Eastern Anatolia

In a 42-page special report in Cornucopia 54 – the first of a series about Eastern Anatolia – photographer Brian McKee explored some remote sights around Lake Van. 'The Wild East' is how the region was described in the special 30-page feature in Cornucopia 24, with beautiful photographs by Manuel Çitak. The feature was by Min Hogg, who returned for Cornucopia 44 to write about the borderlands approaching Armenia, Iran and Syria. Eastern Anatolia is little visited, and it was not until 1950 that some of it was photographed, by Cafer Türkman, shown in Cornucopia 30. The latest photo-report comes from Raf Jah, who travelled from Kars to Ankara with a Leica and a pinhole camera, for Cornucopia 59.

From these sparse, biblical landscapes spring the Tigris and the Euphrates – and the first civilisations. Here are some of the oldest settlements in world, Göbekli Tepe and Mount Nemrut,the exquisitely decorated Great Mosque of Divriği (see Cornucopia 43), and the ruined Armenian city of Ani. The Southeast Anatolian Project, damming the rivers, has had a marked effect on the south of the region.