Below my house is the small and little attended beach of Aspri. It's not organized with chairs like the popular Agriolivadi and Kampos, it has dark gravely sand and one restaurant – which is open only for dinner. Not the recipe for a popular beach. Even. neighboring Meloi beach does better because while not organized, it has accommodation, food, a much larger cove and is easily accessed from Skala. Nonetheless in the summer of 2019, Emily and I became aware of Aspri because of its acclaimed seafood restaurant, KYMA – which a description Emily read said that fish team right alongside diners. While an expensive seafood dinner is usually a waste on me, it's certainly not on Emily – but more importantly, we needed to see what this hidden gem with piscine companions was about.
It turned out the restaurant had build a cement deck over the seaside rocks that basically extended to form an edge with the water – almost like a dock. Indeed, schools of mackerel-sized fish teemed alongside the dining platform and the restaurant had lighting to illuminate them at night. We had met the apparently well-known chef, his wife and young son at Kampos Beach. Apparently, he was well compensated and they were given housing for the summer at a special apartment behind the restaurant. The wife and son spent most of their days at the beach a Aspri and sometimes frequented other beaches for a change of scene.
Patmos has no shortage of seafood-oriented tavernas, which I am usually happy to frequent because I can and do live on mezzes – the small plates of dips and appetizers that are obligatory to any Greek meal. Wherever I go, I'm rarely interested in the entrees anyway. But KYMA was fine dining and was not armed with my usual seafood workarounds. We were prepared for the unusually high prices – but not the clientele.
Yachts pulled up in the Aspri cove and diners came ashore in their tenders – often pulling right up to the dining area. Patmos is a casual island where the fashion trends lean toward flowy linen if they lean anywhere at all. These people were dressed to the nines in attire more fit for Paris than Patmos. Then they ordered in dizzying varieties and quantities. Most tables had one, if not two 100 euro platters of the lobster linguine topped with two giant lobster tails apiece – among the many other dishes. Who were these lavish, celebratory travelers? How do they know to pull up in yachts and feast on ungodly amounts of lobster and pasta? Naturally, Emily and I observed and listened intently. The flags on the yachts and the language were mostly Turkish.
The Greco-Turkish relationship is fraught and confusing – I think even to them. One of the best cases of frenemies in the world, Greeks and Turks have been locked in a relationship with tensions as old and famous as the Trojan War. Yet, there is also symbiosis and cooperation. Greece was under the Ottoman Empire for almost 400 years – which really sucked for them – except the Ottomans tended to be more interested in tribute than conformity. So long as people paid their taxes and followed the law, the Sultans generally did not try to take away the various ethnic identities of their subjects. Greeks could easily have lost their language, culture and religion. But they didn't.
In fact, Greek people and culture remained embedded in Istanbul itself until the late 1950's when Turkish nationalist sentiment caused Istanbullus to start attacking Greek ethnics. In 1964, the Greek and Turkish government arranged an exchange of their respective ethnics. People weren't given a choice and were often forcibly deported to a "home country" they had never seen – where the only link they had was their language and religion. This affected Turkish ethnics in Greek Thrace as much as Greek ethnics in major population centers like Istanbul and Izmir. In all cases, deportees forfeited their real estate, businesses and any assets they couldn't carry or store in friendly bank (think Swiss).
Exactly a decade later – in a shocking turn of events – Turkey attacked predominately Greek ethnic Cyprus, drawing Greece into a war. The world was stunned as two NATO allies fought over a neighboring country under the banner of protecting their ethnic kinsman from one another. For hundreds of years Turkish and Greek ethnics had lived peacefully together on Cyprus and the war had more to do with Greek politics than anything else. The ruling junta of Greece encouraged a coup d'etat in Cyprus with the hopes of a new Cypriot government moving to reunite Cyprus with Greece. Turkey would not allow the ethnic Turkish population to be drawn into Greece – and so one of the most pointless conflicts of the 20th century began and ended with a divided Cyprus: half under Turkish control and the other half Greek-ethnic, but still independent of Greece. And friends, neighbors and families separated and worse for the wear.
Yet Turkey and Greece are neighbors with many interests in common. In the context of the Cold War – which seems to have meaning again in the face of Russian aggression – Greece and turkey were brought into NATO at the same time, for the same reason – forming a Southeastern flank to NATO's containment of Russia. Greece and Turkey are like the Samneric, the twins in Lord of the Flies – the NATO alliance often sees them as Greecenturkey. Mauripol needs evacuating? Maybe we can send in Greecenturkey to do the extraction. Refugees are crossing the Mediterranean? Greecenturkey will absorb and figure out what to do with many of them.
Here in Patmos, small signs of the ambiguous relationship between the two countries abound. Like we saw that night at KYMA, many Turkish flagged yachts pull into the harbor or Petra Bay – but rarely do you meet Turks actually staying on Patmos – especially for any extended time. Once a week the Kusadasi Express ferry pulls into Patmos – allowing a direct tourist connection between the nearest Turkish city and Patmos. It seems to primary serve Turks looking for a day trip to a Greek island. In the summer, there's a boat to Bodrum twice a week which seems to primarily serve foreign tourists who may be moving between Greece and Turkey in their Mediterranean travels.
