The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  Rob was edging into the crowd, shouting over his shoulder, but I heard only snatches – ‘just take a look’ – as he moved to the front – ‘start a stampede’ – and the chanting grew louder – Her yer Taksim – and the mob pressed together – ‘stay out of trouble’ – and there was no noise but chanting –

  Tayyip istifa!

  Tayyip istifa!

  Her yer Taksim,

  Taksim!

  TAKSİM!

  her yer direniş,

  Direniş! DİRENİŞ!

  her yer Gezi,

  Tak sim!

  İstifa!

  TAK SİM!

  – and then a pounding as the police fired.

  Three thousand people turned to run. Three thousand faces reeled round; three thousand bodies dashed back – an entire protest trying to escape, all channelled in a single direction. Some sprinted with their shoulders bowed, gas gushing towards them. Others raced so fast that they lost their footing, squealing as they fell to the ground. A few broke off from the mob, now ducking into backstreets, now scrambling into doorways, now skidding into the gates of a building site. Where I stood we were jammed in place, shoving and tugging but helpless to get away, until a space opened up before me and I ran with a strange sense of elation, carried along by the madding tide.

  After a hundred metres the protesters slowed. A dozen men raised their arms, calling Yavaş, yavaş to steady the retreat. Then the crowd reassembled to start the next approach.

  All night they played this game.

  Eight hours later I was back on İstiklal. The street seemed smaller in the morning light and empty now but for the cleaners wearing fluorescent jackets. I watched a man with a high-pressure hose wash graffiti from the walls, while another swept clear the rubbish, and a third turned upright each tipped bin.

  It was still early when I reached Taksim Square. Gezi Park lay behind rows of ambulances, satellite trucks and armoured jeeps – a strip of naked trees and shattered fencing. Banks and travel agents lined the pavement, traffic queued on the ring road, police patrolled the entrances, but nothing remained of the demonstration.

  For the next few hours I circled the cafes near Taksim, making notes on last night. After we left the protest, Rob took me to a party, a cheerless affair midway to his flat. One group of guests sat watching the news, the coverage shifting between the Divan Hotel (under siege from the police) and the Bosphorus Bridge (blocked by an army of protesters). A second group read out Twitter rumours from their phones: the Jandarma were raiding student dormitories, the water cannons were laced with chemicals, a woman had miscarried on the steps of the Divan. Meanwhile, our host played YouTube clips on his laptop. Here was Prime Minister Erdoğan praising police restraint. Here was Prime Minister Erdoğan blaming the protests on foreign agitators. Here was the prime minister’s spokesman warning that Erdoğan had been the target of a psychic assassination attempt. That’s right: telekinetic assassins.

  By this point I had been awake forty-three hours.

  The following morning, circling Taksim, I noticed ragged-looking protesters assembling in the side streets. From ten o’clock I could hear dispersed chanting. From eleven o’clock I could taste tear gas in the air. By twelve the taxis were turning back on Tarlabaşı and the restaurants locking up in Galata. Yesterday evening I had been too tired to feel afraid, but in the daylight the atmosphere was menacing. Yet I still wandered round in a drowsy state of disbelief, as if caught in the liquid logic of a dream.

  That afternoon I found an outdoor cafe some two hundred metres from İstiklal, opposite a street of private galleries and designer boutiques. I sat on a balcony at the rear of the terrace, facing west towards the shining waters of the Golden Horn. Then a hundred things happened at once.

  I heard running. Shouting. I heard tables drag, glasses smash.

  I looked round and saw fifty, sixty, people rush the terrace. A squad of riot police came after them, firing tear gas under our tables. Smoke burst from the ground and the scene crazed over.

  I pushed to the back of the balcony, where the air was still clean. The rest of the cafe did the same, protesters and customers crushing together. Beside me was a middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf and trainers, her eyes startled, her expression embarrassed. Everyone else was screaming and crying; they were terrified.

  Police had cordoned the cafe, but there was a gap where the terrace met the balcony. Three teenage boys tried to escape that way, moving with hurried, upright paces. As they came to the street they moved faster, jogging past galleries and boutiques.

