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Our trip to Turkey After careful research, our plans to go to Turkey are to proceed as planned. However, we want those of you who are concerned about our making to trip to understand the rationale behind our decision. Taking our personal safety into consideration -- We contacted the State Department (and the British government site just to be extra cautious.) No restrictions are placed on visiting Turkey at this point. Both governments suggest exercising usual caution. That is no different from the advice given prior to the terrorism in the US. The only trouble spots are in the southeastern area where there has been trouble with the Kurds in the past. (In fact we changed our plans to visit Turkey in 1999 for that reason.) We will be flying Turkish Air, which exercises excellent security measures. Tom has flown with them before and was quite impressed by the security. (Sometime you might want to ask him about it.) Besides, for those of you who have done much flying, you know that international flights have much better security than domestic flights. Turkey is some distance from Afghanistan and it is not likely that our air bases there will be involved. While Turkey is a republic, the military has a great deal of power. So far, they have been able to keep a tight rein on Muslim extremists and the Kurds. There have been a few terrorist attacks by the Kurds over the years, but they have not been in the areas where we will be going. As one source said, the greatest threat to tourists in Turkey remains the traffic in Istanbul! (Tom knows that firsthand from his prior trip to Istanbul.) Our tour group is owned and operated by a man who is a former Olympian who is quite a hero in Turkey and has many connections. We have talked to him personally. He is in Turkey now. Has just completed one tour and is beginning a new one in a day or two. He believes that there is no risk involved and we trust him. We know that the Turkish government and military are very protective of tourists and we know that Boris also is very protective of his people. It is a fairly small tour company which only takes groups of limited size. There are only five people in our group. Of course we can't have a guarantee that we will be perfectly safe but we can't have that anywhere. And quite frankly, we would probably feel safer there than in the shadow of the nuclear plant -- where we reside. Personal reasons for going: We have sorted and sorted through these. There are several bottom lines. We are citizens of the world, not just this small area where we live or the US. Traveling is in our blood and getting to know people from other places is a passion. We are not willing to give that up. Tom is being monitored for several potentially serious medical conditions and we are not certain how long we will be able to travel. We have been other places where there has been terrorism and timing could have been different. We visited Japan and traveled on the subways where the sarin gas attacks occurred shortly after that event. Friends of ours live very close to those places and they and their children use those trains daily. Several times we have been in London when the tube, on which we were riding, closed down stations due to bombs scares. Our plane was struck by lightning when we were on our way to our Panama Canal cruise. Some scary things happened in Thailand. Tom had scarier things happen to him in India, as did our friend, Emma. One irony -- the severe medical and physical problems that Tom suffered on our last trip was not the result of visiting any of the countries on our itinerary but from an infection he picked up in an American hospital prior to our trip. And he received good medical care in Australia. Closer to home -- I had lived (and have family presently living) in Oklahoma City, home of the worst domestic terrorism in the history of our country; near TMI, scene of the worst nuclear accident (incident) in our country; and often visited the sites of the terrorist attacks in both New York and Washington, DC (most recently within the month with foreign visitors). We don't want to start living in fear. Nor do we want the terrorists to win. Making people afraid and changing their lives is exactly what they want. They want to cripple our economy, make people afraid to fly, become fearful of each other and tear us apart. We want to do our little part in our lives to prove them otherwise. We are not afraid to die, and realized that when our plane was struck by lightening and thought that was going to happen. However, we are not nearly ready to die and want to go on living well for a long, long time. So we will exercise every caution and hope that everything goes as planned. Of course in the days ahead, everything is subject to change but we wanted to let everyone know where we are at this point. Finally, when we think about the enormity of the history and culture that is represented in Turkey it makes us feel miniscule in this world. We believe in the absolute worth of the individual human soul -- including our own. However, how can we compare ourselves to the layers and layers of rich history, world changing events and roots of all Abrahamic religions that are in the areas we will be visiting. (We actually will be going to the site of where it is claimed that Abraham was born.) We will be visiting areas that we have only known as books of the Bible. How can we even begin to pass that up? Please wish us well in our travels. We'll share our experience and photographs when we return. For our actual itinerary if you wish to follow us in our travels, read about the places we are visiting or see the hotels where we will be staying you can go to http://www.biz2web.com/grant/turkey.htm Peace and love, Marie and Tom |
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