Rural Intelligence bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: My first real experience of nomads was in 1962 in central Turkey near Konya on the old Silk Road. An intrepid group of us had just piled back into our Volkswagen bus after inspecting a ruined caravanserai, and were back on the barely graveled road heading east when three tall clouds of dust appeared in the distance, just like something out of a John Huston film. But it wasn’t Indians or the U. S. Cavalry. It was, we realized as we came closer, the Yuruk heading straight for us, migrating from their lowland winter camp, the “kislik”, to the highland summer camp, the “yayla.” Moving steadily in our direction, taking up the entire road, was the central column made up entirely of the women and children, together with their camels and donkeys. To the left and to the right running parallel to the road were the columns of men folk shepherding their huge herds of goats, sheep, and camels. Seeing no sign that the column taking up the road ahead would give way to us, we pulled to the side, stopped, and watched from our windows in amazement as a highly organized mass movement of thousands of people and all of their camels, sheep, and goats engulfed us. From just five feet away, the women and children together with their camels loaded with the tents, bedding, cooking pots, foodstuffs, and storage bags, streamed by. Leading the way for all the world to see, were the eligible young women, virgins in calico baggy pants, their heads covered in white head scarves; behind them moving as a dignified group were the elderly women in black, many of them spinning with their drop spindles as they walked. Looking after the children old enough to walk, the married women strode by eyes straight ahead. But perhaps the most moving part of the scene was the approach of a group of camels which seemed to have odd little black things bobbing on their backs as they ponderously swayed by. On closer inspection, we made out the heads of tiny babies strapped to the camels’ humps. This mass of humanity from another time passed us by in relative silence, eyes fixed straight ahead. As if by common consent, they had, it seemed to us, decided to have nothing to do with our world. Out of respect for their dignity, I could not bring myself to take photos. As I told myself then, I would have many more opportunities to do so.
But when I returned to this region in the mid-seventies, the huge Yuruk migrations were already a thing of the past. The disintegration of the large tribes was well underway and the Yuruk increasingly survived only in small, impoverished bands. By chance, in the eighties I happened on the Yuruk once again while traveling on the new highway along Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. To break my trip, I stayed at Kas, then a small village on the road to becoming a tourist destination, and took to hiking on a rugged peninsula jutting out into the sea just south of the town. Not far from where the Kas road suddenly ended, I discovered most of the peninsula’s tribe camped in a row of unpainted dilapidated houses. Continuing south along mule tracks and worn trails, I came across Yuruk shepherds and their flocks in the hills and saw the patches of wheat they had sown in the tiny valleys. And I happened on a narrow gorge, fronted by a small sand beach, opening out to the sea where, in rustic corrals, the Yuruk confined their flocks at night. Their herds were conveniently watered by a waterfall crashing down from the cliff above. The peninsula, I determined, was their winter “kislik”, and very idyllic it seemed. On one of my return visits, I began to have actual encounters with the Yuruk camped there. One day passing one of the Yuruk houses, I was surprised to be approached by a hearty middle-aged Yuruk woman in head wrap and baggy pants, who engaged me in conversation. I was even more surprised to be invited into her house, and almost alarmed to find once inside that we were alone. Even in America, this kind of encounter would be considered a bit beyond the pale. I was ceremoniously seated on the floor in one corner of the room, and she took her place in the corner diagonally opposite, a clean expanse of floor between us. Then she proceeded to go through the litany of questions about age, marital status,, number of children, etc. that are the core of social intercourse in Turkey. Then, apparently sensing it was lunch time, she politely left the room and appeared with a peeled hard boiled egg and a small salad. Once I had finished my lunch, she signaled an end to the visit, and walked me out to the path. I had heard that nomadic women were considerably freer and more independent than settled women but this experience was a true revelation. But the day was not over. As I continued towards the village I saw at some distance an aged Yuruk woman in traditional dress standing by the roadside spinning with a drop spindle. Contrary to my expectations she did not shyly vanish from the road as I approached but waited, bold as a magpie, obviously expecting an encounter. We greeted each other and she continued to spin gray goat hair into yarn. I asked her when she and her clan would be moving to the yayla. She brightened considerably in anticipation, hesitated in her spinning, and replied that it would be in a few weeks. When I asked how long it would take her to get there, she replied matter of factly, and to my great surprise, “Two or three hours if I ride in the truck. Three or four days if I travel overland with the men and the animals.”
There she stood, an old Yuruk woman holding a utensil unchanged since the Bronze Age, spinning goat hair and anticipating the migration to the yayla. Behind her the increasingly chic resort of Kas was beginning to spread across the countryside. She was conversing with an unknown male foreigner, and she undoubtedly would make her migration in the back of a truck. In retrospect, I speculated that her grandchildren would work someday, if they are not already, in the hotels and restaurants of Kas. When I returned to the Kas peninsula in the late nineties I was saddened to find the row of wooden houses gone, apparently bulldozed, and to discover that the corrals of the tiny gorge had been replaced by a tea garden/bar, and the tiny beach boasted umbrellas and tanning racks. The old track I had followed was fast disappearing as a new road was being pushed down into the peninsula. There was no sign of the Yuruk. This elegiac memory was brought to mind as I recently sailed by Kas on our gulet/yacht, the Tanem. So close were we to shore that I could clearly see the formerly rugged peninsula, the winter kislik of the Yuruk, now tamed by a new road running all the way to its end already lined with summer houses and condominiums. I can only hope that the children of these Yuruk have managed to make a transition as smooth as that made by Mustafa and Fatih, the two Tanem crew members Mark mentioned in last week’s bulletin. But I wonder about the bold woman who served me a boiled egg and the old lady who so anticipated her trip to the yayla. —Peter DaviesFor the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
