Konya and Environs

Saturday was devoted to the area around Konya, Turkey's seventh (I think) largest city and one of the most traditionally religious.  It lies about 2 1/2 hours drive from Ankara on a good highway.  Situated on a high plane it is quite flat with no distinguishing geographical features like lake or river.  Distant high mountains are visible.


Our first goal was the town of Sille, once a village a bit distant from Konya but now almost touching the suburbs (quite upscale) of northwestern Konya.  This was a Greek village whose residents spoke Turkish.  Mehmet says they might not be Greek at all, but original Byzantine Turks who were Christian.  Anyway, they left some nice houses and a church and a chapel.  There are also old cave dwellings in the hills next to the town.  The crown jewel is the recently restored Saint Helen (or Aya Elenia) Church.  This is a now a (free) museum and has been excellently fixed up.  The photos show the results.

The recently restored Saint Helen Church from the 1800's, now a museum in Sille

The church with blooming trees in front (although the weather was ridiculously cold)

The horizontal lighter stone was recovered from ancient construction - either Roman or Greek - and reused,  a common practice in Turkey

The inscription is in the Greek alphabet but of the Turkish language.  This thrilled Mehmet who did his best to figure out the words

The marvelously painted dome

The impressive golden pulpit

A furniture piece with paintings

The paintings were awesome - here an angel and the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus

The iconic Jesus

Another angel or saint

Two dragons - I don't know their significance

The smallest piano ever - I made Mehmet pose to get the scale

The two headed eagle - apparently used frequently in Byzantine structures

Detail of another ancient block used in the interior of the church

The exterior with more ancient reused building remnants - a form of upcycling

Saint Helen church in Sille - definitely worth visiting

We drove and walked to the chapel which is in a burial yard.  The chapel is now undergoing restoration so we couldn't get in but the views were nice.  We ate a local restaurant Sille Konak and had the regional kebab specialties along with, unusually, okra soup.  All this by a wood or coal burning stove (the day was extremely cold and we encountered some snow falling on the drive to Konya from Ankara).

The worn gravestones of the hill top burial yard and chapel

Detail of the chapel

View from the hill top chapel with Saint Helen Church in the center

Detail of the cave dwellings in the hillside next to the town

Our lunch place -  an old Greek house

Ceiling detail in the restaurant - remember this as you will see it later

The effective stove I sat next to to warm up

The unusual and tasty okra soup (bamya corbasi)

Mehmet digs into the assortment of three local kebab we ordered.  All were good but a bit too meaty for my taste (naturally, Randy and Mehmet enjoyed this meat festival)

Next we skirted through Konya to the southeast for Catalhoyuk.  This is actually a very famous archeology site.  It is the earliest known settlement of agriculture and town dwellers.  It is from 9000 BC onwards.  The site was deserted (of course) except for the guard and a few people leaving as we arrived.  It is very remote (but easy to get to).  At the time these peoples lived there it was a marshland (now, a high steppe) with active volcanoes in the distance.  The land is quite flat (they grow wheat here) but with occasional mounds.  Presumably all of the mounds were very ancient towns.  Only Catalhoyuk has been excavated (and even this is not much done).  We saw a replica of the houses they lived in some 11000 years ago and a few things at the very small but informative museum.  There are two digs on going both under cover of large structures.  We viewed these and enjoyed the very quiet and historic laden fields of this unpopulated area.

The entry to Catalhoyuk (hoyuk is spelled both huyuk and hoyuk - the word means mound or little hill)

Alice with the replica house

Inside the replica house - their version of wallpaper - a painted mural

The oven and stairs - they apparently entered their houses from the roofs

Ceiling detail - look familiar?  See the same ceiling construction in the Sille Konak restaurant above

Some of the artifacts in the modest museum.  These include a box, intricate hook and eye, and a small sewing tool

Replica of the hunting mural in the museum

Mehmet and Randy by the surprisingly spacious replica house.  The construction of walls and roofs are the same as used in Turkish villages in the region today - over 11000 years of the same building techniques!

