Good bye Turkey, Hello Syria!!!

So we arrived in Ankara, Turkey two days ago. We arrived with mixed feelings. Istanbul is a vibrant, historical, active, beautiful city. Ankara, like many capitol cities, is boring, lacks life, but we have had a good experience here. We heard from Orhan Cengiz today, who is one of the leading human rights lawyers in Turkey. He talked all about the state of Turkish politics, rights etc. He was a bit of a conspiracy theorist and i get the idea that his conspiracy ideas about the military vs. government are spot on! We heard from the Turkish foreign ministry, which was disappointing as all we got from them were political slogans and such. But I guess that is to be expected from government offices.

Today, we leave for Syria, where I will be out of internet contact for the duration of our 5 day visit. So I will say a bit about what we will do, and update later on how it was. Tonight we will sleep in Hama, Syria, which was the site of the 1982 Syrian massacre of the Muslim Brotherhood, in which the city was destroyed by the Syrian government and 38,000 died. The government crushed the Muslim Brotherhood resistance there at a massive cost. We will then go to Damascus for a few days, which is the longest continually inhabited city in the world. Considered the capitol of Middle East culture and history, Damascus will be massively interesting and I will be sure to update on its intricacies. We will go from there to an excellently preserved Crusader Castle in Southern Syria. Then on to Amman, Jordan for a day, before we cross into Israel!

I will update in Israel!!