I’d like to open this post with a quote that resonates with me tremendously:

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
- Heraclitus

I’m sure, dear reader, that you’ve had experiences like I have, where you return to a place you loved, or see an old friend, and find that it’s changed, they’ve changed, and/or you’ve changed.

To try to recapture the past, to try to relive the glory days is an exercise in futility. There was a time for those golden memories, and it’s passed, and now the meydan is full of inşaat, and everything’s different…

My heart leapt at the opportunity to return to Turkey.

Every time I’ve been back there since ~2016, it’s been as part of a flight itinerary to somewhere else. By flying with Turkish Airlines, an extra stop in Turkey adds nearly no cost at all to the ticket.

My main journey was to Southeast Asia, but my heart leapt at the opportunity to return to Turkey. I was tempted to spend almost all of my time exploring old haunts instead of new places, but I restrained myself. My visit lasted 10 days.

I wish it lasted much, much longer.

Tokat

Tokat was my first stop (after crossing customs, experiencing a weird flight delay, and being fed complimentary mediocre pide). We’ve both changed.

I spent a year working there as an English teacher, before unexpectedly pivoting to different places, and a different career.

I wanted to temper my expectations. I didn’t want to hope for too much, to expect too much. Tokat is a small city, and many of its touristic attractions can be easily traversed in a day.

I didn’t want to linger long enough to get bored. I wanted to keep missing Tokat when I left.

My reason for visiting Tokat was to see old friends. Former colleagues, mostly. Enough years had passed that most of my former students had graduated, or otherwise left the university and its city for different places.

I was glad to reconnect with my friends, and even more surprised at the ways I felt I was reconnecting with myself. Not just my language skills, but also, with my friend’s memories of myself seven years ago.

It’s a little strange, but also heart-warming to hear pals recall songs you wrote half a decade ago as if it were yesterday. It made me really reflect on who I was then, and also, how long it had been since I recorded something. (I still haven’t gotten back to it as much as I’d like, but the inspiration is there.)

There are more heart-warming things than self-reflection, though. I was thrilled to meet my friends’ daughter for the first time, and see the world through her exuberant, energetic eyes. (Her parents weren’t yet married when I saw them both last!)

I did walk past the building where I once lived. They repainted it, yet again. And, I stopped at the dönerci I used to frequent when I lived there.

Most of the employees were a rotating group of youth, and I expected to feel anonymous, even as the words of my typical order came back to me: no ketchup, no mayo, yes for Hatay sauce.

But, the owner was there, and he recognized me, and we had a lovely chat. He explained who I was to another, curious patron who decided to pay for my durum without me realizing.

And once more, my heart overflowed.

During my downtime in Tokat, and yes, there was downtime, I walked the length of the city, a route I used to meander.

The shopping mall has a Starbucks now.

There’s been a fair bit of renovation around the river, and the historic parts of town. The river itself seems just as unclean as I remembered, but there are some new tile walkways and a place where you can rent boats.

In the in the historic Sulu Sokak area, there are more museums, and renovations. The music conservatory has moved to… I’m not sure where, and there’s a new museum across the street from the old one. (I’m not really clear on how they differ, but it is clear that nothing from the old museum has moved to the new one.)

And, so, with a full heart, and a many friends I wished I spent more time with, I once more followed my old walk over the historic stone bridge, to the bus station…

Suluova

When I lived in Tokat, I spent New Year’s Eve, or at least, the actual moment of it when midnight struck with a close friend. I decided to spend this New Year’s Eve with the very same friend, who was staying with family near Suluova.

The town is where she grew up and went to school. We visited its hangout spots, enjoying coffee and lunch. It was fun for me to compare with my own hometown.

We celebrated New Year’s proper at a hotel with loud live music, and tasty köfte. I will admit, I did not do very well hanging on until midnight, still jetlagged from Singapore.

Rather unique amongst places I’ve visited is the presence of a humongous sugar factory, literally directly across from the main street of town. The factory lay dormant for many years, but as part of many restructurings in recent years, it now runs again, for at least part of the year.

