Alp and Alpay in Cappadocia

Art&Seek Director Anne Bothwell is traveling in Turkey with a group of North Texas artists and writers. Read her previous post here.

We have three main folks leading us through Turkey.  Two of them live in  Dallas:  Alp Yaradanakul is affiliated with the Gulen Institute and is from Bursa; Alpay Seven is  working on his doctorate in biophysics at UT-Southwestern, and he’s originally from Izmir. Our third, Ufuk Ozsoy, is from Ankara, and met up with us in Istanbul. He’s a civil engineer, and may be moving to the states this year. (I’ll add a pix of him soon.)
All three are super patient with a crowd of first time visitors to Turkey. They are Muslim, and have provided invaluable context and answered endless questions as we explore this country with a secular government and a majority Muslim population. They are also scientists herding around a group of cats… I mean, artists. And so far, neither  of them has lost his temper.