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From Selcuk we travelled to Kusadasi where we met up with my aunt’s stepbrother who lives there with his wife. I’d never met Mark and Barbara before but we had a great time hanging out, ended up staying at their place that night and talked for hours over a couple of glasses of wine. Listening to my aunt’s family history I realise how interesting the people who I’ve grown up with are. When someone’s always been a part of your life you don’t really think about where they came from. Her mother is Greek and took part in the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in the aftermath of the First World War. She ended up marrying a British man who is my aunt’s father but they divorced. My aunt’s mother remarried and Mark is her second husband’s son from a previous marriage. Apparently before the family was kicked out of Turkey my aunt’s grandfather built (or designed?) buildings for the Ottoman sultans which can still be seen in Istanbul today.

It was a good week for meeting interesting people in between our Roman ruin visits. Our base for visiting the UNESCO listed combination of Hierapolis/Pamukkale was Denizli where we couchsurfed. Yasin had contacted us and offered his house so we based ourselves there for a couple of nights and did a daytrip. His wife, Umran, and 1 year old daughter, Deniz, were lovely and we really enjoyed hanging out with their extended family. On our second night there he took us to a concert by a Turkish singer who has been living in exile in France since 1980. In that year Turkey had its third military coup (earlier ones in 1960 and 1971) and hundreds of thousands of people were detained, tortured, tried and blacklisted. Around 14,000 people were stripped of citizenship.

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Tags: Aphrodisias, Fethiye, Hierapolis, Kusadasi, Lycian tombs, Pamukkale, travertines