Temple of the Securalists. - Ataturk's Mausoleum.
Prime minister's must visit this temple when they visit the capital out of respect.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: He was a Turkish army officer in the Ottoman military and the first President of Turkey. He is credited for essentially turning Turkey into a modern city and placing them onto a map of "important must see places."
Ata means "Father" so Ataturk means "Father of the Turks." This name was given to him by the Turkish people.
He was born in 1881, raised by his mother, father died when he was a young boy, he wanted to be a soldier, he was involved with young turk movements.
One of the bloodiest wars in time, the Wars of Gallipoli, gave him the name Ataturk because he was the hero and chief commander.
He actually did not reform Turkey to please his people, but instead, he did so to please himself, to be proud to be from his country. He wanted Turkey to be a more western and modern country, and he also supported education reforms.
The Turkish language did not have its own alphabet; they had the turkish sound but while using an Arabic alphabet. So he and group of people created a new one to portray the turkish sounds, which is still used today (He also personally went to schools to teach the new lettering and within months the media had to switch the writing also).
There was a lot of resistance, but the literacy rate increased by 91%.
His overall goal was to secularize the country so he banned religious status clothing from the office.
He changed the measurements in the metric system, and gave women more rights.
Would he be considered a dictator or a democrat ?
Well technically, he would be considered a dictator.
but a "dictator" has a negative connotation.
So even though he was a dictator, I would call him a democrat...
because he did such amazing things for his country
and he was fighting for democracy and secularism.
He was looking for Turkish identity.
He was taking power away from religious figures in order to create this identity.
He also decided that certain parts of the Ottoman Empire should be taken away such as Syria, Bulgaria, and Greece.
The flag: It is a symbol for the people who shed their blood for the independence of Turkey.
(Now we are driving towards Cappadocia making pitstops)
Next stop of the day was to visit Agzikarahan which was a palace/fortress built in 1231-1239.
There were these fortresses built every 40 m along a trade route (silk trade routes).
This architecture is actually similar to the architecture in Andaluz, Spain.
The mosque of the palace would be above ground in the middle because people cannot pray on the same level as animals, and there were always many animals around.
Also when someone would arrive to make a trade, they would obviously stay the night. The palace would be locked down, and in the morning, it remains locked until every person says that they still have all of their belongings and that every person is okay.
He has been living on the top of the palace for over
10 years.. He ran up one day, and cannot get back
down, so his owner left him there and just
feeds him and takes care of him there :P
One (out of many obviously) of the places we visited was the Kaymakli Underground City (Kaymakli Yeralti Sehri), which is one of the largest underground cities in Turkey.
It was built to protect the people against their enemies (regufee during invasions), so essentially, if there was a threat of attack, the people would move underground and live their for about months at a time until the enemies were gone. We don't know exactly when they were built, but people say maybe they go back to the Neolithic ages... Just think about that for a moment...
Between the underground cities, there were tunnels connecting everyone about 36 m long.
The cities were carved from Tufa Stone, which is a cold lava, and very easy to carve. You could scratch some off with your nails.
If the enemies did happen to find them (which they never did here), the place was built like an ant farm so that they would have travel finding their way around.
They had a church (it is believed that they used early Christianity even though it was forbidden), bedrooms, kitchen, a stable with sheep and other animals, living rooms, food storage rooms, wineries, etc. There are eight floors, but earthquakes have ruined the bottom levels (we went as far as four or five levels down !). It is believed that there were many diseases here because the people would stay here for months at a time, and there was absolutely no sunlight. It was dark for us and there was artificial lighting around. When we started to explore on our own, we had to bring out the Iphone flashlights because it was impossible to see.
How did they know when their enemies were gone ? The high hills had guards and mirrors to send messages to each other.
Well, it was as if we all went back to our childhood years because everyone was running around exploring these caves (it was actually a lot of fun !)
and as a fellow classmate said,
"this is way better than chuckie cheeses!"
(To have an idea of how small these caves were..
half of the time we were bent over and crawling)
~Alexa
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