Turkey's Last Christians

Modern Turkey is not a country most people associate with Christianity. Yet long before the rise of the Ottoman Empire - and centuries before Islam spread across Anatolia and Mesopotamia - this was one of the centres of the early Christian world. In this video, I travel to Mardin in southeastern Turkey, close to the borders of Syria and Iraq, to explore one of the last surviving centres of Syriac Christianity in the Middle East. Perched high above the plains of Mesopotamia, Mardin has stood at the crossroads of empires, religions and trade routes for thousands of years. My mission was to search for the last visible traces of Christianity in modern Turkey, from ancient monasteries and stone churches to the surviving Aramaic-speaking Syriac communities whose traditions stretch back nearly two thousand years. Follow Claire’s Footsteps, who joined me on this journey:    / @clairesfootsteps   About me Hello there, I’m Richard, the Travel Tramp. Award-winning blogger and professional travel journalist. I’m on a quest to explore the world through its borders and boundaries. Follow me as I visit cartographic curiosities and geopolitical oddities. Buy my new book about Britain’s Borders: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/46238... Follow my blog for geopolitical oddities and cartographic curiosities: https://www.travel-tramp.com/ Sign up for my Substack newsletter for weekly updates: https://traveltramp.substack.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/traveltramp... Facebook:   / traveltramptravel