We have been posted to Ankara, Turkey, twice -- from 1996 to 2000 and from 2003 to 2006. I have many pictures online from our second posting but none from our first tour there, when we traveled much of the country, including to the Southeast, the East and the Black Sea region. I finally found some print pictures that I had scanned from that time, while we were in Okinawa. They're an odd size (and hard to resize without distorting them) and not great, but I'd like to document our first years there, so decided to make a gallery of them to which I’ll be adding when I can.

I was fascinated by the headgear at the main bazaar in Şanlıurfa, also known as Urfa, located in Turkey's heavily Kurdish Southeast and reputed in Jewish and Muslim tradition to be the home of the prophet Abraham. The Southeast was a fascinating region, so different from the rest of the country.

Kurdish vendor at Urfa bazaar, posted earlier: