Free Republic

“I smell cigarette smoke,” one of my travel companions noted. That was the moment I knew that we should not linger any longer. We had been warned twice on the way up the hillside not to come here. In one instance, it was claimed that two treasure hunters had been arrested by the police a week or two earlier. In the other case, we were told that if the military or police caught us there, we would be arrested. Such is the experience of interrupting the destruction of Armenian cultural sites in Turkey. There are few photographs of the monastery...