Southeastern Anatolia or Mesopotamia – a remote area in Turkey where you can find many different cultures, which are particularly noticeable in the musical styles: Arabic instrumental music, Syrian Orthodox church chants, Kurdish songs. A journey with many musical impressions and encounters, for example with the Kurdish singer Sakina Teyna, who talks about the sometimes harmonious, sometimes complicated coexistence of the ethnic groups.
Mesopotamia is the name given to the land between the two rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The name brings to mind a mythical past and ancient civilizations. But even today the region is still an area where many ethnic groups, languages, religions and cultures meet.
Southeastern Anatolia is primarily Kurdish, and you can also notice the Arab influence. But it is also the area of the Assyrians and Arameans, i.e. the followers of Syrian Christianity.
The Grotto of Abraham's Birth in Şanlıurfa, over which a large mosque was built, is one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in Islam. According to legend, Abraham was sentenced to death at the stake at the nearby carp basin because of his faith. However, the fire turned into water, the logs into fish, and Abraham was saved. Since then, the pool and the carp have been considered sacred and are visited by pilgrims not only from Islam, but also from Christianity and Judaism.
For centuries, the city of Mardin and the surrounding Tur Abdin region have been the territory of the Assyrians or Aramaeans, i.e. the Syrian Orthodox Christians, and a small community still lives here, which celebrates services every Sunday in the churches and monasteries and visits the historic buildings fills life.
Diyarbakir is the secret capital of the Turkish Kurds, perched on a hill on the banks of the Tigris. Dynamic, energetic, hospitable and full of life.
Anyone who remembers the opening part of the James Bond film "Skyfall" will certainly remember the Giaurdere Viaduct well, as this railway bridge formed the background of a dramatic chase in the film.
During our extensive tours through southeastern Anatolia and the multiple visits to the now world-famous excavation site of Göbeklitepe, we also visited other excavation sites, including the one at Karahan Tepe, which is located around 55 kilometres to the southeast.
Karahantepe is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world and is located in the Şanlıurfa region of Turkey. Considered the "sister" of the famous Göbekli Tepe, this historical site offers insights into a time more than 11,000 years ago.
In addition to the underground cities in Cappadocia, archaeologists have recently discovered another huge underground city in Turkey that researchers believe could be the largest underground city complex in the world to date.
On our tour through the southeast we also reached Gaziantep, whose mosaics in the Zeugma Mosaic Museum are known far beyond the country's borders.
For thousands of years, people have been communicating through language, passing on knowledge and techniques through oral transmission of what they have learned, with all the erroneous distortions of meaning by omitting or adding details of the original content.
The myths surrounding the Rum Kalesi Castle in the Yavuzeli district of the Turkish province of Gaziantep reach far back into history. Various epochs of up to 3,000 years are known to date. Archaeologists have only begun to extensively explore the ruins in recent years.
The small town of Şırnak (known as Şirnex in Kurdish) is located in the triangle formed by Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
In the past we have reported several times about the Mor Gabriel Monastery in the south-east of Turkey and the problems of the expropriation of some monastery areas. Now the property is back in Syrian Orthodox hands.
The current day-to-day politics in the Syrian conflict has caused further problems in the province of Şırnak and thus its provincial capital of the same name due to the common border with Syria after the long-standing Kurdish conflicts, in a downright tragic way, because thousands of Syrian refugees sought their salvation by fleeing the country.
Once founded by the Hittites with the name Kummulu, Samosata later became the capital of the Assyrian Empire.
A few kilometres north of the newly built Birecik dam, two larger settlements faced each other on the banks of the Euphrates in ancient times: Apamea on the left and Seleukeia / Zeugma on the right bank.
Like the years before the 14th of July, the day of “Appearance of the great Gods” will be celebrated at Mount Nemrud having some meetings and festivals.
Sanlıurfa as a city is mostly known by the Europeans with her antique name, Edessa. Sanlıurfa is the central part of a city in Turkey with a population of about 390.000 and is located in the hot climate zone in southeast Anatolia. In geographical terms, she is part of Northern Mesopotamia.
We had designated Göbekli Tepe as the most important destination and the highlight of our Şanlıurfa journey. We had as such communicated with an archaeologist, Mr. Klaus Schmidt for this purpose.
The Atatürk dam (Turkish Atatürk Barajı) on the Euphrates is the first finished, most important and largest of the 22 dams of the Southeast Anatolia project GAP (Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi) in Turkey.
Older Near Eastern roots indicate the shape of the northern Mesopotamian weather god Hadad, Babylonian Adad, who was depicted standing on a bull with a double ax and a lightning bolt.
Nemrut Mountain, much better known as the Mountain of Nemrut, is in the province of Adiyaman to the west of the Euphrates valley in the south east of Turkey and is one of the most important tourist sites in the country.
The Diyarbakir city walls were first constructed by the Roman Emperor Constantine. The city walls were enlarged during the Seljuk and Ottoman periods and 82 towers were added. These walls are the second longest walls in the world after the Great Wall of China and actually rank first in terms of wall height.
Batman, known under the name Elih in the Middle Ages and up to the 1950s, is the capital of the Turkish province of Batman in southeastern Turkey.