Alanya, working in the field, and the Jarndarma

We spent the day in Alanya on Friday to get our ikamets. The polis (police) said that they could have them ready by the end of the day, so we were there for a while. Alanya is a little bit of a touristy spot. It’s more of a vacation area for Europeans than Gazipaşa even though both are on the hot Mediterranean coast with beautiful beaches. We met with the governor of Gazipaşa today. He mentioned that a large part of the economy here is agricultural, they are moving towards making Gazipaşa a tourist area. Interestingly, Gazipaşa was originally named Selinti (after Selinus, the ancient city we hiked up last week). It was Ataturk who changed the name/gave it the nickname Gazipaşa (Holy Warrior).

Since we were able to get our ikamets on Friday, we started work in the field starting on Saturday (yay!!). As I mentioned previously, it gets very hot here during the day, so we try to head out to the site around 6AM to get there around 6:30. Saturday we had a lot of “cleaning” to do; we had to remove the brush that had grown over the mound where the ruins lie. The group of us Clark students have started to work on drafting the blocks. Last season they were only able to work for a week, so they moved a lot of blocks to the block field but haven't drawn most of them. This season we need to catch up on drafting those blocks completely and also work on those blocks that have not been moved yet. After our first day of work, we stopped by the Jandarma which is a branch of the Turkish Armed Forces who maintain order in areas outside the jurisdiction of the polis. News spreads very quickly here. Since this area is highly populated by just Turkish people, a group of Americans fiddling around on an ancient site draws some suspicion. Therefore, we went to introduce ourselves to the Jandarma.

The imam, the man in charge of the mosque, also has the keys to the schoolhouse near our site. Since school is out, he let's us store things in the school. His wife brought out bread, tomatoes, olives and çay (tea) for a mid-morning snack and then brought some delicious fruit for us later on. When we had visited the Jardarma and the governor, they had both served us drinks. It is a very friendly atmosphere here. They are finishing an airport here that should open in October, so Gazipaşa would be more easily accessible that you might consider visiting. If you think about visiting, there is a British man that runs the Green Oasis that is very kind and is a good contact in an area where not too many people know English.