Original subtitles

As a reporter, I've traveled

the Middle East for many years.

It's an area that has always fascinated me,

but in my work, I've mainly covered its war zones,

its crises, and its tragedies.

This journey, which takes me down the Silk Road

in the footsteps of Marco Polo,

gives me the opportunity of exploring

the great historical and cultural

significance of this part of the world,

its ancient melting pot of peoples and civilizations

that have contributed so much to our own.

(gentle music)

We sometimes forget that Turkey actually beings in Europe,

in the ancient province of Thrace,

a piece of the old Ottoman Empire that has been pushed back

to the Southeastern corner of the Balkan Peninsula.

(peaceful music) (bird chirps)

The Turks and Islam have been at home here in Edirne

since the 14th century, when the Silk Road's days

of glory were starting to decline.

(muezzin vocalizing)

What could be more fascinating, but also more uncertain,

than the border between east and west.

Where should it be drawn, in Venice, or, for example,

here in Edirne.

Founded by the Roman Emperor Hadrien as Adrianople,

it was conquered in 1361 by the Ottoman Turks,

who made it the new capital of their empire

as well as base for sending their armies off

to conquer Southern Europe.

(upbeat music)

Situated just a few kilometers away from the borders

of Bulgaria and Greece, Edirne is truly a Balkan city.

From a bustling Ottoman metropolis during the era

of the Silk Road, it shrank to a sleepy little town

after the communist countries of Eastern Europe

closed off their borders and the Iron Curtain came down.

This is the legendary founder of modern Turkey,

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of Turkish secularism,

who gave women the right to vote and adopted the Latin

alphabet for writing the Turkish language.

Today is an ordinary day.

There's no special celebration but we can see that dozens

of people have come to lay carnations at his feet.

In an interesting juxtaposition of symbols, the father

of modern, secular Turkey, stands at the foot

of the grand mosque of Edirne.

The Selimiye Mosque was commissioned

by the great sultan, Selim II.

Built in just six years and completed in 1574,

it would go on to become a historic stronghold

of Islam on the European continent.

Around the mosque itself is a complex known

as külliye, containing a school, a hospital,

a library, and a Turkish bath.

This architectural masterpiece would serve as the model

for all religious structures built by the Ottomans

with its four tapered minarets and, above all,

it's monumental dome, measuring 31 meters in diameter.

(calm, gentle music)

It really is very spectacular.

We've just entered the land of Islam and this is our

first mosque on the Silk Road.

We couldn't have picked a better place to start

because this is the magnum opus of one of the greatest

architects in history, Mimar Sinan, and this is

the largest dome to be found in Ottoman architecture.

Sinan was an architectural genius.

For this mosque, he designed a system of eight supporting

pillars that hold up its enormous dome and create a

vertiginous sense of perspective.

The great mosque testifies to the grandeur of the

Ottoman Empire, which at the time, ruled over

almost one third of Europe.

Today, the Thracian Turks are confined to a

small region around Edirne, but they're still fiercely

attached to the traditions inherited from their past.

For example, traditional Turkish wrestling.

Every year, the big annual tournament is held

at Kırkpınar Stadium just outside the city.

The Turkish word, yağlı güreş, means fighting with oil,

and as we can see, the wrestlers really are coating

themselves with cooking oil.

The oil is supposed to make the wrestling

more difficult and more technical.

(speaking in foreign language)

Okay, everyone's got enough?

Okay, good luck guys!

The Kırkpınar tournament is the most famous

tournament in Turkey.

It's held on the spot where the Janissary camp once stood.

The Janissaries were the Ottoman Emperor's

special shock troops.

In fact, the gypsy drums and five sweep produce

the marching music of the elite core mounting an attack.

Legend has it, that in the 14th Century,

two brothers fought each other in the Janissary camp.

Neither was able to get the upper hand

and they ended up dying of exhaustion.

The wrestlers wear extremely sturdy leather pants

which, since the oily bodies are hard to grip,

their opponents try to grab in any way they can.

These wrestlers are called Pehlivan,

from the Persian word meaning hero.

And we can see where the French expression,

strong as a Turk, comes from when we watch them.

What's the connection between Turkish wrestling and the kind

of wrestling that was practiced here back in ancient times?

The Greeks oiled their bodies and wrestled on marble tables,

and they were naked, while you're clothed.

Why is that?

Yes, that's absolutely right.

Wrestling is found in Greek mythology,

but there we're talking about mythological times.

