Ankara, December, 1969 (120)

I was stationed in Turkey from December, 1969 through December, 1970. Just getting to Turkey was interesting. In many ways, even after traveling around Europe, I still felt like ‘a small town boy from the South’ – my trans-Atlantic flights to and from Germany had been on military charters, but my flight to Turkey was on a regularly scheduled Pan-Am flight. International travel was rare in the 60's, so to be on a plane that was filled with people on business and personal trips from NYC to Tehran, with stops in Paris, Istanbul, and Ankara (where I got off) seemed surreal.

Landing in Ankara was my first big surprise of the trip – and where I first began to dislike National Geographic magazine! Here I was expecting an Arabic city as depicted in National Geographic – camels, tents, exotic architecture. What do you get? A poorer and grayer version of an American city, with insane traffic. Modern architecture, blaring horns, cars and vans that don’t obey traffic laws.

To get from Ankara to Sinop (where I was to be stationed), you had to catch a local flight (or an 18 hour bus trip) to Samsun, then ride a military shuttle to Sinop. Due to the fact that Samsun was fogged in when I arrived in Ankara, I spent 3 days in Ankara.

This picture is from my hotel window in Ankara. They heated with coal then and since it was late December, it was cold with lots of coal smoke.

Pictures in this set (Military Years) are from when I was in the military, from 1967-1970. All photos were originally slides, a friend spent very many hours restoring those slides to being viewable. Best viewed as part of the Military Years set.