddin Öztaş, our tour organizer, into a life as a devout Muslim with regular prayers and a deep awareness that his life is filled with God’s presence. To fill more and more of the world with that presence Gülen teaches first of all one thing: education. Muslims should, according to him study a lot and so get to the front of modern science. Since God is the creator there is no taboo in research. It will always lead into finding God’s traces anywhere.

Gülen-schools are opening in many countries around the world. A homework-support for schoolchildren was what my friend Nureddin started with. He is now about to open a complete regular school in a town near Cologne/Germany.

Gülen teaches that obedience to Islamic rules does not contradict life in a modern society. He encourages Muslims to meet Christians, Jews and people of other religions and to learn from them. Nureddin’s and my friendship is on his side deeply rooted in the optimism that Nureddin is getting from Gülen. Without him we would not be on this journey to East Anatolia together. Nureddin obviously likes me not although I am a devout evangelical Christian but because.

My expectation is to find conservative Muslims with an open heart for a modern life in the framework of an open society. Words like liberal or western or democratic are over-used but they nevertheless still give an idea of what people all over the world are searching for. If they combine their search with a deeper desire for spiritual foundation it should not necessarily lead to contradictions.

There has been a long period of secular government in Turkey. People have thought that faith would rather hinder the development of a western kind of democracy. Today the ruling AKP is more open to religious influence and has tried to prove the secularist point of view untrue by installing democratic reforms. The Kurds are treated as an acknowledged minority for the first time in Turkish history, the Armenians are welcomed in again (a treaty to open up borders again was signed last Saturday, see photo above) the demands of the European Union for better civil rights have been accepted not as a burdensome requirement for economic cooperation but as a chance for renewal.

There is a lot of modern Muslim democratic reform on the way. My hope is to find it proved also in Eastern Anatolia.

Through Twitter and Facebook I have been in contact with Muslims worldwide that also strive to reconcile faith and life in a world with almost no borders. I greet Adel in Bushere / Iran, Ashfaq in Mauritius, Ahmad (an Egyptian) in Abu Dhabi / Dubai. I also greet Bijan, a Bahai-Persian in Mecklenburg / Germany, David, a Jew in Tel Aviv, Joshua a Texan in California (and a conservative with a heart for immigrants) and, of course Erkan in Istanbul who encouraged my blogging a lot.

And a river went out from Eden

Paradise was in former days thought to be near the sources of Tigris and Euphrates. The bible says in Genesis 2 that a river is going out from the Garden of Eden and that this river splits up into four arms which are called Pishon, Gihon, Hiddeqel and Perat. Hiddeqel is thought to be Tigris (arab.: Didschla) and Perat/Pherat is used for Euphrates in all parts of the Hebrew bible.

The medieval Ebstorf Map found 1830 in a monastery in Lower Saxony has the paradise with its four rivers in it.

Paradise is, in the imagination of Islam full of irrigating channels. My old German translation of the Quran says there are creaks rushing through (durcheilt von Bächen). In the Biblical imagination paradise is itself a source of rivers supplying the world around.

The Bible begins and ends with a river or stream flowing from paradise – first the four-armed river from Genesis 2 and then at the end a crystal clear river from Revelation 22, the last chapter in the bible.

Here the crystal river in the old English of the King James Version:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,
proceeding out of the throne of God.


A River Runs Through It is the title of a book and a film about two brothers who go out fly-fishing. It contains all the beauty that is in the quick flow of clear water. Paradise must be a lot like this. Will we get an idea of how it looked liked, before time began?

Great Expectations

Christiane, my beloved wife of 35 years and I will visit Eastern Turkey between October 16th and 25th. We will fly into Van, a city on the eastern shore of Lake Van, about 50 miles from the Iranian border. From Van we will go by boat and bus over seven days via Mardin, Urfa and other cities back to Gaziantep, a town close to the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea.

Our road will lead us along the borders of Iraq and Syria. We will cross both Tigris and Euphrates. They have their sources in Turkey and run down into the Gulf of Persia. Both are giving water to one of human life's cradles: the eastern half of the “fertile crescent” the half-moon-shaped region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean.

Old world maps show paradise right at the upper course of Tigris and Euphrates. That is about where we will be around October 20th. Great Expectations!