Religions are born.

The Islamic religion emerged, the world began to develop.

Things aren't the same as they were.

According to our religious beliefs,

human health is extremely important.

In other words, wrestling on marble is harmful to our health

and according to our beliefs, to Islamic principles,

the lower part of the male body must be covered.

So we wear leather pants, the kisbet.

All of the movements in oil wrestling are done

so as not to harm the body.

Why do you cover yourselves in olive oil or sunflower oil?

We use oil because it's an essential part of the sport.

It makes it much more difficult

to seize your opponent when he's moving.

In other styles of wrestling, you usually start off

by grabbing the limbs, but in oil wrestling, we wrestle

with the kisbet, the leather pants, and not with the body.

In other words, we have to grab the pants,

focus on the kisbet rather than on the opponent.

Oil makes things more complicated

and it's been used since the very beginning.

Of course, wrestling without oil exists, too,

but our wrestling tradition is with oil.

When you wrestle, do you feel like you're

practicing a sport or do you feel like

you're preserving a very old cultural tradition?

Both.

We practice a sport, we do wrestling, we train all the time.

Just like Sumo wrestlers in Japan, oil wrestlers

are highly respected in Turkey.

It's a very difficult sport to do

and because it's so difficult, everybody respects them.

In ordinary daily life, when people see them in town,

at the market, anywhere, they give them respect.

Everyone loves them.

They have a special place in our lives.

How do you win in a wrestling match?

Well, let me explain it, first by using

one of our expressions.

We say that if your belly sees the sun, you're the loser.

Go ahead, show them a hold.

(speaking in foreign language)

Right, that's a win!

Okay, I can see it's over!

(gentle music)

On the outskirts of Edirne, the Bayezid II Complex

was built in the 15th century

by the great sultan, Bayezid II.

This is one of the most remarkable examples of a külliye,

that is, of a charitable foundation erected around a mosque.

(upbeat music)

The Complex is especially famous for it's dar al-shifa,

or house of health.

It was a state of the art medical facility at the time,

with a fee hospital and a mental asylum

that continued to operate until

the Turko-Russian War of 1878.

The historian, Aken Akhenechi,

oversees the conversation of the site.

Why did the Ottoman Empire decide to conquer Edirne

and to make this city its capital?

And why did it build such a lavish complex

with a mosque and, especially, a hospital?

Edirne was a point of transit between the Silk Road

and all the roads leading to the west.

The Ottomans became aware of its importance and they

came here because it lead to the Balkans and to Europe.

Right away they set about building this complex based on the

idea of the welfare state.

It was to do with giving importance to the human being.

Sheikh Abid Ali said, "Where human beings flourish,

"the state will flourish, too."

First the imarets were built,

kitchens that gave free meals to the poor.

In the area just behind us, for example,

free meals were served for 150 people.

Next to it was a hospital, which was also free.

Throughout the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries,

patients came from all over Anatolia and the entire world.

(upbeat music)

We know that Arabic, Islamic, and by extension, Turkish

medicine was far ahead of Western medicine

at the end of the Middle Ages.

In what way, what was innovative here?

We know that all of the sciences and the arts

in the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries were moving

from East to West with people like

Al-Farabi, Al-Biruni, and Avicenna.

We also know that the trade routes, the Silk Road,

the Spice Route, contributed to that.

So if we take this place, the Bayezid II Complex

in the 15th century, treatments for the mentally ill

included music, the sound of water, aromatherapy,

and different activities.

You spoke about medical knowledge that

came here from Buccara, about Avicenna, Ibn Sina,

but this road was also known as the Spice Route.

Were there spices or plants that were brought

to the Balkans to be used as remedies in the hospital?

We know that the rose is a plant that came to us

via the Spice Route, and many other kinds of products

followed the same route west.

An example of one of those products is rose syrup,

which was used in the Bayezid II Complex.

Edirne was a major rose center during the Ottoman era.

The roses cultivated in this region

were sent to the West and Anatolia.

Later, they were used in making various syrups, sherbets.

At the Bayezid II Complex, patients were fed

rose syrup to calm them down.

Here roses were not only used in syrups,

but also for their fragrance in treatments

for the mentally ill and other patients.

The Ottoman Turks, who originally came

from Asia to subsequently rule in Europe

as far as the gates of Vienna, deserve our recognition.

They were the intermediaries between two worlds

who greatly contributed to the interchange of ideas

and techniques that occurred along the Silk Road.