  I shouldered my rucksack and followed them out, jostling through the gap. But I did not give chase, for though the street looked empty, it seemed safer to keep walking. Sure enough, as I paced down the pavement, an armoured jeep overtook on my right, accelerating towards the boys. By now they were racing along a wall of mixed stone, and when they reached the end of the wall, they turned left to start sprinting downhill. The jeep turned after them, passing from sight, but as I approached the crossroads, I heard shots. Peering round the corner, I saw one boy still sprinting, another stumbling, and a third crying out, his legs buckled beneath him. More police were waiting at the base of the hill, their weapons raised – yet I could see no blood or broken masonry. Then I understood: rubber bullets.

  The jeep was maybe fifteen metres away, a vulgar vehicle with outsize tyres and a water cannon propped on top. As the cannon wheeled towards me, I felt a giddy sort of surprise, for I could not believe the thing was solid. It looked so tacky, like a bouncy castle wilting after a day of play.

  I waited. Kept waiting. There was nothing between us but space, nothing but absent air. Then the turret squeaked, the gears gulped, and the jeep drove off again.

  Letting go of my rucksack, I leant back against the wall. I had forgotten how to breathe, but kept swallowing until my lungs filled with air. Eventually I noticed a polished plaque fixed to the stonework behind me. Reading the plaque, I learnt that I was standing outside the British Consulate.

  ‘Last night was the worst yet,’ said Alev, as we sat on her roof a few hours later. ‘Most of the protests have been violent, but never this bad.’

  Alev lived in a top-floor flat two minutes’ walk from Taksim Square. Her roof looked out on Kabataş, the buildings capped with cluttered tiles, twisted aerials and miniature chimneys, the balconies dotted with shrubs. Beyond lay the broad sweep of the Bosphorus and the far coast of Asia. The straits were an even grey that evening, the sky smothered in cloud. The distant shoreline was dim. We were waiting for the rain.

  Sitting there, I told her what had happened since the Marmara Taksim. I mentioned joining the midnight demonstration on İstiklal and escaping from the police this afternoon. As Alev listened she bit her lip, shook her head. Then she told me about her own adventure.

  Yesterday evening, having left Taksim Square, Alev returned to her flat. Before long, friends were texting from another hotel – the Divan – to say that police had forced the doors with water cannons and were filling the lobby with tear gas. She followed the news on social media until, sleepless with worry, she went to look. The hotel was next to Taksim, but the square was on lockdown, and Alev looped round to the far side. On İnönü Caddesi she saw riot squads asleep in police vans, ID numbers blacked out on their helmets and shields. In Maçka Park she saw protesters drifting through the darkness, eyes rimmed white with antacid spray.

  It was early morning when she reached the Divan. ‘The police were guarding the hotel, so I told them I was a guest again. When I got inside, the whole lobby was flooded, all the furniture and carpets soaked. People were just lying on the floor, holding each other and looking helpless. One of the conference rooms had been turned into an emergency centre – this giant hall with glass chandeliers, full of doctors and patients and crates of medicine. And tear gas everywhere, because none of the ventilation was working. It was the like the aftermath of an earthquake.’

  ‘Nobody knew the reason for the attack,’ Alev added
. ‘Since Gezi Park started the Divan has been feeding protesters and offering them shelter, and when the park was cleared, that’s where everybody ran. But the police came after, meaning they were trapped. The hotel belongs to the Koç family. They’re billionaires, philanthropists – not the biggest fans of Erdoğan. So maybe it was revenge.’

  ‘Revenge?’

  Alev raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. On first moving to Turkey she did not believe all the stories of conspiracy, but living in Istanbul wore down her scepticism. Over the years she had seen building projects begun without consultation and government contracts awarded on a whim, seen regulations ignored and the city becoming spoilt.

  ‘That’s what caused the protests: plans to replace Gezi Park with a shopping mall. It wasn’t Erdoğan’s decision, but he’s talked about cleaning up İstiklal, about making the neighbourhood more Islamic. And he wants to build the biggest mosque in Turkey on Çamlıca Hill, where it can be seen from everywhere in the city. I know, it sounds like a joke, like he’s pretending to be a sultan.’

  When I complained about the endless wastes of concrete that I had passed when walking into the city – kilometre after kilometre of newbuild – Alev explained how the government was using economic growth to justify all this petty despotism, as well as using political tension to make the country more authoritarian. She gave examples of lawyers being arrested, journalists being deported, activists being threatened, and friends becoming paranoid. Then she said: ‘Since the protests began it’s felt like living in a police state.’