Although the only broadcast radio station to reach Patmos is Turkish and when I look at my available phone networks, three of them are Turkish, I have not met a single Patmian who goes to Turkey to shop or to see a movie. Kusadasi is about four hours away by direct ferry and five if you do like we did and transit on Samos which has daily ferries both to the rest of the islands of the Dodecanese and to Kusadasi. Bodrum is about five and a half hours by direct boat. Meanwhile Athens is an eight hour ferry that departs at midnight or 1 am and Rhodes is about five hours away with much more limited and expensive shopping. Generally, prices in Turkey – outside the Euro Zone – are cheaper and Kusadasi is a sizable city with malls, movie theaters and Carrefour and Tesco stores equivalent to Target or Walmart. I don't think most people here have even given Turkey a thought for their shopping runs.
The wariness between Greeks and Turks is interesting. Bodrum has much the same whitewashed, stone construction style as many traditional Greek islands like Patmos, Lipsi and Santorini. It's the same cultural base and influence. Greece is a little more European with a Middle Eastern flair while Turkey is a little more Middle Eastern with a European flair. These two baklava and mezze-loving countries are divided by their affiliations. Greece is a founding member of the European Union while Turkey has had its EU application sitting in a dusty hopper on the EU application desk for decades while the former Eastern Block countries have slipped right in before it. Meanwhile, Greeks and Turks can see each other across narrow straights between islands like Samos and Rhodes – and Turkish cities like Kusadasi and Marmaris. From the Turkish perspective, they're good enough to be members of NATO, but not of the EU. What kind of friendship is that?
The obvious and politically charged answer is that while Turkey remains officially a secular state – and a strong effort by Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk) to shape Turks as a secular people – the prevailing religion is Islam. For better and worse, Christian Europe has been loathe to admit either muslim Albania or Turkey. Besides some straits of sea water, that is the big divide between Greece and Turkey specifically. Sure, Italy and Germany – aided by their Bulgarian thug-mercenaries may have subjugated, humiliated, starved and impoverished Greeks two generations ago while Turkey did no such thing – but somehow Turkey remains the tenuous relationship.
A quick look under the cultural hood of Turkey makes the entire issue all the more complex and confusing. Until the end of World War I, there was no real Turkish identity. The Ottoman Empire was ruled by the descendants of the Sejuk Turks who took Constantinople and large swaths of territory that had previously belonged to the Byzantine, Persian, and Mamluk Empires. However, as I mentioned, the outside the Istanbul area, the Ottomans weren't trying to create anything resembling a national identity. Much like the Persian Empire, the Ottomans were more-or-less content with ethnic and religious diversity so long as there was peace, prosperity and taxes – and it can be argued that this approach was a major reason for its longevity.
That's why in the aftermath of World War I, when the empire collapsed and Turkey became a republic left mostly with its core territory of Anatolia, Ataturk struggled with how to create a new national identity among people who largely never considered themselves Turkish. People deep in the Anatolian provinces saw little connection between themselves and Istanbullus or the people of Turkish Thrace. One of Ataturk's most visible efforts was moving the capitol from Istanbul to the hitherto unimportant Central Anatolian town of Ankara (although he himself still spent the majority of his time in Istanbul where he ultimately died in a former royal palace). He even had the Turkish language revised to eliminate many of the loan words that had entered Ottoman Turkish from Farsi and Arabic with the result being that a Turk today might well need a translation to understand Ataturk's own early speeches.
All of this to say, that even a Turkish identity isn't quite a Turkish identity. The idea of a long, historical ethnic-cultural tension or relationship between Turks and Greeks is almost a fiction because the majority of Turks didn't really see themselves as Turks. If there was a blood-feud, it's hard to say who exactly it was with.
"I like the people of Turkey!" a Patmian man who decided to take on the role of ambassador said to a family of three from Bodrum sitting at Stelios' Gelato Shop and Cafe. "You are welcome here! The Turkish people are very nice people. I always like Turkish people!"
While no state gift was offered to the visiting delegation, the upper-middle-class looking Turkish family appeared to accept the Patmian Ambassador's offer of friendship and goodwill. They countered with how beautiful Patmos is and how much they have enjoyed seeing the island. The Ambassador was pleased and attempted to continue their conversation in mutually broken English using some gesticulation to make up for gaps in vocabulary. The Ambassador extolled Turkey's similarly delicious food and again, nice people. The Turkish delegation extolled Patmos' very nice food and how adorable Skala was. It was a conversation made of fantastically good will and very limited vocabulary.
All the same, I enjoyed that there was a Patmian who stepped forward in friendship. He may have ranked in the bottom quartile of English fluency among the 3,000 Patmians, but he exuded kindness which goes much further than words. Sadly – or perhaps happily – these are the only Turkish visitors I have encountered so far in my almost seven weeks on Patmos and they received a warm reception. Every positive encounter helps and thus far, Patmos has a 100% score in welcoming its Turkish neighbors.
