Collegiate Scholars expect to visit the Acropolis of Athens in Greece after the trip to Turkey was changed.
Wikimedia Commons | Courtesy
Just 36 days before the Collegiate Scholars program planned to leave for Turkey, it changed the destination of its annual trip for rising seniors to Greece, after the U.S. Mission in Turkey on April 9 released an emergency message concerning the first two places on the itinerary.
“There are credible threats to tourist areas, in particular to public squares and docks in Istanbul and Antalya,” the message read.
Shortly thereafter, American media picked up the story, and this added to the cause for concern, Collegiate Scholars Director Richard Gamble said. April 9 was also the first day Americans deployed B-52 bombers to Qatar, its first time doing so in the Middle East in 25 years.
“The fact that the security message identified especially the waterfront, we spend a lot of time on the waterfront in Istanbul. Istanbul is one the most beautifully situated cities in the world, and Antalya is an amazing Mediterranean port,” Gamble said. “The fact that the warning had become so dire and so specific to our itinerary, it became just too difficult.”
The program used to go to Rome, and although Tuku Tours, the travel company that Collegiate Scholars used to book the Turkey trip, also does tours in Italy, the directors chose Greece because it was less expensive. Rescheduling the trip, however, caused the trip to shorten from 22 days to 13, due to changing from the Turkish lira to the European Euro.
Plane tickets were also more expensive, but students did not pay more than the $1,500 they already had shelled out.
“The college absorbed 100 percent of the extra costs,” Gamble said. “That was amazing. The college took decisive action and did everything necessary to make this work.”
This trip marks the first time the Collegiate Scholar program, formerly known as the Honors Program, will not visit Turkey in the past 13 years.
It notified juniors in the program of the change April 11, and the change in destination allowed for three students who recently had pulled out of the trip over safety concerns to rejoin. That put the number of participants at 31, the largest the program has ever had.
Associate Professor of Classical Studies Eric Hutchinson, who will take over the Collegiate Scholars in the fall, said he and Gamble were monitoring the situation in Turkey for the past year due to several terrorist bombings.
“At the point the U.S. Mission released its alert, it didn’t seem prudent to take a group of students there,” Hutchinson said.
The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for Turkey as early as Sept. 3, 2015, one day after it approved the departure of government family members living in the Adana, Turkey, U.S. Consulate, which is in the southeastern part of the country.
The program changed the itinerary first in October 2015 to avoid Ankara, Turkey’s capital, after a terrorist bombing killed more than 100 people. Gamble said he contemplated changing the trip then, but after speaking with students, a majority of the students still wanted to go to Turkey. Collegiate Scholars have not visited southeast Turkey since 2014.
Since September, the State Department has issued four other travel warnings to Turkey, with special concerns concerning travel in the southeastern region. It also removed government personnel’s families from Izmir, also a location on the Collegiate Scholars’ trip itinerary and where Tuku Tours’ office is, and limited official travel to Turkey to “mission-critical” cases only on March 29.
“I know this looks so drastic,” Gamble said. “Looking at it now, the U.S. was preparing for the B-52 bombings by getting the families of U.S. military and diplomats out of sensitive regions. We were certainly aware of that and watching that. At no point did the U.S. say not to go there.”
The State Department did not issue any security messages at the time of the program’s 2015 Turkey trip.
Greece itself does not have a travel alert, but the State Department did issue one for the entirety of Europe on March 22, the day of the attacks in Brussels, Belgium.
“International travel always carries risks,” Gamble said. “Students and families know this trip is voluntary. We work hard to keep the trip safe and instructive. Looking at everything that is happening, your options become simply to travel nowhere.”
Hutchinson said the program picked Greece because it aligns well with the program’s purpose. Greece combines classical, New Testament, Byzantine, and modern elements.
“It accomplishes a lot of the things the trip is supposed to accomplish,” Hutchinson said. “For Hillsdale students, since the Greeks do loom so large in a lot of what we do, it’s a really great alternative to what we were going to do.”
Although the students will miss out on Troy and the Hagia Sophia for now, places on the itinerary include Athens, ancient Mycenae, Corinth, and Delphi.
“I was disappointed because I’ve had friends go there the past couple of years who talk so highly of it,” former Collegiate Scholars Co-President junior Luke Zahari said. “At the same time, Greece is pretty cool, too. As a person studying classics, it’s very exciting to go see these things firsthand that I’ve seen in textbooks.”
As a classics professor, who only has visited Athens and some of the Greek islands, Hutchinson said “all of it” excites him.
Gamble said he has never been to Greece and looks forward to visiting, but he has plans to head straight from Athens to Turkey for an Aegean cruise. He’ll return to Turkey in October for a conference, as well.
“That’s how confident I am in Turkey still,” Gamble said.
Gamble notified Tuku Tours the evening of April 10, it returned an itinerary the next morning. The program had the details reinvented by April 14.
“I would very much like to see us continue working with Tuku Tours, who has been so great to us,” Gamble said.
Hutchinson said it is unclear as to whether or not the change to Greece is permanent.
“At this point, it’s impossible to say,” Hutchinson said. “It’s hard to know what the world is going to be like a year from today. There are so many things in flux in that region.”
Nonetheless, Gamble is speaking with a travel agency to do a history and culture of the Ottoman Empire tour with Hillsdale students in the future.
“I am determined to keep going back to Turkey,” Gamble said. “Not sure how soon, but we will go.”