More churches in caves here in Ihlara near Cappadocia in Turkey with pictures on the roofs of biblical characters.

Our tour guide told us something strange.   There is damage and graffiti on these walls, but oddly mostly through scrubbing out the eyes and faces of Jesus, Mary and the apostles.

But also, there are eyes painted onto the walls as well!!

Here in Turkey, the eyes are now a cultural icon, showing up on all kinds of goods including these fridge magnets.

This is strange, as I know that Judaism and Islam have a kind of added on superstitious tradition of an ‘evil eye’  this is often seen with the Hand of Fatima, a kind of good luck amulet to warn evil spirits, I’ve seen this some Jews in Israel as well as Muslims in Morocco.   In Judaism this is comes from Kaballah which is a form of mysticism and not biblical.   The hand of Fatima I think is actually an Islamic thing.

These eyes were part of something superstitious added on the church.  When you think of that Paul had to reprimand the early Christians for bringing in unbiblical teachings, this isn’t that much of a surprise.

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Next 15. Selime Katedrali – The cave cathedral

A few years ago I visited Brussels twice as it was a convenient way of breaking up my journey from Tel Aviv back to London, by landing in Liege and getting a Eurostar from Brussels to London.

Did Brussels have a radical Islam problem long before the recent terror attacks?

I think so.

I saw this graffiti.

And this Islamic book shop.   Author Israel Shamir maybe of a Jewish background but he is a holocaust denier.  This gives the haters of Israel the “some of my best friends are ____” argument, but this is still filth that these shops are peddling.

Sharia Banks.    My bank Lloyds does Sharia banking too.   I’m thinking of ditching them over this.

Quite an incredible view!   There is quite a lot of steps to the bottom.

This place in the middle of the bottom of the canyon offered juice stands and a simple cafe, and a small mosque/prayer place in a shed.   Looks like its probably a popular place for camping.

This was a great place to have lunch, in this building by the river.   I got chatting to a man on our group who happened to be a pastor from Los Angeles, it was great to talk about biblical history in the whole middle east area.

There are different cave churches around the canyon.  Our group leader told us that there was a population exchange with Greece in 1924, so most of the Christians have gone.

Up here was a cave church with some unusual discoveries in….

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Next 14. The caves have eyes!

After the disappointment of seeing the first church shut, going to the Open Air museum of Goereme is the best place to see all of the cave churches.

These cave churches have painting as sophisticated as a conventional cathedral.

Outside of each of the churches seems to security guards.   They forbid people to take pictures.   Using a flash is thought to make the colours fade, the security guards have a boring job and are mostly playing with their phones, so I can sneakily get a few pics when they aren’t looking.

The amazing looking paintings seem to vary in conditions.  Most have been heavily scratched by age and vandals.   Some further away from the sunlight have keep their colours better.

There is at least 20 different churches to visit in this park alone.   There are hundreds and hundreds all over Cappadocia.

Previous 11. Turkish motoring
Next 13. The Ihlara Vadisi Plani Canyon

In Turkey, it seems motoring here is in the old soviet style of automobiles of Lada, FSO, Yugo and old style Skoda, the latter being a different type of vehicle to today’s VW based sub brand.

These two cars are massively popular everywhere in Turkey.   Probably together they make up a third of all the vehicles I’ve seen here.   The left is a ‘Tofas’ a boxy Fiat derived saloon built in Turkey just Lada did.   The right is a Renault 12, which was built by Renault’s Turkey plant along side the modern Clio, Megane and Laguna range.  This car was sold by Dacia of Romania until they made a recent comeback making simple cheap vehicles for Europe again today, and building a lot of them in Morocco.   As you can see, to make your Tofas a bit more special, a lot of them are souped up with alloys and big sound systems.

I can’t see any real special feature in the R12 and Tofas apart from they were cheap, gave factory workers jobs until I guess people insisted on modern safety standards and emissions.  They were made as recent as 2002.

Nowadays Renault Turkey built some modern electric vehicles for Israel’s “Better place” company, a sadly shortlived project that was to make the Holy Land’s roads with cars with no fossil fuel products at all.

Some of the religious Turks seem to have stickers on their cars like this with ‘Masallah’ which I guess they are relying on Islam to keep them safer drivers.   Driving isn’t too bad here, or at least until I got to a really big city like Adana which seemed chaotic.

Much of the middle east has scrap yards where people can get their motoring down to a cheaper price using second hand bits.   I didn’t see any here.   I did see some abandoned cars left in bits at the side of the roads which surprised me as I thought the cost of scrap metal would mean that there would be a big incentive to have them hauled away.

I think Turkey is generally a very industrious country and there seems to be metal workshops,. farms, carpentry shops and all kinds of factories all over the place.

Related: Crap car spotting in Morocco

Previous 10. Varying uses of caves and the camel man
Next 12. The Open Air Museum and cave churches

This cave has the lower spaces used for chickens and the upper parts used for doves.

Here is a gift shop, the front part, a normal sort of building, back end is hollowed out rock.

This camel owner does rides outside of Goereme Open Air museum.  The two camels are parked up on the left, camel man’s missus sits in the sofa doing some sewing.  Theres one more camel and their food and water around these two rocks.

This man wasn’t very nice.   I was offered a ride, which after asking ‘how much?’ 3 times he refused to give me a straight answer.   Eventually he said 10 Lira. (£2.50)   After a short 5 minute ride, and some pictures.  I got off and he then decided the pictures and ride were two separate items totaling 60 Lira.   After arguing we agreed 10, he went to 50 then 40.   I thrust him 20 and told him to get lost and walked swiftly on.

This camel is much different beast than ones operated by Israelis and Palestinians.  This one has a cover over his mouth, and his fur a bit matted and unkept (Maybe hes malting?)  This is purely a tourist thing, Turks don’t use these as working animals today.

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