Update 12

I keep travelling like a tourist in my free time. The magnificent abbey in Bellapais, a village in northern Cyprus, was another recent destination.

The story of this abbey is like a summary of colonialism in the Middle East and its intersecting connections to its regional history which may also shed light to contemporary politics. A guide told me that when Bellapais Abbey was partly collapsed by an earthquake in early 20th century, the British governor in Cyprus was so happy. The next day, he transported all its stones to upgrade the colonial facilities in Port Said. From a British colony -Cyprus as the biggest aircraft carrier in the world- to another one on the Suez...

If you read the life of Said Pasha and especially his nephew Ismail Pasha, you would see that the Ottoman retreat from the Middle East triggered a colonial plunder of all region. Its consequences, the fight to share Middle Eastern resources between Western European neo-colonial states like Britain and France, still continue. Just check who is bombing Libya nowadays...

Update 11

St. Hilarion Castle is just a few kilometers away from my garrison. As one of three Crusade castles in northern Cypriot shores, it was once captured by Richard the Lionheart.

The writer Rose Macaulay describes St. Hilarion Castle as "a picture-book castle for elf-kings" and the rumour still persists that Walt Disney based his Disneyland castle on this northern Cypriot original.

Update 10

Military life goes on and here are two songs that I listen to frequently:

Bandista, a Turkish alternative music band, tells about "four corpses in Cyprus," hinting how the Turkish humanitarian invervention was justified decades ago.

Then Muse, the British rock band, asks the question,

"How could you send us so far away from home?"

...pointing out to the ultimate paradox of such a war, forcing me to think that decades of politics that Turkey had been pursueing following the justified intervention has lead us to a mess now.