Turkey II: Trainspotting

The Dogu Ekspresi from Ankara to Kars

It’s still light, the air still hot, when the conductor at Ankara train station gives the signal for departure. At 6 PM, the Dogu Ekspresi sets off. On time, of course. The name indicates the direction: this is the train heading east, from the capital to the end of the Turkish world, to Kars on the border with Armenia. Crossing Anatolia, a route of 1,310 kilometers, with 47 stations and a journey time of 26 hours. If it stays on time.

In Ankara, the republic shows off its most modern side with all its might. The station is a colossus of glass and steel, similar to an airport, with escalators and security barriers. However, it was built solely for the high-speed trains that roar from here to Istanbul or Konya. The Eastern Express to Kars can only be reached after finding your way, with friendly assistance, through an inconspicuous back exit to the original station. It’s a building made of aged, gray stone. Here you find those who have time and need time wait - and and in exchange are bid farewell by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself.

His portrait is proudly displayed on the carriage in which the republic’s founder once made his domestic journeys - when he wasn’t driving his equally beloved Cadillac. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, railway construction was a central unifying element of his new republic, and the Dogu Express dates back to Atatürk’s initiative. At the end of the 1930s, it rolled into the far east of the country for the first time. This was intended to connect remote regions with the economic and educational centers of Ankara and Istanbul, train by train.

Those who set out on the journey today experience Turkey from the perspective of a window and can make themselves comfortable in five open-plan carriages, a dining car, and a couchette car where the conductor distributes bed linens in the evening. Leading the way, a 3,300-horsepower diesel locomotive does its work, capable of reaching 100 km/h, at least in theory. In practice, the train travels leisurely eastward, continuing for quite a long time through Ankara, with its identical, square buildings housing its six million inhabitants. But even before evening falls on this summer day, golden-brown hills rise in the last light, and from the cramped train compartment, the vastness of the country can be glimpsed for the first time.

The ensuing night’s rest can certainly be considered a blessing, because not so long ago, the Eastern Express made a name for itself as a “party train.” A few videos on Instagram were enough to create the joyful hype. Suddenly, all seats were sold out well in advance. There was music and dancing, and even marriage proposals on the train for a life on a shared platform. Some passengers decorated their compartments with fairy lights, while less romantic ones hung out of the open train door for a selfie.

Today, that too is history. Those traveling are those who want to go from A as in Ankara to K as in Kars, and the journey alone is not the destination but it is simply a long journey. Workers and employees, large families, women with covered heads next to women with bare shoulders all sit on the train - the entire spectrum of this society, which, despite all its problems, still seems to live together relatively relaxedly in two centuries and two worlds.

In the dining car, people meet and conversations begin. It’s always the case when traveling that you meet many people - chance acquaintances when paths happen to cross. On the train, however, paths don’t cross; they run parallel. This gives more time to chance, and it’s worth taking advantage of. For example, a conversation with a teacher who once taught in Germany for five years and raves about Karlsruhe rather than Kars. He cultivates his connection to his “second home,” as he beamingly calls it, by regularly reading the news in German. “Twenty minutes every day,” he says. As he passes, another man overhears the German dialogue: a tall, thin man, marked by illness. He, too, has had his own experiences with Almanya. With a shy smile, he apologizes for not speaking the language better. But one word he knows well: “deportation.”

Many fates, countless stories, and all differences united in one train with a common destination. Sometime before noon, we reach the Euphrates, which is generous enough to accompany the Eastern Express for several hours. Shimmering green, the river winds its way through narrow gorges, soon irrigating a Garden of Eden of mulberry trees and banana plants, and allowing grains, vegetables, and nuts to flourish. In the distance, snow lies on high peaks. The train travels through the deserted, roadless landscapes toward the second sunset.

We have now traveled so far east that the sun sets almost an hour earlier than in Ankara. The train has creaked and groaned so high that at 1,800 meters the temperatures suddenly make a sweater necessary again. When we disembark, the pedometer on our phone is almost at zero, but we have covered more than 1,300 kilometers. Nothing has happened, but the day on the Dogu Express was full of experiences. And with only a three-hour delay, we even reach Kars before midnight.

Kars, in July

Translation: Lisa Kremer