About 14 days ago we had a rather serious conversation with a long-time friend who has been married to a Turkish woman for over 20 years and lives in a house near Izmir.

Since the time of the German economic miracle with a rapidly increasing number of Turkish guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s, the amounts of monthly transfers from Germany to Turkey to support the family members who remained there had also increased continuously.

Despite protests on the streets of Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and other cities, which have meanwhile turned towards civil disobedience, there is still no end in sight to the demonstrations in Turkey.

The eastern part of Turkey offers a huge variety to mountain climbers, from the tropical landscape of the Ponti Mountains along the Black Sea coast to the year-long snow-covered peak of Mount Ararat and the area of Hakkari in the far south-east. In the tradition of the Armenian people Mount Ararat is the centre of the universe and the Armenian people are the children of the mountain.