Saturday, July 14, 2012

Last Day in Sanliurfa

July 7, 2012 was our last day here. We went to Gobekli Tepe, the oldest known temple or sanctuary of the world. Estimated to be about 12,000 years old. For details, see the professional excerpt here:
Frankly think about it .... the bible locates the Garden of Eden between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Mesopotamia ... this is part of Mesopotamia.  This is consistent with the Bible .... original human settlements are in this region.





We drove straight to Gaziantep where we met Osman, the rental car guy. He dropped us off at the airport from where we flew to our next destination: Cyprus.
The security agents monitoring the metal detector literally left their post to take picture with one of the kids.Our flight was at 10:40 p.m. As we were traveling to another country, we had to go through passport control. We ended up at the wrong gate/section for domestic departures and only when the terminal emptied for the flight to Istanbul did we realize we were at domestic departures (the security control guys did not tell us even though they looked at our tickets.  Luckily we still had about 30 minutes and rushed to the other side of the terminal, went through another security checkpoint/passport control and made our flight. Whew !!!

On a final note ... The politics of this place is very complex, and it will take more than a few weeks stay here to fully comprehend the details. The local (English) newspaper in Sanliurfa had daily stories about all the people the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyin Erdogan, has been detaining for years. Opponents, who are accused of plotting to over throw the government, both elected politicians and journalists, have spent years in jail. At the same time, it appears that people love him. Those we met are very happy with level of infrastructural, employment situation in the country and they credit the PM. There was a very detailed story on the New Yorker magazine this Spring on the Erdogan's government. Click here to read it.

On to Cyprus !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment