An exciting 17-day expert led tour through Eastern Turkey.
April 29 - May 14, 2023
This is a region of immense contrasts. The vast landscape ranges from the plateau ringed by mountains in the distance and criss crossed by the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to the sparkling clear blue water of Lake Van and beyond, snow capped Mount Ararat.
This part of Turkey is also an area of great diversity in terms of the people and cultures that have marked it through the millennia. From the l0th/8th millennium sanctuary of Gobekli Tepe to the city of Kars with its 19th century Russian Neo-Classical houses, by way of Armenian churches, Ottoman mosques and the Urartian citadel of Van, this tour is an introduction to an extraordinary range of worlds that spans twelve thousand years. It includes the legacies of Hellenistic dynasts, Roman armies, their Sassanian adversaries, Arab and Syriac communities, and from the 11th century the Turks, who settled in Anatolia following their victory over the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, five years after the Battle of Hastings.
Damla Arslan
Damla Arslan was born in Istanbul in 1984. She graduated from the history department of Boğaziçi University in 2006 and she attended the program of Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage Management at Koç University between 2006 and 2008. Her specialty is the ancient history of Anatolia and she has been working as an archaeologist in various excavations around the country since 2005. Her latest excavation is in Batman, southeastern Anatolia, and she is working on an upper Mesopotamian mound by Tigris called Gre Amer during the summer season. She received her tourist guide license from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2009 and she has been working as a freelance tour guide all around Turkey with a special interest on the southeast and the eastern parts of the country.