Turkey: From Fresh Air to Tear Gas in 13 Days

When it came to places our families didn’t want us visiting on this trip, Turkey was at the top of the list. The country has been in the U.S. news a lot over the past year for ISIS activity and other Islamic extremism. But Mac and I knew there had to be more to the story. After all, the news certainly isn’t always right or truthful–and it usually focuses on what people already want to hear. Turkey had long been on my travel bucket list, ever since I had sipped Turkish coffee back in Vienna during study abroad many years ago, listening to vivid descriptions of exotic Istanbul.

So despite our families’ concerns, Mac and I packed our bags in Greece and headed for Turkey. Little did we know that in the span of only 13 days, we’d go from breathing in fresh mountain air while hiking to choking on tear gas while taking shelter in a neighborhood bar as the streets erupted around us during this year’s Pride Parade (you can check out CNN for more on this–yep, we made international news).

The trip started innocently enough. We took a ferry from Rhodes, Greece, to Fethiye, Turkey, almost two weeks ago. And we did what we usually do–dive mouths-first into some local food. Here in Turkey, a lot of people are vegetarian but the local cuisine does offer lamb, goat, beef and chicken. We ordered the Sultan’s plate to get our first taste of Turkish fare. (Fethiye, Turkey)

After fueling up and dropping our main bags off at a hotel for safekeeping, we grabbed our daypacks (now our only packs for the next week) and headed off for our long-awaited hiking trip in southern Turkey. Over the span of seven days, we walked from Fethiye to Kas.

The walking wasn’t always easy. Sometimes we had to have assistance. (Faralya, Turkey)

Sometimes the signs made things look scarier than they really were. (Turkish countryside)

And sometimes we had to just have faith that the people marking the trail knew what they were doing–even when the route appeared to go over a cliff (and in this case, it did and we had to scramble down on big boulders).

But we did get to see some pretty cool things–like local folks herding goats. (Turkish countryside)

And cows. (Gey, Turkey)

I was excited to figure out what conservative Muslim women wear to the beach … (Patara, Turkey)

And meet some local people, like this kind lady who spent almost an hour helping us figure out how to get to the next town. (Bel, Turkey)

Mac’s favorite part of our hike was the wildlife we saw along the way. (Turkish countryside)

My favorite part was the jaw-dropping views. (Kalkan, Turkey)

And the fact that one night we got to stay in a gypsy wagon trailer park that was part of a hippie commune. Finally checked that one off my bucket list! (Kabak, Turkey)

We spent another night smoking the water pipe, drinking Turkish tea and eating Turkish delight.  (Kas, Turkey)

After nearly a week and a half of hiking from village to village, we flew to Istanbul for whirling dervishes, mosques and more Turkish tea.

Needless to say, we kept busy in Turkey–and we were pretty tuckered out come last weekend. So on Sunday we decided to stay in for the day. We were having a very chill afternoon in our apartment in Taksim (a hip neighborhood of Istanbul, much like where we lived in Capitol Hill) when excitement came to us; the government-cancelled but stubbornly supported Pride Parade passed right underneath our windows.

It looked fun, so of course we ventured out. We found police blocking all of the streets around our neighborhood, so we sat down in a little bar to have a beer and watch the action.

We didn’t anticipate becoming part of the action but that’s exactly what happened when the police decided to counter the protest with tear gas, throwing a can of it just a few feet away from where we were sitting. We fled to the inside of the bar, where they shut and locked the doors and passed out wet wipes to the people who were hardest hit by the tear gas.

Everyone was coughing (let me tell you, it really does a number on your lungs)–and then we started talking. We were all from different countries (Libya, Switzerland, Germany, Turkey and the U.S.) but the chaos outside our windows gave us something in common. And that was enough to launch us into friendship. The cat and mouse game between the protesters and the police was still going on when we left the bar with our new friends, convinced some police officers to let us through their barricade and went to have dinner together in a different part of town.

That one crazy night in Istanbul might have proven our families right. After all, we did choke on a fair amount of tear gas in Turkey. But to look at it only that way is to miss the rest of the story, to see the tear gas instead of what was left behind when the smoke cleared: friendship. Sometimes you need to go somewhere foreign and put yourself in challenging situations just to see how similar you are to the people around you. And for that, Turkey was a breath of fresh air.