There is one city, the most legendary of all,

that epitomizes this coming together of Europe in the East,

the intersection of Christianity and Ummah,

the world of Islam.

It is, of course, Istanbul.

Once called the new Rome, it's now Turkey's largest city

with over 14 million inhabitants

as well as it's economic and cultural nerve center.

Dozens of remnants of the Silk Road

can still be found here today.

For example, the famous Hagia Sophia Basilica,

where a young Marco Polo went to pray before starting off

on his journey to China with his father and his uncle.

It's now a mosque which overlooks

the esplanade of the old Byzantine Hippodrome.

It faces the famed Blue Mosque, which was built to be

its counterpart in the 17th century.

Bridging Europe and Asia,

the Greco-Roman world and the Arab-Islamic world,

Istanbul is still one of the world's

most fascinating cities, even today.

It was founded as Byzantium.

It then became Constantinople in 324

when the Emperor Constantine made it the eastern capital

of the Roman Empire, and was finally conquered

by the Turks in 1453.

When the Turkish soldiers came through

its gigantic walls, they found an almost deserted city.

They even wondered where they were.

The few remaining inhabitants told them in Greek,

"Eis tín Pólin, you are in the city."

That's the most probably etymology.

Eis tín Pólin, Istanbul.

(ship horn wails) (gentle music)

The famous chestnuts of Anatolia.

The Turks are nuts about them!

(car horn blares)

On the Golden Horn, the estuary where Byzantium

once built its boats, I'm intrigued by the site of dozens

of men who spend there days fishing off the bridge.

They aren't doing this for fun.

They're refugees from the Syrian Civil War,

which has forced millions of civilians

into exile since 2011.

Over the centuries, the Silk Road's routes constantly

changed in relation to the wars that were being waged.

To get to Buccara, for example, the Byzantines

avoided the Turkish Empire by traveling

to the north of the Black Sea.

In our case, we're going east and in order to avoid

the war in Syria, we'll be going through Northern Turkey.

History repeats itself.

On the other side of the Golden Horn, the fortified

Galata Tower overlooks the old Christian quarter.

The current medieval structure is also called

the Genoese Tower because merchants

from the Italian city of Genova established

a colony in Constantinople.

Genova and Venice were commercial rivals,

which meant the Venetians were no longer welcome

on the banks of the Bosporus.

That's perhaps one reason why Niccolo and Maffeo Polo,

Marco Polo's uncle and father who were living in the city,

decided to go further east in 1261

and try their luck in China.

The Genoese Tower and the city's formidable

ramparts were supposed to make Constantinople impregnable.

As was the spectacular basilica cistern,

which was built in the 6th century to collect rainwater.

The underground system is more than 100 meters long

and supported by 336 Corinthian style columns.

Few places are able to give us a sense of the

bygone splendor of Byzantium as this ancient reservoir.

(gentle music)

Istanbul lies on the Bosporus, which in fact,

divides the old Greek city into two parts,

separating Europe from Asia.

Connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara

and then to the Mediterranean,

this strait is one of the busiest sea routes in the world.

(sea gull calls)

(fast paced music)

Overlooking the Sea of Marmara, is the big industrial

city of Bursa, with its nearly three million inhabitants.

In the early 14th century, the city was also the

capital of the burgeoning capital of the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottomans tried their best to make Bursa

the western terminus of the Silk Road.

The city produced silk fabrics and enjoyed a monopoly

in trading with the Europeans.

For centuries, in order to maximize their profits,

the Turks also tried to prevent raw silk from being exported

and to keep the secret of silkworm breeding to themselves.

The big merchants who came, for the most part, from Persia

had to stay in this extraordinary two-story caravanserai,

the Koza Han, or Silk Bazaar.

Turkish sericulture, which was extremely labor intensive,

flourished and then went into a decline.

Today, most of the silks come from China

or from Central Asia.

(upbeat music)

However, another tradition is still going strong in Bursa.

A tradition that has had a deep influence

on the Turkish imagination called Karagöz,

or shadow puppet theater.

In his modest tourist shop in the bazar

Senazi Shedekal brings these humorous

and impertinent puppets to life.

Karagöz and his friend Hacivat are supposed to have been

brick layers in Bursa in the 16th century

who were executed by the Sultan

because they told so many funny stories

that it slowed down the construction of a mosque.

(speaking in foreign language)

Oh my God!

