American Matt Krause Is Walking Across Turkey to Iran

Matt Krause’s American friends refused to believe that Turkey was anything like the United States. To prove them wrong, he’s walking across the entire country.

By: Alyson Neel

Matt Krause Turkey travel danger terrorism Arab Spring Iran walking

Matt Krause. Photo: mattkrause1969/Flickr

“I’m afraid of someone shooting me or slitting my neck on the side of the road. I’m afraid of drunken teenagers beating me up at night.”

Turkey sits in a tricky geopolitical spot, wedged between North African and Middle Eastern nations rife with civil unrest.

On the southeastern border, there’s Iran and Iraq, which are, well, Iran and Iraq. The Arab Spring, the nearly two-year-long wave of protests and demonstrations that have ousted leaders and led to violent backlash, is unfolding right in Turkey’s backyard. Then there’s the civil war in Syria, where the death toll has climbed to 23,000-plus. Turkey, formerly close with Syria, came out against the regime last year and provided support and refuge for opposition forces. This past June, Syria downed a Turkish jet that officials said had crossed into its airspace. And now add to this volatile mix the American-made, Muslim-mocking film Innocence of the Muslims, which sparked demonstrations in more than 20 countries and led protesters to burn American flags outside the embassy in Ankara.

Because of all that, Turkey’s tourism minister has predicted a two-million-person drop in the number of visitors to the country. So why, then, is a 42-year-old former kitchenware-supply-chain manager from California walking 1,305 miles across Turkey with no more than a backpack full of clothes and the equipment necessary to document his adventure?

MATT KRAUSE CONTEMPLATED FOR 10 seconds before leaving his desk job—a gig as a finance analyst with Eddie Bauer Headquarters—in 2003 to follow his Turkish girlfriend to Istanbul. He had met her on board a flight to Hong Kong. After they parted ways, Krause tracked her down—he knew her first name and the California town in which she lived—through some “Google stalking.” He found her, and they started dating.

Living in Istanbul (“Turkey: Round 1,” as he calls it) proved both worldview-altering and mind-numbingly frustrating for Krause. He put all of his money and time into a seemingly promising jewelry-business start-up. He and his girlfriend married. He found work as a niche English teacher because of his professional background. But none of his new life proved sustainable.

After the jewelery business flopped, Krause returned stateside in 2009 to another desk job—this time in Seattle as a supply-chain manager for Progressive International—with his wife planning to later join him. But their marriage, which already had been on the rocks in Turkey, crumbled to pieces with the distance.

While he came to Turkey for the love of a woman, Krause says he left with a deeper connection for the country and its rich culture and warm people. Back home, conversations about Turkey kept coming up, and Krause kept finding himself trying to convince the same non-believer. Turkey and the U.S. really aren’t all that different, he’d say, but words weren’t enough to make it stick. That’s when he realized it was time to move back—and go for a really long walk.

KRAUSE’S SEVEN-MONTH ADVENTURE began on September 1 in the resort town of Kuşadası in Aydın province along the Aegean Coast, and it wraps up in the rural province of Van bordering Iran. Walking 1,305 miles is an objectively difficult thing for any human being to do. Plus, Turkey, encircled by the Aegean, Black, and Mediterranean Seas, is home to some wild and unexplored landscapes—from pristine coniferous forests and lush river valleys to rugged mountain ranges and arid desert plateaus. He’ll wander through sparsely populated plains, trek around the largest lake in the country, and come up against debilitatingly freezing weather (between -22 and -40 degrees Fahrenheit).

via American Matt Krause Is Walking Across Turkey to Iran | Turkey | OutsideOnline.com.