April 2005: Tekirdag, Turkey |  print |
The way from Istanbul to Tekirdag follows the line of the ancient highway that once linked Byzantium to Belgrade. It was along this road that Mehmet IV, fed up with the intrigues at court and bored by the routine of ruling, would head with his hawks to his beloved hunting grounds at Edirne, followed by a vast, ambling caravan of camels carrying the necessities of life like concubines and their eunuchs. Occasionally, parallel to the busy modern trunk-road, I caught a glimpse of an elegant stone bridge over which once rode this splendid sight but otherwise the 21st century has obliterated the Ottoman prospect. The road then forks: to the northwest lies Edirne; to the southwest, following the coast of the Sea of Marmara, is situated the little fishing village of Tekirdag. Or so I thought until the sign on the outskirts of the town proudly informed me "TEKIRDAG, pop. 108,000."
This part of Turkey was in bygone times Thrace, its inhabitants made famous by Herodotus for being unable to agree with each other about anything. Despite that, the Proto Thracians were remarkably advanced in their culture and mercantilism as evidenced by their exquisitely painted tombs and intricate gold ornament discovered in Bulgaria and Thessalonika. Persian, Macedonian and Greek colonists followed and then in 46AD, after a particularly gory 'domestic' murder in the ruling family, the Emperor Claudius annexed the area. When Rome split in 395AD, the province passed to Byzantium until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 when it was absorbed by the Ottomans. On 24 April 1720, almost 285 years to the day of my visit, Ferenc Rákóczi II took up residence in Tekirdag, in part a 'guest' of the Sultan and in part in self-imposed exile from Vienna.
I am standing at the end of Barbaros Street, about a hundred feet above the seafront below, overlooking a becalmed and languid Sea of Marmara. There is a smell of wood-smoke in the air, mixed with the tang of freshly landed fish borne by the skittish wind that works the seafront. Behind me is Rákóczi's house, an austere and simple wooden building in the old Turkish style. The curator and I have quickly and amicably acknowledged our language barriers, so I am allowed to set off around the house on my own. Despite the high ceilings which initially give a feeling of spaciousness, the scale of the house surprises me for it is far smaller that what I had imagined: a ground floor consisting of an entrance hall, a dining room and kitchen, complete with well; three modest sized rooms on the first floor, furnished in the Turkish style of wall-to-wall divans along their length and breadth, and then two rooms on the top floor, one of which is admittedly large for it contains the Prince's 'throne'. Nevertheless, compared to Sarospatak, Mukachevo, even Borsa, this is a Princely hermitage, not a manor house or palace.
Throughout the house, dotted around the rooms, is a collection of enchanting watercolours painted by Aladar Edvi Illes (1870-1958) at around the turn of the 19th century. He managed to capture a Tekirdag scarcely changed from Rákóczi's day and his depictions contrast dramatically to the physical structure of the town today. However, as I set off down the hill towards the sea, I wondered whether the essence of Rákóczi's Tekirdag may still linger below the surface of the clamorous bustle of modern life in Turkey. Calls to prayer from lofty minarets float on the evening wind: a devout Catholic, Rakoczi would have heard these same cries of piety but I doubt he would have construed them as hostile, for the sounds he dreaded were the suave words of Vienna's political elite in a hollow homily about Hungarian independence.
The harbour was packed; it felt like most of the population of Tekirdag had descended on the cafes around the quayside, to drink tea, smoke cigarettes packet by packet and idly chatter in the resilient warmth of the setting sun. A waiter, or was he a circus performer, passed me by, carrying a stack of thirty glasses of chai on a flimsy tray. Fifty small fishing boats were slowly stirring themselves into life: engines started , satisfactorily chugged, then mysteriously shut down for there was seemingly no sign of human life on board. Bread sellers moved urgently between the tables, purveying their wares with a monotonous falsetto cry, while chestnut roasters turned their brown nuggets over charcoal grills on wheels. It's strange to think of Rákóczi and his fellow exiles similarly sitting by this stretch of shore, for their own country was landlocked and until Rákóczi reached Danzig in October 1712 on his way into exile, I wonder whether he had even seen the sea. For seafarers, the sight of open water spells freedom but to 'landlubbers', it is an empty expanse beyond which lies the dread of a great and infinite void.
Tekirdag was of course much quieter in Rákóczi's day, a backwater that the world passed by. I could still pick out the shared sounds – the incessant chatter of sparrows, pigeons cooing in the pine trees, the squawk of an irate gull, the clippity-clop of a peasant cart. For a man who had parlayed with the Holy Roman Emperor, who had allied himself with the Sun King, the Sultan and the Tsar, who had discoursed with Queen Anne and the Protestant Princes and Estates of Europe, Tekirdag must surely have seemed on the very edge of the world, no matter how close it was to the Porte – a day's hard ride or a half-day sail.
I had a late dinner at the Feribot Restaurant on the quayside, little silver fishes like whitebait and rings of plump squid. It's the sort of restaurant that vanished years ago at the other end of the Mediterranean. Simple, fresh food, friendly and attentive service and reasonably priced. Walking back to the Rodosto Hotel where I had found a room with a spectacular view across the water, past a café packed with intense card players, Rákóczi's last stopping place had left me unsettled. Suppose he had accepted Charles's generous terms and had had his estates reinstated. Surely there is a strong probability that he could then have gone on to steer Hungary towards at least a partial independence. Here, by this sultry sea, isolated and unwanted by his political peers, fifteen years passed by in the life of this extraordinarily gifted, courageous and honourable man, at the end of which Rákóczi had nothing to show, apart from the untarnished icon of his own selflessness which he bequeathed in perpetuity to the Hungarian nation.
The clue is in the word 'honourable. Rákóczi, a man of honour, had promised his followers total independence. Many had given their lives for his cause; their families had been subjected to hunger and deprivation. He had not delivered his promise and choose exile rather than dishonour. There was no other course open.