A small part of the long boardwalk along the coast of Izmir. It’s lined with bars, cafés, and restaurants that, I’m confident, were pretty bad. I was amused to note the absence of a railing or other barrier for miles; I don’t think that would pass muster in much of the U.S.
Why would anyone go to Izmir, willingly at least? It’s a port on the Mediterranean, but there are no great beaches in or near the city. It’s smack in the center of the great Greek and Roman civilizations, but there are no eye-popping ruins. A century ago it was a great multi-cultural melting pot, but much of that was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1922.
These are just some of the bus companies operating at the Izmir bus stop. We’re getting around Turkey on buses and dolmas, minibuses that ply secondary routes. The system is comprehensive and the buses have been really good. But gee, how many bus companies do they need? A lot, apparently.
We loved this sign on one of the dolmas we took. Would that everyone took that advice in public places.
The quick history: Smyrna was founded by Greek colonists some 3,000 years ago. The Persians took control, but Alexander the Great recovered it for Greece. Alexander, in fact, is given credit in legend at least for Smyrna/Izmir’s current location; he allegedly had the city moved based on a message he received in a dream nearby. In Roman times it was, along with nearby Ephesus (Izmir is maybe 55 miles north of Ephesus), one of the major cities in Rome’s Asian province.
Fast forward a couple thousand years; Smyrna has been an important center of commerce under the Ottoman Empire. But the Ottomans were on the wrong side of World War I, and in the subsequent treaty the Sultan gave away huge amounts of his Empire. With Western support Greece invaded Anatolia, taking Smyrna on May 15, 1919, and headed up towards Istanbul; it appeared as though even the rump territory ceded to the Ottomans was going to be taken over.
Enter Mustafa Kamal (known to history as Ataturk, Father of the Turks) at the head of the Young Turks. They had effectively gone to war with the Sultan over his capitulation after the War, but now mobilized to stop the Greeks. Surprisingly, just years after having been all but wiped out in World War I, they did in fact stop the Greeks and pushed them back to Smyrna. Kamal’s troops retook Smyrna on September 9, 1922, more than three years after the Greeks had first captured the city; that day is now celebrated as the victory of the Turkish War of Independence.
This is what we loved about Izmir; there was some great food. This dish – grilled meatballs on an eggplant-yoghurt with tomatoes was fabulous. In fact, we had it for lunch all three days we were there!
As long as I’m showing food, here’s another meal, dinner this time. Artichoke, more eggplant yoghurt, veggies, and of course some raki.
Unfortunately – but perhaps not surprisingly, given the realities of war – victory was followed quickly by catastrophe. While the Greeks and Armenians were trying to escape Smyrna (the Armenian Genocide had occurred less than 10 years earlier) an enormous fire started, destroying most of the Old City and killing anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 people. Surviving Greeks, then, were eventually shipped to Greece as part of the final treaty that ended the war: Greece agreed to send Turkish Muslims to Turkey while Turkey shipped Greek Christians to Greece. Thus little of the genuinely multi-ethnic spirit of Smyrna remains in today’s Izmir.
That’s the city’s story, then. For us, there was one historic site that we enjoyed. The Agora – the central part of the ancient city – was built originally for Alexander the Great, then rebuilt after an earthquake in the second century AD by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. At first the site looked pretty boring, particularly after touring Ephesus just days earlier, but eventually we discovered the excavated basement of a great basilica on the site. That was fun, and very photogenic.
The excavated basement of a Byzantine basilica. You can see Mark over on the right admiring the site.
All in all, Izmir made a nice little stop. There’s a long walkway along the coast that’s pleasant. There’s a huge Culture Park near the center of the city, occupying a big part of what had been the Old City before it was destroyed by the Great Fire, where I spent a few hours reading and watching Izmir go by. There’s a busy market area that I remember from my visit in 1975 (though it seemed a lot less exotic now than it did then, when it was the first time I’d ever seen anything like it). And there was some decidedly good food, which always makes for a place we would like.
Otherwise there’s not that much to do in Izmir; it’s the sort of place that’s probably worth a visit every 40 years or so. The relative low-key nature of our stop may have been a good thing, though, as it gave us time to start thinking seriously about our winter plans. For a while we’ve had a general notion that we would spend the winter in Africa, but now we’re starting to put some meat to those sketchy ideas. It is a little strange, I’ll admit, to be dreaming of Africa while sitting in a café in Izmir, that I can attest that it does happen.
Mark in Izmir’s bazaar. This was relatively early in the day, but it gets more lively later on.
There was a little – or a lot – of everything in the bazaar, including a fish market area
An Ottoman clock tower from the start of the 20th century lies at the heart of the city and is often described as the city’s emblem
Right behind the clock tower is this tiny-but-lovely 18th century mosque
Most of the grounds of the Agora is either empty or taken up by pieces waiting to be put together: pediments here, capitals over there, lintels in that area, and so on
And finally, just to show you we don’t just take pictures of cats, here are some of Izmir’s finest dogs. We’re amused to observe that in East Asia, stray dogs are all small and uniformly a light brown. Here in Asia Minor the strays are much bigger and varied in design. Just an observation.
