• Home
• /
• Travel

Beyond Istanbul: Why you need to explore Turkey's untouched gems

While it tops the charts as the most visited city in the world, venturing beyond its bustling streets reveals Turkey's hidden treasures

Istanbul was recently listed as the most visited city in the world; it got 20.2 million visitors in 2023. Istanbul is incredible, but Turkey is so much more than just this one Bosporus-straddling alpha city. Furthermore, once a place makes it onto the most-visited list, there's a danger of it falling victim to its own success — strangled by congestion and trampled under touristic feet. Istanbul is already one of the world's top 20 most populated cities, and the legions of seasonal visitors further swell the already swollen ranks. Istanbul is full.

One way to escape the heaving throng that winds its way through the labyrinthine streets around the blue mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) is to head east. On our most recent visit to Turkey, we got as far as Urfa, around 950km southeast of the city.

In an ode to his hometown, singer-songwriter Gerard Kennedy suggested that New York was so good they named it twice. If a plurality of names indicates merit, then Urfa is a huge deal. Named more times than a perennially bad restaurant, some of Urfa's previous appellations include Ur, Ruha, Edessa, and, my personal favourite, Justinopolis, which makes it sound like a Justin Bieber-themed amusement park — which it isn't. Back in 1984, Urfa was suffixed with the term sanli, which means glorious. It's as though the province received a knighthood for services to the republic. Today, Urfa is officially known as Sanliurfa (glorious Urfa). Most locals, however, drop the honorific and persist with the name Urfa.

Reflecting its many names and the numerous civilisations that have called it theirs, Urfa is architecturally diverse. This structural variety is enchanting rather than visually cacophonous. Seljuk-era mosques and madrasas sit happily alongside old Byzantine churches, with Roman, Ottoman, and Mamluk structures punctuating the cityscape.

At the heart of Urfa is Balikligol, the fish lake. The lake is overlooked by the imposing Urfa castle and surrounded by beautiful rose gardens, mausoleums and mosques. Swimming in the lake's clear shallow waters, as the name Fish Lake suggests, are thousands of fish, specifically carp. The lake's pampered piscine population is placid and playful; most fish will happily eat food from your fingers if you let them.

For a lira, you can buy a small tin of fish food to indulge them.

Urfa's traditional sites are juxtaposed with modern tourist attractions, such as an architecturally beautiful museum and a sprawling shopping mall. This relatively new mall has air conditioning, global fast-food brands and a multiscreen cinema showing all the latest blockbusters.

Older than the pyramids

Ironically, Urfa’s other newest attraction is 7,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) lies around 9 miles east of the city and is the oldest known place of worship anywhere. In 2011, Gobekli Tepe made the cover of National Geographic with the headline ‘The Birth of Religion’. This neolithic site has the archaeological community buzzing; Gobekli Tepe challenges much of what we thought we knew.

Although the site is still under excavation (90 percent remains unearthed), the standing stones are open to the public. The simplest way to describe this Neolithic structure is to imagine Stonehenge but with pictures. Many of the cleanly carved limestone pillars at Gobekli Tepe have animals — snakes, foxes and lions — artfully etched into them. Walking around the standing stones filled my mind with questions: Who? Why? What were they thinking? The enigmatic Gobekli Tepe, at present, raises more questions than it answers. But these are essential questions, the answers to which may shed light on the very origins of civilisation.

Also, in the vicinity of Urfa, you can find Mount Nemrut Colossi. Secreted away in the Taurus Mountains overlooking the river Euphrates, half a dozen stone heads (decapitated statues) stare purposefully across the horizon. The heads are believed to represent King Antiochus the First and an assortment of Greek, Armenian, and Persian deities. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, Mount Nemrut is thought to be the king's burial site, dating back around 2,000 years ago.

Getting to the fallen colossi is arduous, especially if you go alone. Undulating mountain roads aren't for everyone, although the spectacular views of the river Euphrates on the route are breathtaking compensation. Even once you make it to the base of Mount Nemrut, there's still a 20-minute uphill walk before you lock eyes with the fallen heads. Sometimes, though, extra effort sweetens the goal, which is undoubtedly true of Mount Nemrut. Furthermore, inaccessible places typically don't have queues or crowds. When we visited, in August, we were fortunate enough to be the only people there.

About a seven-hour drive west of Urfa, heading back towards Istanbul is the beautiful city of Konya. This is another of Turkey's great cities. Konya was once the capital of the mighty Seljuk empire and home to Jalaladin Rumi, scholar, poet and founder of the Mevlevi dervish order —best known for their whirling. Each Thursday evening, on the grounds of a museum/mausoleum devoted to sufi Rumi, the dervish brethren perform their sema (spiritual exercise); the music and whirling movement are mesmerising.

Konya is also home to architectural treasures like the Alaeddin mosque and the Karatay madrasa. The distinctive octagonal and decahedral Seljuk structures are embellished with complex geometric patterns etched in stone, carved on wood, and painted on tiles in blue and black.

A double-headed eagle

Beyond geometry and calligraphy, the Seljuks, unlike many other Muslim dynasties, also represented living creatures in their art.

Everywhere you look in Konya, you will see the double-headed eagle. This was an ancient symbol adopted by the Seljuks, and it remains Konya's emblem to this day, adorning everything from the local football team's kit to the university's crest. It's like Liverpool's liver bird, but more so, more prevalent, and with an extra head.

On the outskirts of Konya, however, the double-headed eagle makes way for the leopard. Catalhoyuk (fork mound) is a Neolithic site made famous in the 1960s by archaeologist Sir James Mellaart. In its heyday, home to around 7,000 people, Catalhoyuk was hailed as the earliest known (9,000-year-old) large-scale human community—a contender for the title of world's first city. The leopard features heavily in the art unearthed at Catalhoyuk, so much so that Professor Ian Hodder, the lead archaeologist working at the site, titled one of his books The Leopard's Tail: Revealing the Mysteries of Catalhoyuk.

One of the site's most famous artefacts is the iconic figurine of an enthroned woman with her hands resting on the heads of two leopards (now in the national museum in Ankara). Based on the discovery of many similar artefacts, one popular — but contested — interpretation of Catalhoyuk is that it was a mother deity worshiping matriarchy. Each year, among the site's visitors, you can find a few members of the community.

For these intrepid pilgrims, some from as far away as California, the leopard represents female power.

Like Gobekli Tepe, Catalhoyuk inspires awe through age and mystery. Walking around the site, which is still being excavated, you see the homes of people who lived 9,000 years ago, you see their art and artefacts, and you glimpse the very distant human past. Experiencing all this firsthand for the first time, I couldn't help but imagine their lives. What did they think about? What did they dream of and aspire to?

Holidays can make you fat; they can also make you think. I was happy that we headed east of Istanbul on this trip; it was thought-provoking in the best way.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com