It's a lot better than when dropping us off at the port at the end of our first stay on Patmos, Nicholas gave us hugs and his parting advice, knowing we were heading to Samos for a few days and then on to Kusadasi and Istanbul, "You no get hashish in Turkey!"
Istanbul is often considered the very divide between Europe and Asia. One side of the Bosphorous is the European shore and the other the Asian. While we could debate whether Europe and Asia are actually separate continents in anything other than concept – and whether the Bosphorous, magical as it may be – is really a hard divider when people have been using the Silk Roads for thousands of years to trade goods and march armies between Asia and Europe…. we can see where at least culturally there's a ring of truth to it.
Turkey – especially outside of Istanbul – is full of blocky, cement apartment blocks and houses that could just as easily be found in Taiwan. There is an aesthetic – or lack of one – that resembles some of the less curated civic designs of many East and Southeast Asian cities. In Alanya, Emily and I walked along the highway until a bus pulled up alongside and asked if we wanted to ride – much in the same way Thai local buses do. There's no bus stop – just passengers in need. Public restrooms usually feature both squat and sit-down toilets – much like Singapore and Malaysia. Powerlines run alongside roads and buildings in chaotic exposed bundles and swirls – just like in India, Nepal Vietnam and Thailand. Advanced systems and networks of coach buses are people's primary inter-city form of transportation much like Thailand and Taiwan. Despite Mustafa Kemal's best efforts – the Turkish language still has elements of Farsi which thanks to all my time with my friend Mazyar's family, came in very helpful to me. Sabzi, for example, means green vegetables in both languages.
In 2010, after three weeks in Mediterranean Turkey, Emily and I crossed from Marmaris to Rhodes. Why reinvent the wheel? Here's what I wrote at the time:
The 50 minute crossing from Marmaris to Rhodes is like entering a different world. Where Antalya had the old town Kaleci for tourists and an entirely different, much newer city for Antalyans, Rhodes is the real deal through and through. The new town is old, the old town is older and everyone is everywhere.
But it's what they're doing and what they're eating that is also just as great. Rhodes is filled with great shops and restaurants. You can't walk ten feet without finding something you want to look at, smell or taste. From our hotel, the beach is a block in one direction, the harbor is three blocks in the other direction and two of the best restaurants in town are within 100 feet.
More importantly, Rhodes is Greece. And Greece is Europe. It's far more polished, easy and refined. Really, Rhodes is Europe Lite – all the stuff of Europe without any of the rules or pretension. There's no reason why the bathrooms can't be spotless and yet everyone can dress like it's Saturday at the beach.
In a fantastic cafe where we worked on free WiFi in air conditioning and style, we noticed two approximately 16 year olds making out on the sofa behind us. Then he went to the men's room. Then she went to the men's room. Then they both reappeared 30 minutes later. That would NEVER have happened in Turkey. But that's Greece. An hour later we saw a different pair of sixteen year olds tripping the sofa fantastic. So, I guess we need to work downstairs instead if we return to that cafe.
I'll never forget the sense of fresh air and suddenly calmer, less chaotic world when we got off in Rhodes.
Of course, that doesn't make Greece and Europe necessarily better.
"You know what I liked most about Greece?" Sennen asked me recently. "TURKEY! I really loved when we went to Turkey. It's great there!"
Our four days in Kusadasi during the summer of 2019 apparently had a real impact on Sennen. When asked what it was he liked so much, he mentioned the bubble waffles, the ice cream, the giant fortress and the way the streets were. I'll give him the ice cream – it's made with mastic – a gummy sap that when mixed into the ice cream, makes it stretchy, almost like bubble gum. I'm not sure it's the BEST ice cream I've ever had, but it is the most unique and captivating. It also lasts surprisingly long, giving you a chance to marvel at the texture without it melting. Quite considerate of it.
An American couple on shore leave from their cruise told me that they had never been so far East before. The wife's family was originally from Italy, so they had been to explore her ancestry and enjoy Italy. But never further – and not just to Greece – but the far eastern part. I don't often think of Patmos as being so far East, but then I look at a map and remember it is. And not just East, but south making Israel a neighbor too – living in an area that was once a crossroads of civilizations. It certainly doesn't feel that way today unless you consider an island with both gelato and baklava to be negotiating East and West.
I would like to think that maybe one day, Patmians might follow their ambassador's example and go East for shopping instead of North to Athens. Lee Kuan Yew believed it was critical to Singaporean national identity that people of different ethnicities enter one another's neighborhoods for worship and shopping. He believed barriers came down when people saw how each are other are people – more alike than different – and regular interaction is the best path to that. Maybe giant platters of lobster linguine are a start. I'd like to imagine that more people would want to sometimes go checkout where they're radio station is and eat some gummy ice cream alongside their not-so-different neighbors.
