Exploring the ancient city of Van in Turkey

We flew over the shimmering surface of the largest lake in Turkey for 15 minutes or more before the plane descended onto the airport runway. The calm surface had an inviting azure hue, which made it strikingly beautiful. It was the strangest lake I had ever encountered.

Five islands the size of Singapore could comfortably fit into the lake with room to spare. At its widest, it is about four times the width of Singapore. Its deepest point would submerge the Petronas Twin Towers.

The water has an odd quality: brackish as well as soapy. It is strongly alkaline — which renders it unsuitable for drinking or irrigation — and almost lifeless. It was thought that only one species of fish, the pearl mullet, lives in the lake alongside various species of plankton. In 2018, a new variety of tiny fish was found in the lake, so two kinds of fish are now known to inhabit the waters.

Several freshwater rivers drain into the lake. Fish washed from these rivers perish in the inhospitable waters, making for a rich feasting ground for birds at the river mouths. People can and do bathe in the lake, and salts are extracted from the alkaline water for fertiliser. This vast highland lake never freezes over because of its salinity. It has no outlet and has existed since prehistoric times.

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About 3½ millennia ago, a great civilisation called Urartu, also known as the Kingdom of Van, thrived on the lake’s shores. The lake and the region derive its current names from this kingdom: Lake Van, the province of Van and the city of Van, which is on the shores of the lake. Urartu existed and flourished for about 300 years before it was subsumed by various invasions, eventually becoming part of the greater state of Armenia (which exists today as a separate country contiguous to Turkey).

Van is a modern city in Anatolia, traditionally known as Asia Minor, and now part of Turkey. It is modern in appearance but ancient in existence, having been the capital of Urartu. It looks modern because of a catastrophic earthquake in 2011 that wrecked much of the city, so what I saw was largely rebuilt.

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It feels like a modern, medium-sized Turkish city with a majority Kurdish population. It thrives on tourism, especially tourists from neighbouring Iran, who cross the border for shopping and some liberalism that they can’t taste in their own country. Iran’s border is an hour’s distance by road with the Iranian city of Tabriz just 300km away.

In the small town of Dogubeyazit, 40km from the border with Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, I tarried in a bazaar that sold goods from Iran. Less interesting than the cheap electronic goods, knock-off watches and sunglasses (likely made in China), was the fresh produce, such as pistachios and other nuts, from Iran.

White swimming cats

For many people, and certainly for cat lovers, the mention of Van will cause their eyes to light up because of the Van cat. This ancient breed has different-coloured eyes (known as heterochromia): one eye is blue and the other is amber or green. The Van cat is all white and known as the “swimming cat” because it takes to water like a duck. In the 1990s, the population of Van cats was in dire decline, to the extent that a local university started a breeding programme.

The Van Yüzüncü Yil University is located a little distance outside the city centre. It offers various degree programmes but something special is marked on campus by a big statue of a Van cat.

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The building marked by the statue is the Van Cat House, where these creatures are bred. Mature males and females are kept in large, airy, separate fenced enclosures with toys and a small pool for swimming. The cats are lanky and completely adorable. Friendly felines sidled up to the fencing, displaying the mesmerising different-coloured eyes for which they are so highly prized.

Inside the building, I bought cat food and stepped into a large, fenced enclosure of Van kittens and teenage cats. And was promptly mobbed once they knew I carried food. Lucky me!

The original big breakfast

Van is famous for another tradition, its breakfast. This is a big meal that puts all others breakfasts to shame, and people come from all over the country to enjoy it. The Guinness Book of World Records says the record holder for the largest number of people attending a “full breakfast” is Van, with 51,793 people tucking in at a marathon outdoor eating session on June 1, 2014.

Van breakfast restaurants have opened to much fanfare in Istanbul and Ankara, but there’s nothing quite like having the meal in Van, with its fresh produce and regional specialities. The Van big breakfast is traditionally served at breakfast, but can also be a whole day affair.

I had my special breakfast in an airy restaurant overlooking Lake Van. Its resident cat slouched in a chair nearby, obviously used to having its own way.

Breakfast was an hours-long affair, with the courses being brought out one after the other until the table ran out of space. An incomplete list of dishes includes a fresh salad of tomato, cucumber, chilli and endives, fresh butter, freshly made yoghurt with nuts, korut (caramelised wheat), lamb and egg on sizzling hot plates, various jams, honey with honeycomb, rolls and slices of various kinds of cheese, deep-fried vegetables, muturga (wheat, scrambled eggs, sugar, butter and flour) and more flatbread than my party could hope to eat. The baked Van Mullet, a small, slender fish perfectly cooked and suspended from a round metal rack, made its appearance. It was delicious.

Urartu lives

Although modern in aspect, history looms large over Van. A little distance outside the modern city is a rocky massif, at the top of which is Van Citadel, the massive ruins of an Urartian fortification, with a strategic view of the plains below. A large stone panel in the cliff is inscribed with the Urartian script, which historians have been able to decipher.

At the base of the rock massif is a large cleared area called Old Van. Until the early 20th century, this was a thriving community, with businesses, residents and a large Armenian population. In 1915, what is sometimes referred to as the Siege of Van occurred, with Armenian citizens defending themselves against attacking Ottoman forces. It was part of a larger episode of mass expulsion and extermination of Armenians that has been called the Armenian Genocide.

The echoes of the events of a century ago reverberate into the present. In October 2019, the US House of Representatives recognised the mass killings of Armenians as “genocide”, a claim stoutly denied by Turkey. Today, the site of Old Van remains eerily empty.

On a small hillock some distance from the city are the remains of an Urartu civilisation settlement called Cavustepe. The hilltop commands a spectacular view. It is the site of what was once a building complex with large, square limestone blocks, a wheat storage area with rows of earthenware jars sunk into the ground, a sacrificial altar for animals with a drainage channel for blood, and basalt blocks forming the base of a temple. The black basalt blocks were cut with astonishing precision. The clean, polished sides look as if they had been cut with modern machinery last week instead of thousands of years ago with hand tools.

The self-appointed caretaker of the site is an elderly gentleman who has tended the place for several decades. He had taught himself how to read the cuneiform Urartian script, joining a small group of academics with the knowledge. His name is Mehmet Kusman, and he is a local celebrity sometimes referred to as “The Last Urartian”.

Despite having vanished as a civilisation thousands of years ago, Urartu has never quite gone away.

The litter of history is strewn across Van, which was once Tushpa, Urartu’s capital. Monumental irrigation works and castle fortifications from Urartu survive to the present day. There is the unspoken, often unacknowledged legacy of the Armenians who occupied the area for centuries, such as the historically important Armenian cathedral on Akdamar island on Lake Van, Armenian silver-craft, and derelict Ottoman-era monuments such as Hosap Castle, some 50km from Van, and Ishak Pasha Palace, which is on the Unesco Tentative World Heritage list.

And there are the living legacies of Van: the city beside the scenic, alkaline lake, with its big breakfasts and white cats with mismatched eyes and a penchant for swimming.