In late April, six months after my last trip to Turkey, I returned for talks in Ankara and in Izmir. Flying into Istanbul on a sunny afternoon, I was reminded of my previous arrivals. Before, I would time my arrival for the late afternoon, around 6-7 pm so that my friend, Gordon, could pick me up after leaving work. I would make it through customs and passport control, and meet him at International Arrivals. We would then go to the parking garage, and I would often glance at the city map showing the traffic pattern. It was almost always red, the streets choked with traffic, and I knew that our drive to to the Asian side of the city would be long. It was almost always at least two hours, once it was almost four.<\/p>\n
But this time was different. Gordon and his family had moved back to Canada the summer before, and when they did, I felt that my ties that had held me to Turkey for more than a decade were starting to unravel. When I left in the July of 2017, I knew that my frequent trips for talks, for writing, for friends, were going to become infrequent. From 2005 to 2011, my visits to Turkey were about once a year, from 2011 to 2016, I visited about four times a year. I used to joke with my friends that I was there every six weeks. Since leaving in July, 2017, those visits have become about every six months.<\/p>\n
I’ve told friends that I have about a decade long relationship with a place. I spent my 20’s traveling back and forth between Mexico and the US. My 30’s were spent traveling back and forth between the US and Spain. In 2003, I spent 8 months living in Salamanca and Barcelona. In 2006, I lived in Madrid for about 8 month. Between those years, I visited many times, working, writing, taking photos. At one point, I considered moving permanently to Madrid. And then, about 10 years after I first started traveling frequently to Spain, I realized that my time there was done (I wrote about this on my former blog, here<\/a>.) In 2005, a year before I turned 40, I visited Turkey for the first time. Eleven years later, in 2016, I turned 50 in Turkey. It was around then that I started thinking about this decade long relationship with place that I’ve had. I wondered if Turkey might change that. When I left Turkey, in July 2017, twelve years after my first visit, I wasn’t so sure.<\/p>\n Before, I always knew when I was going to return, there was a talk or a conference that I was invited to give or to participate, or I there was research for the book I’ve been working on to do. But this time, in late April 2018, I didn’t have anything planned for a subsequent trip. Maybe I would return in six months, maybe in six years. I wasn’t sure.<\/p>\n Originally, my visit was just going to be to Istanbul and to Izmir. It was going to be a short trip and I wanted to spend at least a couple of days writing. In the end, I added a trip to Ankara to do a talk, and to see friends there.<\/p>\n At the end of the whirlwind trip, I knew I wasn’t done with Turkey yet. I don’t know when I’ll return, but I’m looking forward to going back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In late April, six months after my last trip to Turkey, I returned for talks in Ankara and in Izmir. Flying into Istanbul on a sunny afternoon, I was reminded of my previous arrivals. Before, I would time my arrival for the late afternoon, around 6-7 pm so that my friend, Gordon, could pick me … Continue reading A Return to Turkey<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-travel","category-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/65450872_10119555317598664_2602223274788126720_o.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}