  The rain was falling. Although we were close to Taksim, I could hear no chants, no sirens or shouts. Only one noise interrupted the downpour: a wooden spatula knocking against a cast-iron pan. It was coming from the apartment opposite, the spatula beating faster until the whole pan was ringing. This was joined from the flat below by a metal spoon circling an earthenware pot, which made a spiralling sound like poured sand.

  Soon half the windows and balconies around us were clanging, clattering – a song of protest joining together the strained voices of the city.

  ‘This happens every evening,’ said Alev, running downstairs to collect pans from the kitchen. ‘It’s how you show support.’

  I was a guest at her flat for the rest of my time in Istanbul. Most evenings I would sit on the roof and listen to this improvised orchestra. Sometimes it reminded me of a cheering crowd, sometimes a spitting fire. That night it was the cry of a wounded animal. When Alev came back with a pair of metal pans, we joined the performance, banging their blackened bases until the keening died away and there was no sound but the rain. Rain falling harder, pouring off rooftiles and splashing from gutters. Rain in parks and squares, in alleyways and avenues, on the concrete cages of a thousand building sites. In Karaköy and Kabataş, in Tarlabaşı and Taksim, rain washing clean the exhausted streets.

  I stayed a few more days in the city. The demonstrators returned, the tear gas too, but the carnival atmosphere was gone for good. When Taksim Square opened again, a new protest began. People gathered in one corner, facing a poster of Atatürk that hung from a disused cultural centre. There were students and professionals, young families and elderly couples, standing for hours on end. Some held flowers, others taped shut their mouths, and a few listened to music or read books. One or two remained through the night, casting a mood of mourning over the square. This was the march of the defeated.

  I stayed a few more days in the city. Much of my time was spent wandering the backways of Beyoğlu and Fatih – old neighbourhoods on either side of the Golden Horn. I found rooftop chapels in Tophane, ruined churches in Cihangir, and the walled compound of the Armenian Cathedral on a quiet road in Yenikapı. The architecture was thrown together in a haphazard fashion, meaning I would turn from a row of stuccoed hotels and stumble into a street of wooden houses, their timber frames misshapen, their clapboard covers coming loose. Often they were deserted, except for a few children ambushing one another with water pistols. But then I would notice a squad of police standing on the pavement, watching the children play.

  I stayed a few more days in the city. Each evening I met someone new. A communist activist who smoked and smoked, telling stories about rigged elections and government plots. An Ottoman historian who invited me to dinner and suggested every route I might walk through Turkey. The pianist whose photo I saw when hiking into the city, a lean, loping figure who believed his instrument could bring peace. An ambassador visiting from Ankara, an entrepreneur in town from Beirut, and a foreign correspondent just returned from the Black Sea coast – all with advice on travelling in the region. Some warned me never to mention my destination, others to keep quiet about Gezi Park.

  I stayed a few more days in the city. I had the same conversation dozens of times. It concerned nationalists and separatists, Kemalists and Islamists, AKP and CHP and far-left factions whose acronyms I cannot remember. I was told that the protesters were exhausted. The opposition divided. The military powerless. That the prime minister was loved. The economy booming. The country falling apart. These conversations shared the same tone of hope, of expectation, for the change that must come, surely it must come, after fighting so hard for the future. And shared the same undertow of regret, too, for they knew hope could make nothing happen.

  I stayed a few more days in the city. Every morning I told myself I would book a flight home, and every afternoon I delayed. In Greece I had decided to cut short my walk, but something held me in Istanbul. I felt no desire to drink, nor escape the summer crowds. I felt no longing for solitude, either, because the capital made things seem close and urgent. Crossing the Balkans, my pilgrimage had turned into a test of endurance – eyes fixed on the horizon, mind folding in on itself – but reaching Istanbul I forgot about the journey and let the present press in on every side.

  Well, I almost forgot. One evening I sat on the roof of Alev’s flat, staring towards the Asian shore. As the sun went down on the waterfront neighbourhoods – the parkland scattered with cupolas, domes and the slender spires of a dozen minarets – I saw how far I had come. The Levant was near. The Holy Land was near. Jerusalem was near to me now.

