On the State of Turkish Railways

In 1993, Christmas eve, I took a train from Ankara to Erzurum.  Or, rather, I would have, had it not hit a lorry at a level crossing in the city of Kayseri, breaking the train’s engine.  No one was hurt.  It had already taken twelve hours to cover the distance a bus could’ve done in six.  While a new engine was sent for, the snow was falling thick and heavy and I pictured even more delays, so I decided to spend Christmas eve in Kayseri instead and jumped train.  I gave up on Erzurum in the end.  Such was winter train travel then.

In October 2009 I took another train fro Ankara again, but on a similar route, intending to travel even farther, to Kars on the Armenian frontier.  This time I made it.  Indeed it was only three or four hours late in finally pulling into Kars’ desolate station.  The lack of snow could’ve had something to do with that happy result, but I also noticed Turkish State Railways have come along over the years.  The clapped out old rolling stock has been replaced and the new trains move a bit faster than they used to.  In fact they now have super high speed ones between Ankara and İstanbul that can cover the distance in an outrageously modern short time.  Not surprisingly, they’re called ‘The Fast Train’. 

However, apart from those turbo trains, some things haven’t changed much and travelling out to the as-yet-quite-wild east by rail still eats up more of your time than long distance buses.  They call the services ‘Express’, but that’s relative to jogging.  But if you can spare the time, it does have its benefits.

You can go for regular strolls down the length of the train to get some exercise and ward off deep vein thrombosis and other recently invented travel ailments that didn’t exist seventeen years ago.  You can stop off in the restaurant wagon for some dinner, which greatly amuses the staff as no one else seems to go there other than you.  As the train stops off at almost every small town and village along the way, there’s a constant change of passengers and they’re all happy to chat and share their packed lunches with you, which perhaps explains why the restaurant wagon staff are left with nothing to do but loll about text messaging their friends and reading yesterday’s paper.

The pictures accompanying this piece were taken on my recent trip, made all the more enjoyable by the ticket staff who set up camp in the front wagon of the train, where I was sitting.  They boiled tea on their little gas ring and pulled out their prepared picnics of tomatoes, cucumbers and stuffed peppers their wives had prepared for them.  They invited me to join and I contributed my own things and we fell into that easy Turkish chumminess that tends to make you think you’re always with family wherever you happen to be. 

Later, at prayer time, a few of the more devout ones twisted the rotating seats around askew, facing Mecca to the train’s right, and got up on them to perform their prayers.  Passengers who had questions about their tickets or journeys simply had to wait until the ritual had been performed, when the conductor could look right, then left, rub his hands over his face and once again make that abrupt transition from that world of the spirit, where all are equal before God, back into this one of first and second class.

So train travel in Turkey is still fun, just more comfortable and a little bit quicker than it used to be. In all the best senses some things haven’t really changed at all over the years.   The railways, like just about everything else in the country, is still that odd blend of old and new.  Anyway, here’s a little atmosphere piece from that anti-climactic trip to Erzurum in ‘93.  I’ve also thrown in a few shots from the recent trip to Kars.  Enjoy.

T’was six o’clock in the morning, the day before Christmas.  All the city were tucked snug in their beds, and I felt like the only creature stirring at this lonely hour.  Walking briskly along the dark deserted street to make it to the station with time to spare, and find escape from the biting cold of the Ankara winter.  Coal smoke from thousands of dying fires filled the thin air with its acrid smell.  In another hour or so hearths would have to be re-stoked as a new day began on the cold, sleeping steppe.  I envied these citizens their warm houses as I crunched through the grimy snow, the frozen air turning my breath to frost and numbing my face.

Soon enough I was walking up the icy steps and through the tall ornate doors of the station.  Here inside, at least, it was considerably warmer.  A few tired and dazed people wandered about, dispelling the notion that I was the only one awake.  A floor sweeper pushed a broom aimlessly around the hall.  A few would-be travellers wandered in and out carrying suitcases or ragged shoulder bags.   The only ones not moving were the ticket clerks, and a few forlorn travellers were camped by the ticket windows, asleep amongst their baggage.  A simit seller patiently arranged the round sesame covered bread rings on his tray, so I bought one and sat down on my rucksack to have breakfast.

The station had changed little in five or so years.  New computer-monitors told one of the comings and goings of the few daily trains where once had been a huge hand-painted sign.  Aside from these, the echoing Bauhaus style foyer was still gloom and smoke-tainted high ceilings. The news kiosk in the corner was still selling the same newspapers and comics it was years before.  The old man who ran it was busy in his old, blackened oak world unwrapping bales of the morning papers and slotting them together on the counter in front of him.    
  