I've prepared the screen, turned on the light,

my luck has changed in Bursa!

As I was on my way to the Orhan Mosque, I met a strange man.

His name was Karagöz, he's a gypsy!

When we speak, everyone watches us.

This is shadow theater we're talking about,

so why are the puppets so colorful?

It's true that in Egyptian's shadow theater,

everything is dark, there's no color at all.

But they use color, for example, in India, in Indonesia,

and Thailand and China.

Color is used because it attracts people's attention.

So that's why Karagöz puppets are colorful.

In the old days, they were colored with alizarin.

Traditionally, alizarin was made from plants or insects.

That's how natural colors were obtained, but not anymore.

Today we use watercolor inks.

Senazi why do you think Karagöz and Hacivat

became so popular in Turkey?

Everyone liked them because they represented the people.

They spoke about things that people were interested in

and they talked about things like corruption.

(speaking in foreign language)

Karagöz, Karagöz!

Where is the dancer?

She left a long time ago!

Oh, my Karagöz, what is this?

May the clergy break your head!

You've taken down the screen, now it's in pieces.

I'm going to tell the host!

Well, best of luck!

Please forgive us for any slip of the tongue!

Is Karagöz just as irreverent today as it was in the past?

Karagöz is not, in fact, a show for children.

It's for everyone from three to four years old

up to 80 or 90 years old.

Before the play begins,

the Karagöz puppeteer goes out in front of the screen

and looks to see who's in the audience.

Then he improvises.

For example, he says "Mrs. Senel is here,

"she speaks French very well."

And he'll throw out a couple of French expressions.

Or he might say, "Ah, there's Alfred!"

and say a few words to him.

Karagöz performances are very flexible.

Politics is also part of it.

A Karagöz play has four parts to it: the prologue,

the dialogue, which is the longest part,

the main play, and the epilogue.

The last part is always humorous.

But in the second part, the dialogue,

the Karagöz artist also talks

about politics and current events.

For example, he might say,

"Well, my Karagöz, what's the matter?"

"Oh the situation's very bad in Syria and Iraq."

Or he might talk about Erdoğan.

Nowadays, politicians pretend to like Karagöz,

but in reality, they don't because the puppets

make fun of them.

That's why politicians don't really like Karagöz very much.

The Karagöz puppets are both lighthearted

and serious at the same time,

which can be a little bit perplexing.

Their ambiguity is, in fact, much like the ambiguity

of modern Turkey, a Republic that is both

secular and Islamist, turned towards Europe

as well as towards the East.

(muezzin vocalizing)

Located on the northwestern edge of Anatolia,

Bursa was the last stop on the Silk Road's overland route.

It was also from here that the Ottomans set out

on their quest to expand their dynasty,

and for several centuries, the Ottoman princes

came back here to be buried in the Muradiye.

The exteriors of the 12 main tombs, or türbe,

were designed in the Byzantine style of architecture.

The Ottomans thus remained faithful to their

nomadic origins and continued the tradition

of returning to be buried together with their families

all in the same place.

Even if they'd gone off to distant lands

or conquered half a continent in their lifetime,

their final resting place would be at home in Bursa

in the complex of Sultan Murat II.

In the mausoleums, the tombs of the sultans

and other important persons can be identified by the fact

that their turbans were placed on top of the sarcophagus.

All around them, the stuccoes and frescoes

in the Oriental Rococo style have been

considerably restored over the centuries.

It was Sultan Murat's son,

Mehmet II, known as The Conqueror,

who finally captured Constantinople in 1453 and made

it the new Turkish capital.

(slow music)

(car whooshes)

A good way to catch a glimpse of the past

and to see how the Turks once lived back in the times

of the Sultans and the final glory days of the Silk Road

is to take the side roads and head towards

the mountains that tower over the city of Bursa.

At the foot of Mount Uludag, the village of Cumalikizik

seems to have been frozen in time.

For centuries, passing through places such as these

in Asia Minor were a must for travelers, painters,

Orientalist scholars, or romantic poets

in search of the misty lands of their fantasies of the East.

Ever since then, the number of tourists wandering

through the crafts and souvenir stores has steadily grown.

But they still come with the same desire to explore

the architectural mazes of these Balkan style villages

and to take in the atmosphere of an era in history

when the Ottoman Empire was one of the most

powerful in the world.

An empire that was a bridge between Europe

and the East along the Silk Road.

(slow paced music)