Turkey - From the Dardanelles to the Gulf of Edremit (105/151)

Turkey - From the Dardanelles to the Gulf of Edremit (105/151)

Hardly more than a kilometre wide, yet a fateful demarcation line between occident and orient, between Europe and Asia: the Dardanelles. Two Turkish fortresses stand guard over this critical spot. The fortress on the European side bears the unambiguous name "Kilitbahir", Lock of the Sea. In the midst of the bustling everyday life of the little city of Canakkale on the Asian shore numerous paths and encounters lead to the trails of a long history as the melting pot of many cultures here at the transition from East to West. The Strait of the Dardanelles, the gateway to the Aegean, was controlled in Antiquity by the fortified city of Troy and its hinterland Troas, visible from afar from the looming Mount Ida, now known as Kaz Digi, which also dominates the coastal panorama at the Gulf of Edremit. The people in the former land of the Trojans have long since ceased to seem strange and distant to us, in an unfathomable way much is familiar to us. And the native Anatolians evidently live comfortably with their difficult double inheritance, the traditions brought from Central Asia to one of the origins of Europe.