Amasya

You know how sometimes you live somewhere, and you somehow fail to see or do something nearby, since you could do it anytime? When I was living in Tokat, I never once visited the astonishingly lovely city of Amasya, a mere three hour bus ride away. Instead, I took overnighters to a wide variety of spots around Türkiye (and elsewhere.)

I visited Amasya for the first time a few years ago. Seeing as my Suluova excursion meant I was very close by, I couldn’t resist paying the picturesque city center a visit, especially since I was equipped with my camera.

During my previous visit, I ate some pretty good mantı, visited some museums, and did everything I wanted to, except climbing the top of the hill to get a closer look at the imposing King’s Tombs. So, naturally I did that.

I would have happily spent longer in Amasya, but instead I decided to detour to Ankara to see another friend, one I hadn’t seen since 2016.

Ankara

How does it feel to walk down a street where you used to live, and to realize that you have no idea which building is the one you once called home?

Returning to Ankara felt weird to me in 2015. Even at that time, as I walked to Yedinci Caddesi, it felt as if all of the shops had changed hands, and had somehow turned louder, tackier. Only the landscape betrayed my foreknowledge of the place.

A lot can change in two years, and a lot more can change in ten and a half.

Many of my readers probably know that I spent the summer of 2013 studying Turkish in Ankara – and writing a blog about it at the time.

My first stop after visiting Ankara was the neighborhood where I stayed for a summer, nearly a decade prior, Bahçelievler. I was prepared for weird emotions, and also prepared to meet a friend, along with her newly wed husband only blocks away from where I spent that summer. And yes, I couldn’t have told you with any certainty which apartment building I called home.

I suspect I feel the changes in Ankara strongly because I didn’t live through them. Because, my memory is hazy to begin with. Because, I spent enough time there to have a strong baseline.

But whatever my baseline was, it was shocking in an unpleasant way, that a single entarance to the metro now cost more than the maximum amount of credit you could get on a ticket when I first used the system in 2013. That more than anything else underscored to me the stark inflation faced by Turkey’s people in recent times.

I ended up spending the night at my friends’ apartment, far away on the other side of town. Chatting, enjoying each other’s company, and visiting an artificial lake, an uncontested bright spot in the contested legacy of former mayor Melih Gökçek.

I made sure to visit lively, grimy Kızılay on my way out of town. I had hoped to also visit Anıtkabir, Atatürk’s mausoleum, but alas, I did not have enough time.

Kızılay, like the rest of the city, had changed.

No more is there a TÖMER Center where I had class. No longer are the streets littered with prostitutes’ business cards. The underground shops were more upscale han I rememberd, and many of the above ground shops and restaurants are different than I remember. No more big bubbly bread, and no more wrestling team pide.

Istanbul

When I open Google Maps, my map of Istanbul is dotted with apartments where friends of mine used to live. In one place, I remember walking up a steep hill, only to wait outside the building for keys to be thrown out the window to me. I can remember meeting an old friend for a coffee in Taksim. His contact details are now long lost.

In 2013, I visited Istanbul for the first time, and I didn’t know anyone who lived there. The past may repeat itself. Of my remaining friends, one is finishing a PhD., and the other is mulling over the idea of moving to Ankara, which she finds a more liveable city.

It felt weird to visit Istanbul and not stay on a friend’s couch. Though my Airbnb had its quirks, it was liberating to step outside, and be within a short walk of so many neighborhoods, so many places I remembered.

The last time(s) I visited Istanbul, everything was the same old, same old. I may have had a chip on my shoulder about being a foreigner who never lived in Istanbul, but I certainly had excuses to stop by.

Looking back on it, I visited the city at least once per year between 2013 and 2019. The pandemic changed many things, and so I spent 3.5 years away from Istanbul, away from Turkey. Maybe, that isn’t such a long time, but that’s almost as long as I spent at university. Maybe, my perception is off.

Or maybe, I shouldn’t go so long without visiting my favorite country, a place that thrills, enthralls, and comforts me. Maybe I shouldn’t go so long without seeing old friends, lifting a steaming, tulip-shaped glass of tea to my lips, and taking a sip.

I’ll share more pictures and details about portions of this trip to Türkiye at a later point. 😉