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West Asian Toilets
First, a note on the name of the region — terms like
"Middle East" and "Far East" only make sense from the
vantage point of Britain.
What is someone in India to make of a "Middle East" that
is thousands of miles to their west?
What I have here are toilets from
Turkey
and
Syria
(and I'll just ignore the fact that half of İstanbul is
on the European side of the Bosphorus).
Also see
the North African Toilet page
for examples from the Sinai peninsula of Egypt.
I've spent a fair amount of time in west Asia —
eight trips to Turkey,
a couple of trips to Syria,
Cairo-to-İstanbul overland, etc.
You realize that you have become a "West Asian Old Hand" when you
find yourself discussing the relative merits of squatters over raised
porcelain commodes.
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Here we see a long-haul Syrian bus making a toilet stop
along the road from
Damascus to Aleppo, Syria.
This is probably close enough for photography...
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Köse Pension,
Göreme,
Cappadocia, central Turkey.
A classic floor-mounted squatter with
integrated plumbing.
The shower head mounts on the wall of the room,
and the toilet drains the entire room.
The hose/sprayer also reaches the toilet itself for hygenic purposes.
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Really focussing on the shower in this case,
in my room
in the Otel Derviş in
Konya, in Turkey.
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The fabulous Doy-Doy Restaurant, Sultanahmet district,
İstanbul, Turkey.
Or, for those
in the know,
çok iyi kebap ve lahmacun salonu.
Sifa Hamam Sokak #13, +90-212-517-15-88.
Note the classic spigot on the wall and
the red plastic mini-pitcher.
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For some reason the pitcher is almost always red....
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The Mavi House guesthouse, Sultanahmet district,
İstanbul, Turkey.
Another great spigot-and-pitcher example.
And this one's red, too...
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The Mavi House is just across the street from
the back side of the Four Seasons hotel.
That extremely expensive luxury hotel was originally
the prison featured in the film "Midnight Express"
(which, it must be pointed out, was a blatant propaganda film
funded by the Greek government,
with a screenplay by that master of conspiracies, Oliver Stone).
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The toilet at a gas station along the highway in
central Turkey.
This image is unfortunately not documented in detail,
but it's from somewhere along the highway north-east
of Konya.
It's not as if there's all that much
difference in Turkish gas station toilets!
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The Orange Guesthouse,
treehouses near the ruins at
Olimpos, along the south-western
coast of Turkey.
You sleep in elevated platforms in the orange orchards,
but at least the toilets are on solid ground.
Or, as the Romans put it when they ruled the area,
commodia firma beneficius est.
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A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used.
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If you're not bored yet, you might be interested
in (or at least tolerate):
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