Through the doors onto the platform could be heard the whistles of local commuter trains as they came and went.  After one’s departure, two soldiers came in marching a handcuffed prisoner between them and lazily swinging their Kalashnikovs at their sides.  Perhaps a captured militant of the PKK, or an activist of the far left, a deserter?  Whatever he was, he must have been important because the lieutenant carried a leather brief containing the details of this unfortunate.  In another day or two he would probably be pictured on the front of one of those newspapers in the kiosk.  They went into the heated waiting room and I followed them.  They sat down together in a corner and out came cigarettes.  The lieutenant lit one for the prisoner and put it in his mouth.  There they sat waiting for their train and chatting like old friends rather than captors and captive.

Around the room sat several dozing strata of Turkish society: some city intellectuals in thick spectacles and berets reading the country’s quality press or novels; middle class families in copies of European fashions, their children misbehaving and shattering the silence, and rural peasant families – men in flat caps and the women-folk in veils and baggy trousers.  They sat surrounded by boxes done up in string and plastic jugs of goats’ cheese or yoghurt – probably on their way to family in other obscure Anatolian villages, but stranded between trains in the capital.  The villagers stared up in unconcealed awe at the high ceiling and faded splendour around them. Their middle class compatriots watched them with a look of mixed amusement and pity, while the intellectuals paid neither of them the slightest notice.

Towards seven o’clock the ticket clerks began to stir and we shuffled into the great hall to buy our tickets onward.  I gave my destination to the surly man behind the glass, keys were tapped and a computer-printed ticket spat out of the machine: second-class to Sivas on the seven-thirty Vangölü Ekspresi.

The possession of a ticket sent most people out onto the cold platform, as if the train would duly arrive.  I stayed indoors until the train’s horn and coughing engine told me it was indeed here.  Back outside in the frozen air, the sky was beginning to turn steel-grey as the sun rose behind the brooding apartment blocks bordering the tracks.  Our train stopped at the platform in a great hiss of steam and squealing metal.

Heavily burdened families, both in material possessions and weighty humanity, jumped down, and equally encumbered new families pushed to get onto the near-empty train.  I walked along until I found my carriage and climbed up the icy steps into the old accordian coupling where snow had collected in corners and icicles hung from above.  After finding an empty compartment whose windows had not been frozen open, I threw my bag onto the rack above the seat and went back outside to wait for departure.

The platform was a scene of calm hysteria as family elders argued seating arrangements with conductors who ran to and fro, blowing whistles and wiping at the ice crystals hanging from their moustaches.  Most of the blackened train was covered in ice and frozen snow, having come through the night from Istanbul, and would be much more so when it finally arrived at its destination – the city of Van – eight hundred miles away to the east, a few days later.  After what seemed ages, all the passengers were tucked away somewhere on the train, the excess ice had been hammered away from the couplings and the ‘all aboard’ whistle blown.  I got back into my compartment.

The heater was now beginning to come to life and I scraped at the frost on the window until I could see out of it.  After a few false starts the old train heaved, sighed and began to lurch out of the station in spite of itself – its tired metalwork groaning in cold agony as it did so.  I dozed for a bit and came to again as we passed through the city suburbs.

Office workers, factory labourers and schoolchildren in their hundreds had now stirred and were crunching off through the snow to their daily recesses in the city, wrapped up and still shivering as they waited at level crossings or bus stops.  Rude homes of breezeblocks and cement let thin wisps of smoke into the air from metal chimneys.  Inside, at the other end of those smoking flues, no doubt, sat housewives and grandparents in big sweaters around the stoves having their morning tea and bread.

As we progressed through the hinterland of the city, the houses deteriorated in quality.  We were passing the shantytowns, or gecekondus, where the lower strata of labourers and Kurdish émigrés from the east built their humble dwellings on top of each other, clinging to snowy, barren hills around the city.  Along ‘streets’ of frozen mud, barrowmen pushed handcarts of roasted chestnuts or frostbitten vegetables as they do everyday.  The ones who had already found their street-corner pitches were busy lighting their gas burners, or setting bins of old wood and rubbish alight to keep warm.

So, for me it was the day before Christmas, but for them it was just another bleak day dawning as I slipped unnoticed through its back door – I on my way, and they on theirs.  I was warm in my compartment as we clunked along and the heater began to melt the frost on the window.  I had the compartment to myself so, feeling my eyelids dropping, I stretched out on the long seat and fell asleep to the rhythm of the swaying, creaking train, now at full speed and gently moving over the joins in the tracks.