Inside one of the active dig sites.  The structures are pretty visible with some distinguishing features such as ovens

Mehmet and Randy walk across this high steppe where the first ancient town was established - the covered first dig is in the background

The second (and more advanced) dig was even more impressive with its mainly layers of civilization

Detail of the mud brick construction from the houses of the dig above

Mural in the replica house - either of volcanoes and the town, or a leopard skin atop geometric figures - I opt for the former explanation

Detail of the roof construction of the replica house - still used in central Turkey today and we saw the same roofs and walls driving back through the local villages to Konya

Using the back road through villages to Konya our next goal was the Mevlana Museum, one of the top sights of Turkey.  All the guidebooks had it closing at 6 PM and we arrived just before 5 PM, giving ourselves a good hour to view it.  Alas, the museum closed at 4:40 PM so we were not allowed in.  We did some good exterior shots of the tomb of Rumi, the religious poet who lived in the 1200's and the founder of the Mevlana movement.  We then walked to the city center where the Alaeddin Mosque resides on top an artificial hill (the city is very flat).  This mosque is a forest style Selcuk mosque from around 1220 and is huge.  We were shown around by the friendly caretaker and then viewed the exterior where the original wall and gate of the surrounding fortress still are present.  After a cold brief walk to view another mosque exterior (the Ince Minare) with its interesting minaret, we got a cab back to our parked car.  We headed for dinner in a residential (apartment buildings) area of the city and ate very good (and inexpensive) pide.

Randy and Alice arrived too late to tour the Mevlana Museum but this is the exterior

Plain on the outside but not so plain on the inside - the Alaaddin Mosque

Dates from 1220 or thereabouts

Mehmet with his new friend, the mosque caretaker.  Notice the columns - many of the columns if not all were recycled from Roman and Greek buildings.  Some, like this one, feature well carved designs

The tiled central area - the lights were not in the mosque so photos were a little difficult - but the tiling is impressive

The wood pulpit area - intricately carved Selcuk 8 pointed star in the center

The Alaaddin forest mosque with its original wooden ceiling support beams and upcycled columns from the Hellenic era

Inside the mosque was a Selcuk safe - presumably to hold valuable books and artifacts

The side exterior which is the original palace wall.  It includes a mixture of stones from the Hellenic period (white) and from the Selcuk period (brown)

The entrance door leading to the Alaaddin mosque complex.

The wonderfully tiled minaret of the Ince Minare Mosque

Detailed carvings surround the entrance to the Ince Minare Mosque (we did not enter it)

Our dinner spot - Cemo - a popular pide place (say that three times fast!) with Konya families

Randy and Mehmet enjoy frosty mugs of ayran, the yoghurt and water drink common throughout Turkey

Instead of a frosty Efes beer, in Konya you get a frosty ayran.   Interestingly, while drinking does not occur in public, there are many places to buy booze in town (the tekels) and Konya has the highest per capita drinking rate in the country.  Makes you wonder about what all of the overt religiousness is doing to the local populace!

The famous local pide  - etli ekmek -literally bread with meat in Konya lingo

I opted for the cheese version

We indulged in two desserts - both local and pretty good - one with kaymak on top.  Kaymak is the fat from yoghurt which is a kind of very thick whipped cream - not sweet but incredibly rich.  It can be addictive in a bad way!

The top off of the day was the performance of the Whirling Dervishes.  They only perform on Saturday evenings at 8 PM.  They do this in a huge (very huge) complex not too far from the Tomb of Rumi.  This new complex is impressive in scale and planning and with good parking (something extremely rare in Turkey).  Everything is free (parking and performance).  The auditorium is built in the round and probably seats 3000 or so people. It was about 3/4 full with Turkish people.  A lot of tour groups from surrounding towns apparently.  More women than men and most women with head covers.

The dervishes before the whirling - donned in black with their "tombstone" hats

Shedding the black robes they are in white pre-whirling

Let the whirling begin - actually there were five sets of whirling with small ritual breaks in between

Detail of the famous Whirling Dervishes - in their home city of Konya - this is the real thing folks!

The performance satisfied us - there were 24 dervishes, 2 masters, about 6 singers/chanters and about 8 musicians playing the traditional instruments.  I will admit to sleeping through half of it but I think I got a pretty good understanding of the ritual.  It was certainly worth going to but perhaps as a once in a lifetime event.  Randy drove us efficiently back to Ankara while Mehmet napped in the backseat.  We were left with memories of ancient peoples who first populated the central south Anatolian flatlands, not so ancient Turkish speaking Greeks who wrote their Turkish with Greek letters, and the mosque laden but apparently clandestinely hard drinking Konya.

To finish up - the traditional view of Konya - the splendid green tiled tomb of Rumi at the Mevlana Museum complex