It is a strange sort of frontier. A passing between two worlds, but whether it is from east to west, or from west to east, is a little hard to tell. This was once the most hermetically sealed of borders. For long years, local people who shared a common language and ethnicity were unable to visit their cousins who lived on the other side of the divide. What should have been a short dolmuş (minibus) ride through the verdant hill country that spans this border was strictly forbidden. We are in that part of the Black Sea region where the Ottoman Empire once nudged up against the Russian Empire, and where later Mustafa Kemal’s new Turkish Republic bordered on the Soviet Union. This is where modern Turkey shares a common frontier with the region of Georgia known as Adjara.
So much has happened along this fragment of the Black Sea littoral over the last hundred years. For significant periods during the Cold War years, there was no easy way to cross the border between north-east Turkey and Adjara. Difficulties in arranging visas and insurmountable travel costs meant that there was scant contact between communities on either side of the frontier.
The Adjara region of Georgia, along with two other areas — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — enjoyed until the break-up of the Soviet Union a special status as autonomous regions within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was in and around the various so-called autonomous regions of former Soviet republics that some of the most challenging issues have arisen in the post-Soviet era. The authorities in Tbilisi were keen that newly independent Georgia should exert its authority over all regions of the country. Just as the Kyiv government was never entirely happy with the special status that Crimea enjoyed as an autonomous region; the perceived erosion of that autonomy was a key issue underpinning the Russian pretext for annexing Crimea in 2014.
It was a differently divided world in Soviet times. Turkey, then as now, was Muslim and in most Western eyes seen as part of the East despite its membership of NATO. Neighbouring Georgia was then a far-flung part of the USSR, part of the sultry and sometimes volatile deep south which seemed another world from Moscow. The only common denominator between Turkey and Georgia was the Black Sea. For observers from the west, so little was known of this remote corner of the Georgian coast that many commentators referred back to the pre-Soviet era for accounts and images of travels through Adjara — including the remarkable early photography of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.
Batumi (marked in orange) lies in the Adjara district of Georgia that was once one of three autonomous oblasts within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.
His shots of Adjara clerics and tea plantations as well as of the old town of Batumi beautifully captured the texture and detail of local life on the eve of the Russian revolution.
I had seen Adjara from afar myself. Many years earlier, I had travelled to Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast, visiting the industrial port of Hopa and from there had seen the lights of Batumi twinkling across the waters at night. It seemed so far away, and I had no idea that I would ever be able to visit a place that seemed so completely beyond reach. When I did finally make the journey it would be along this same coastal route.
Journey to Adjara
A dolmuş from Hopa takes me to the border town of Sarpi. It is a cool, grey April day, the Black Sea shrouded in mist as we make our way east. Low cloud covers the wooded hills to our right, which in places have been cleared to make way for neatly terraced plantations of tea, a plant that thrives in the mild, wet climate of this corner of the Black Sea region.
The queue for the Turkish exit booth at Sarpi is less a queue, more a noisy throng of men crowding around the passport window. Across the frontier at the Georgian checkpoint, there is a similar melee taking place but it is not long before a Georgian entry stamp is unceremoniously thumped into my passport. The stamp is in the shape of the country, an outline that includes the disputed and Russian-occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Wars have started for less, but even Adjara, the Georgian region I am visiting, once had its own aspirations of separatism during the chaotic early days after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Between 1991 and 1993, when the rest of the newly independent republic was undergoing a bloody civil war, the Adjara region around Batumi, then under the authoritarian rule of Aslan Abashidze, managed to avoid most of the conflict. Adjara has always stood apart from the rest of the country. With a considerable Muslim population, the region now has closer ties to Turkey than any other part of Georgia. It remains an autonomous republic within the country today, although its autonomy has been considerably diluted since the Rose Revolution of 2003, after which the former leader Abashidze was forced into exile in Russia.
A marshrutka, the Georgian equivalent of a dolmuş, transports me the short distance between the border and the city. Entering Batumi, it appears that some of the streets are in a terrible condition, a consequence of them being dug up for the installation of pipes and cables. The Mercedes drivers who race along the rutted thoroughfares seem unconcerned though. The expensive cars are one aspect of an immediately noticeable disparity between wealth and poverty, which seems more emphasised here than in Turkey. This same contrast extends to the city itself: a glossy veneer masking something that is all together more threadbare.
Small grocery shop in the backstreets of Batumi (photo © Laurence Mitchell).
Classical connections
Adjara has long been identified as the location of the mythical Golden Fleece, which the hero Jason obtained through the assistance of the Colchean princess Medea. The historical fleece is most probably one that had been once used for filtering gold from streams. It is said that as the precious particles accumulated they gave a glitter to the wool. There is a gilded statue to this effect on a preposterously tall pillar in Batumi’s Europe Square: a representation of Medea holding in her right hand a glistening fleece with a ram’s head attached. The statue, which was unveiled by President Saakashvili in 2007, is the work of sculptor David Khmaladze. Controversial even then, the statue is reported to have cost in the region of half a million dollars and was symbolic of the hopes that the determinedly pro-West Saakashvili had for Georgia in general and Batumi in particular.
