Defining unidentified flying objects in Turkey
The sighting of a UFO in early November excited the Turkish public, with pictures appearing in both tabloids and more serious papers.
The flying object was spotted in the Karaköprü area of Şanlıurfa province at around 4 a.m. on Nov. 4. Filmed on amateur video, the strange hexagonal ball of light hovered in the sky emitting red, green and white lights and moved quickly and erratically. After 15 minutes it disappeared without a trace. As of yet no official explanation has been offered as to what it might have been, although some Internet comments point to a genuine sighting of a “Green Fireball” phenomenon. Non-believers claim the object is just a star filmed under magnification and the more cynical say these were American spy planes monitoring Turkey’s border with Syria.
This is not the first instance of a UFO sighting in Turkey. They occur regularly, with recent ones in Konya in March 2007, which lasted on and off for a week, and İstanbul on Jan. 4 when people in the Yenibosna area saw a spinning circle with glowing white lights in the sky. Haktan Akdoğan, the head of the Turkish Sirius UFO Space Science Research Center, claimed in August that the number of sightings in Turkey, as in many other countries, has been increasing in recent months.
The largest concentration of sightings in Turkey, and perhaps the best documented, occurred between 2001 and 2002. This spate of sightings seems to have been triggered by the extraordinary events of June 7, 2001. Ten village guards from Dondurmaz in Adıyaman province were on the night watch. All of them claimed to have seen a bright light in the shape of a large circular “tray” the size of a house glowing in the sky. They watched as it flew off in the direction of Ulubaş Mountain and then flickered out of existence.
When the men reported to their commander, their statements were taken seriously and Adıyaman Governor Halil Işık had them separated and individually questioned. Not only did their accounts tally up, but when asked to draw pictures of what they had seen all the sketches were uncannily similar. Mr. Işık felt the event was serious enough to send a report with the details to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and also informed Akdoğan at the Sirius organization. By June 13 in the same year Sabah newspaper was leading with the headline “Everyone searching for UFOs” in a story that detailed how in Uşak locals had stoned an alien, in Gaziantep the police had made a video recording of a UFO and that people all over the country were phoning in reports of strange occurrences to their local gendarmerie.
The reports continued in a slightly hysterical atmosphere well into 2002 and included an event in Gebze on May 31, 2002, where a UFO was said to have visibly circled, projecting lights, for over an hour. This was followed by the Akşam daily printing a story on June 1, 2002, about Saffet Şap, an electronic technician from Beykoz who managed to capture on video a flying object which looked like a black bug with seven or eight legs. On Nov. 9, 2002, Hürriyet daily ran an account of four commercial pilots from different planes who had all seen UFOs in the same patch of sky on the same day at the same time.
Akdoğan seems to be a recurring figure in Turkish UFO lore, commenting freely on each event and insisting on the importance of Turkey to alien life. His motives however may not just be scientific; he is also the owner of the İstanbul UFO museum, which opened in 2002 (riding on the back of these multiple UFO events), and any extra interest in aliens will also encourage punters through the door of his premises. Indeed. The museum is a fairly successful franchise. Of the six UFO museums in the world, three are in Turkey (İstanbul, Denizli and Göreme in Cappadocia) and his Web site www.siriusufo.org advertises for further partners to open other UFO museums. It is his clearly stated intention to open UFO museums all over Turkey to “further the knowledge of the Turkish people and to attract tourists.” His organization provides all the necessary materials and installations so each museum is a de facto copy of the last. Whether they are lucrative or not is not mentioned, but when the Göreme museum opened in 2006, Hürriyet reported that they had 5,000 visitors in just one month. Apparently it was especially popular with the Japanese.
Whether extraterrestrials exist or not is much debated but recent advances in science make the chances seem more likely. Animals known as “extremophiles” thrive in Earth environments previously thought not to have been able to sustain life -- from microbes found living without oxygen in volcanic fissures two miles down to “tardigrades” that can survive temperatures from nearly absolute zero to 30 degrees Fahrenheit and even live in a vacuum like that found in space. These minute living things have upended the understanding of what is needed for the survival of life.
Previously scientists had worked under the assumption that both oxygen and liquid water were key factors in sustaining life but now it seems that these are only important to some types of life. The “rare Earth” theory is falling out of favor to be replaced with the idea that life is adaptable and that the question which needs to be asked is what kind of environment other than our own might sustain living things. The chances of intelligent life with the technology to communicate are slimmer; it is possible that such worlds have come and gone. If life of this sort exists now, they, like us, would have the technology to recognize that Earth is an “interesting” planet and worth investigating. So why aren’t they here? Some would say they are and that the report of flying objects above Karaköprü was a clear indication of just that.
Where humans fear to tread: Göreme UFO Museum
Intrigued by the purple sign with ET raising his finger toward home we thought the UFO museum would be well worth a visit. Arriving at 11 a.m. we were disappointed to find the museum closed and the area in front of the building scattered with rusty old signs. Perhaps, Penny said, they’d been abducted by aliens? It appeared that someone was watching us though because as we turned to leave a lady appeared out of nowhere and began to open up.
The entire museum has been chiseled into the distinctive soft rock of the area. After passing through a door plastered with enlarged images of strange lights hovering over Göreme (photographed in 2005 by a French man), we entered a cream-colored, smooth-walled fallopian tube-like hall. As we wandered down the corridors, the walls on either side of us lighted up and elucidated upon the topics of UFO sightings amongst prehistoric and ancient cultures and in religious texts. Although the presentation was flat and static, the facts and photographs were riveting and made a convincing case that humans have been visited from outer space for thousands of years. The suspension of our disbelief and openness to the idea of aliens was I’m sure influenced by the strange womblike subterranean location and the spooky music echoing through the tunnels and chambers.
The amount of information, testimonials and pictures was quite impressive although little wall space was set aside for dissenting views. Also lacking were the exhibits, models and interactive elements that one comes to expect from modern museums. Obviously displaying real dead aliens is not easy; likewise the options for displaying spaceships, balls of fire, meteors, etc. However the models that were on display were crude, almost of an elementary school project level and boards had letters and parts falling off them.
The only installation that gave us pause was the largest one of four white aliens with large catlike black eyes, preparing to operate on a human woman. Trapped and helpless she lay prone under a white sheet, lights pumping down a tube from the nearest ET and over her belly and legs. Maybe it was the lighting or maybe because it was a woman the feeling of malevolence and terror was hard to shake. Luckily the abducted woman was near the exit and I was able to leave her and her captors swiftly behind and emerge reborn as a believer into the bright Cappadocian sunlight.
