(Turkey seen from Eftalou)
Spring is in the air and everywhere they mop, sweep, paint, mow,
prune and brush: Lesvos slowly enters a new season full of surprises.
Once again a new ferry connection between Petra and Turkey has been
announced (at the moment there is only one, between Mytilini and
Turkey). This has happened so often that everybody just thinks: “
I’ll believe it when I see it”. Moreover the much wanted ferry is
not coming at a fortuitous moment: German and Dutch people are not
particularly welcome on the other side of the Aegean. The Turkish
‘Sultan’ is looking for troubles with the island, as proven by
daily violations of Greek airspace by Turkish fighter jets, with the
biggest provocation being a Turkish helicopter flying above Mytilini
for some minutes.
As far as I know the Greeks – if they do not have any connection
with the Gülen-movement – can shop what they want in Turkey
without being afraid. I’ve not heard of any Greek having an account
at the wrong bank in Turkey and now cannot return home (like it
happened to tens of Dutch/Turkish and German/Turkish people who are
not allowed to go back to Holland or Germany anymore). Not all Turks
seem to be afraid of the tensions created by the Sultan because they
still come to visit Lesvos. Although I wonder which people they are,
who still get issued a visa allowing them to travel abroad.
The Sultan would love to occupy this beautiful island (and others
lying close to Turkey’s coast). Millions of years ago Lesvos was
attached to the country that flies the red flag with a shrinking moon
and a star. The remains of dinosaurs and mammoth-like elephants prove
that Lesvos once belonged to a mainland. Much later mighty Ottomans
ruled the island for a few centuries. That is right. But they ruled
from an enormous empire that stretched as far as the Arabian
countries up to Israel/Palestine. Those countries the Sultan has not
claimed yet, has he? And has Mister Sultan forgotten his history?
Before the Ottoman empire, plenty of Turkish regions were inhabited
by Hellenic people (that is why there are so many Greek temples in
Turkey). But we already knew that the Sultan is not good in history.
Just
like Bashar Al-Assad is ruling his beautiful country with
I-do-not-know-what-kind-of craziness, the Sultan also seems to be
leading his country towards a steep ravine. More and more tourists no
longer feel comfortable in Turkey, thousands of people, not to the
Sultan’s taste, have been arrested, bank accounts are frozen and
the economy wavers. Maybe the Sultan no longer knows how to get
Syrian people to make the dangerous crossing on leaking dinghy's
towards Europe, if he continues like this there may soon be another
refugee fleet of creaky boats coming to the island –
this time with
Turkish people.
Of course there always have been tensions between Greece and Turkey.
This is nothing new. For example it has not always been possible for
tourists to make the crossing from the Greek islands to Turkey. The
atmosphere depends on the rulers and for sure the Sultan is now
steering towards a pretty dangerous horizon. It wouldn’t take much
to happen and the ferry line between Petra and Turkey can be closed
again.
It was not that bad living under Ottoman rule. Due to its great
nautical and mercantile traditions Lesvos earned lots of privileges
and became one of the wealthier areas in the Levant, doing business
in a great part of the world, trading in olive oil, soap, wine and
ships. When the Greek flag again was raised on the island, the wealth
melted like ice in the sun and lots of factories and impressive
houses now remain only as silent witnesses of this golden century of
Lesvos.
A
few years ago Lesvos became one big geopark (Unesco), but that has
not brought masses of tourists, as it has to the Nature Parks of the
United States, and so ‘new times’ of great economy – (partly
because of the Greek crisis) has not come. Additionally there are
people that think that refugees are still hiding all over the island
behind the great tapestry of flowers –
the red poppies, the
pink tamarisks, the many coloured anemones, the blankets of orchids.
Yet, when you climb up green Olympus and cast your eye along the
capricious coasts of the Gulfs of Yera and Kalloni, when you become
enchanted in the mountains above Plomari or clean your spirit on the
deserted beaches around Sigri, you will not meet a single soul
(meaning also no refugees).
Were
I ever to become Sultan, I would immediately take Lesvos and make it
a private island. All ingredients for a paradise are here: mysterious
caves, gurgling waterfalls, steep mountains with jungle-like
vegetation, all the fruit you could wish for and everything
surrounded by the wonderful blue Aegean sea. The Turkish mainland
boarding the Aegean is growing, so with a bit of time, the Sultan
will not even have to move one finger before Lesvos will be touching
Turkish soil. Although, that will take lots of patience because the
land is growing at only about 1 mm a year. That the country is
shifting is proven by all the earthquakes felt in the Lesvorian
region, whose epicenters are mostly to be found in Turkey.
Long before that will occur, the island is entering a new season.
Spring has been late, yet came pretty hastily when she decided to
come, causing an explosion of flowers. The island is now at her
prettiest, even though there are regions which are clearly too dry
for this time of the year and are not so generous with flowers as
other years.
But Lesvos is rich with water sources and will not be quickly
defeated by the warming up of the earth. Just as the inhabitants keep
on combatting the crisis. After all bad things that have happened the
island has now been given a present, and this from the Sultan.
Tourists who do not want to go to Turkey may venture out and to look
for new holiday destinations under the same sun, and of course the
new ferry line from the most touristic region of Lesvos to the
country of the Sultan, where a Greek temple and the twin sister of
Molyvos, Assos, are waiting. Or could this new ferry line bring
hundreds of Turkish tourists to the island? Let's hope that this will
then not turn out to be a Trojan horse.
(Last week came also the announcement of a new ferry line, a fast one, between Mytilini and Dikili)
(with thanks to Mary Staples)
©
Smitaki 2017
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