The installation of the extraordinary Medea statue heralded a building and redevelopment phase that began in earnest around the same time. The notion was to promote the city as a Black Sea luxury resort and gambling centre — an uneasy blend of Las Vegas and Dubai with classical pretensions. The epicentre of this development was along Rustaveli Avenue next to a large seaside park that has fountains that light up at night and ‘dance’ to popular classical music.
In line with the redevelopment, many of Adjara’s elegant fin de siècle buildings were lovingly restored and luxurious new hotels constructed. One of the first of several large five-star hotels to open was the Sheraton. A gleaming white monolith with a clock tower that rises loftily above the surrounding palm trees, its design is based upon the legendary ancient lighthouse at Alexandria. In keeping with the Las Vegas image, the hotel is lit up garishly at night — you can only imagine the electricity bill. Not to be outdone by this, former President Saakashvili also had plans to build a 47-storey Trump Tower in the city — a building that would outdo the Sheraton in terms of both height and dubious taste — although this project was eventually abandoned under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 2017.
A few blocks inland from the seaside park and the towering grand hotels it is a different story. Away from Batumi Boulevard and Europe Square, everyday Adjaran life goes on unperturbed by the newly minted glamour. This is more the Georgia I am familiar with: rutted streets and attractive but poorly maintained housing, battered old cars and family-run corner shops. There are no dancing fountains here, or even many working street lights. There is gambling though, although of a less glamorous kind than the preferred Batumi brand: the ‘slot club’ fruit machine emporia that take the money of those who can least afford it — less Golden Fleece, more fleecing the poor.
A couple of large trawlers are docked at the quay and beside them, dangling lines in the oily water, stand dozens of men fishing. It is a sight that is universal, an activity done by men the world over in pursuit of companionship and an excuse to kill time.
A café that seems to have no customers other than a few men who smoke but do not eat looks unpromising but, on request, a khachapuri adjaruli is cooked up for me. A delicious boat-shaped Adjaran speciality of freshly baked bread filled with eggs, cheese and butter, it provides sufficient calories for the rest of the day and enough cholesterol for the next fortnight.
Later, a wander down to the docks brings another side of the city into focus; a less glamorous one certainly, but one that is steeped in history and tradition. Batumi has been a seafaring city since the days of the Greek colony of Colchis. Romans, Ottomans, Russians and even for a short time, the British (1918–20), have all taken turns controlling the trade here. A couple of large trawlers are docked at the quay and beside them, dangling lines in the oily water, stand dozens of men fishing. It is a sight that is universal, an activity done by men the world over in pursuit of companionship and an excuse to kill time. The fish — if indeed there are any — are of secondary importance to the relaxed conviviality of it all.
Close to the port, on Kutaisi Street, I find a neighbourhood central to the city’s Turkish community. Here amidst Turkish language signs are Turkish-style restaurants, halal butchers, bakeries and cafés serving black tea in tulip-shaped glasses. There is even a small ‘Türk Internet’ shop, and of course a mosque — Batumi is more heterodox in its faith than most places in steadfastly Orthodox Georgia.
Beyond the city
Batumi’s Botanical Gardens (Mtsvane Kontskhi) lie a few kilometres north of the city. Founded by a Russian botanist in 1912, they cover a little more than a square kilometre of steep wooded hillside. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky made a photographic record of the gardens just as they were being laid out.
I take another marshrutka to pay a visit to the gardens. A tiled wall covered with a colourful Soviet-era mural stands at the base of the winding path that leads up through the gardens. A combination of climate and post-ideological neglect has allowed opportunist plants to colonise the moss that grows between the tiles. At the centre is the clumsily redacted face of a Soviet hero, almost certainly that of Lenin. While most Georgians are inordinately proud of their age-old traditions and long history, they tend to be less keen on commemorating what befell them during their more recent past. The path leads uphill through lush foliage and tall trees, eventually reaching a viewpoint from where the rocky shoreline of the Black Sea can be seen curving gently southwards towards Batumi and the Turkish border beyond.
I decide to return to Batumi by a different route and follow a road down towards a village at the foot of the hill. Just outside the village, where cows are contentedly grazing and wandering nonchalantly across the road, I can see and hear in the distance a convoy of honking Mercedes all sporting white ribbons tied across their bonnets — a telltale sign that this is a wedding party. I soon realise that the convoy has been stopped in its tracks by a group of teenage boys who are blocking the road. Some sort of bargaining is taking place and I can make out one of the drivers handing over a few banknotes to the boys. The exchange appears to be fairly good-natured and as far as I can tell everyone in the wedding party seems to be accepting this as perfectly normal behaviour. Could it be that good-humoured bribery is part and parcel of any traditional Adjaran wedding?
When I eventually leave Batumi, heading north to Zugdidi from where I will travel on to Svaneti the following day, it strikes me that, while Georgia’s second city might have ambitions about transforming itself to a luxury destination, it will never be a Dubai or even a Las Vegas. To me, this does not seem to be such a bad thing. Beneath the glossy veneer of the modern city is an ancient place with a village at its heart: a place of legend that is trying hard to reinvent itself for the modern age. Notions of legendary riches may well be the key that connects ancient and modern but the truth of it is: the city of the Golden Fleece retains a cultural wealth that surpasses any number of glitzy casinos and gilded statues.