  That evening I started to sketch a path through the Middle East. Half the armies of the First Crusade followed the Via Egnatia to Constantinople, arriving in the winter of 1096. Next spring they crossed the Bosphorus and marched into Asia Minor. By autumn they had reached Antioch, and after taking the city they moved down the Mediterranean coast. Civil war in Syria made that route impossible, but I could patch together an alternative. Rather than aiming for Antioch, I would head south to Antalya, hop on a boat, and walk the width of Cyprus. This would make up the distance lost by skipping Syria. A second boat would take me to Lebanon, where I could rejoin the crusader trail.

  Although pushing on into Turkey might risk another relapse, I would find no bars in central Anatolia. Besides, if I went home from Istanbul it would not mean I had failed to finish, but given up without ever trying. I no longer believed that the pilgrimage could heal me, but abandoning the journey would fix nothing. And, if I kept going, I might discover a new reason to walk.

  So in early July I packed my rucksack and began hiking again.

  It was midday when I set off from Hersek, a scrappy village on a headland in the İzmit Gulf. After three weeks at rest my pack felt heavy, my boots tight, my legs not stiff but slow to lift. This was my first time in the Middle East, and though I had learnt a courtesy of Turkish, I was unsure how to explain the pilgrimage, let alone find shelter. My maps of the area were also patchy, and few of the roads had signs, while every attempt to ask directions was met with a baffled grin.

  I was climbing through the Yalak Valley, its narrow course leading south towards Lake İznik. Tomato vines strung the riverbank to my right, and on my left rose a series of stunted hills, coarse with tufa and cropped with woodland. The air by the coast was cool, but as I rose higher the sun beat hard against my skin. A breeze carried the muffled cry of traffic up from the
coastal road, until I turned a corner and the valley was quiet.

  Nine hundred and seventeen years ago, one Wednesday morning in October, this route was choked with dead and dying soldiers. They had been camping near Helenopolis, the Byzantine city that once occupied the Hersek headland, but at daybreak they trooped into the Yalak Valley to take on the forces of the Seljuk sultan.

  They did not know that archers were hiding in the woods above the valley. They did not know that they were marching into an ambush.

  The soldiers were from Lombardy, northern and eastern France, Rhineland and southern Germany. They had hiked across Europe and were making their way to Jerusalem. Historians would dub them the People’s Crusade, but contemporary sources used another name: peregrini, or pilgrims.

  The inspiration for their pilgrimage can be traced back to 1095, at the Council of Clermont, when three hundred clerics gathered to hear Pope Urban II call for the liberation of the Holy Land. His speech was prompted by a request for help from the Byzantine emperor, Alexios Komnenos, but Urban refashioned this into a cause for conquest.

  Although the speech made no mention of pilgrimage, the proposed campaign showed obvious parallels. Before leaving home, a crusader had to settle his debts and seek permission from his priest. While on the road he was meant to visit shrines, venerate relics, and observe the liturgical calendar. And, if he reached Jerusalem, or died in the attempt, he would earn a plenary indulgence, meaning salvation was assured.

  By borrowing the template of pilgrimage, the Pope turned an innovative form of holy war into something familiar. Of course, fighting for Christ was nothing new, but during the Middle Ages informal codes of chivalry recast Christian morality in martial terms: courage was a virtue, pacifism a cause for shame. Urban went one further, presenting war as an act of Christian fellowship, a religious duty.

  The wandering evangelists who publicized the First Crusade took advantage of this pilgrimage link. Preaching manuals from the period show how they dressed Urban’s campaign in the language of penance, calling it a missionary war, or a chance to avenge the death of Christ. A few even claimed that the capture of Jerusalem would spark the Second Coming. The Church did not endorse these arguments, but nor did it prevent their use, because apocalyptic fantasies were a powerful recruiting technique. Yet the majority of crusaders were not waiting for Judgement Day, nor setting off in search of riches and adventure. What sustained them through the journey’s hardships – through hunger, sickness and danger – was the belief that they were travelling towards salvation. And, as I climbed onto the Anatolian Plateau, I wondered if this was the only motive that could endure. In Greece I had realized the journey was damaging me, but deep down I still hoped that reaching Jerusalem would solve something. Why else would I keep walking?