With a wife, daughter, dog and garden house in Sarıyer’s Zekeriyaköy, it would appear Dutch photographer Wilco van Herpen, 47, is living the idyllic married life, but his road to such a destination anything but standard.
Van Herpen’s story begins in Amsterdam. A free-spirited 12-year-old, he took charge of his life and refused to attend a decent school, enrolling in a secondary school of his own choice.
His first profession was cooking. While working at hotels in the 1990s, he used to look at the planes going over his window and murmur, “I should be on those planes.” His close friends, realizing how unhappy he was, encouraged him to travel. “‘You love to stroll around with a camera in hand. Go wherever you wish and take some pictures! What’s holding you back?’ they told me,” he said. After a while, he decided to make a total change.
‘Your name is Volkan now’
It was a Turkish coworker who inspired him to go to Turkey: “As I was working at a hotel in 1987, I had a Turkish dishwasher who was in love with his country and kept insisting that I should see Turkey some day. According to him, the best drivers were in Turkey and life was a bed of roses. I was convinced right away.”
Back then, he had a Turkish girlfriend living in the Netherlands. He tried to convince her to go to Istanbul together. “Can you imagine it? She was a Turk and I was a Dutchman, but I was trying to convince her to go to Turkey with me? But I was successful in the end,” she said.
He was dazzled by Istanbul but was surprised by Turkish customs and traditions from day one.
“Since we were not married, hotels didn’t accept us. I was very surprised. Just for this reason, we had to stay at a dirty hotel in Sirkeci.”
He met his girlfriend’s family. Her uncle would call him Volkan – volcano in English – instead of Wilco.
“I liked my name, it fits me well because my outbursts are famous,” he said.
‘I only ate dried beans for a month’
Upon his return to the Netherlands, van Herpen became a photographer, but then became bored, took his backpack and set off for a world trip. He stayed for a while in Cape Town for a long time and returned to the Netherlands in 1993, continuing his life as an independent photographer.
“But I was still thinking about Turkey. I was with Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. I took their pictures and became a member of Turkish associations,” he said.
Van Herpen then started visiting Turkey more often. “There is nothing like getting lost in the crowds of this country. Turkish people constantly ‘oppose’ some things. I like this constant state of objection,” he said.
In that period, he fell in love with another Turkish woman, Nevin. “I settled in Turkey in 1999 and started living with Nevin. When I came here I had not a single penny in my pocket. I had no job either. I only wanted to take photographs.”
When the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, leader Abdullah Öcalan was caught, he longed to be a part of such a big event.
“So, I got on a bus and went to the town of Mudanya. And I somehow met a few journalists there, started living in a house rented by daily Radikal. I was about to die of hunger. I was not having even a bite but going to home-cooking restaurants in the evenings; a plate of dried-beans dish, two slices of bread and hot pickles. That’s what I ate for a month,” he said.
‘I looked for Gonca at every movie’
Van Herpen broke up with Nevin in 2002 but it was not long before he fell in love again.
“I went to the Istanbul Film Festival with a friend that year. Then I saw Gonca at a film. She was a translator for the director. As the director finished talking, I went up to Gonca, instead of the director, and applauded her. She gave me a look as if ‘What is this guy doing?’” he said.
“I wanted to have a conversation with her, but she didn’t stay around. I found her phone number from somewhere, but didn’t have the courage to call her. We had to talk face-to-face. I saw all films in 2003, throughout the year and during the festival. She was not anywhere. And I finally ran into her at Beyoğlu Cinema,” he said.
Gonca said she remembered the moment very well. “I was thinking that a man with colored eyes can never look meaningful. But this man standing at the top of the stairs of the cinema was different. His eyes were glimmering. ‘Oh my God! This man is in love with me,’ I said to myself. But I had to go back to my job,” she said. “After work, I started looking for him in the hall. I realized that he was watching me; I was caught red-handed and was so embarrassed. A few months later, we started living together in Cihangir.”
The couple married in 2007 and after their daughter Şira was born, they moved to Zekeriyaköy. “Everyone around us was very surprised. But my family supported us,” said Gonca.
Tootling around the country
Van Herpen said his life changed when he started “Wilco’s Caravan” in 2006 on İZ TV, a program which sent the photographer traveling around the country.
At the start when they decided on the name of the program, they had difficulty finding a caravan, he said. At last a renowned German caravan brand, Hymer, agreed to lend them one for one year.
“Our first stop was İğneada. It was difficult for me for the first few programs, but the Anatolian people embraced me. I had very interesting experiences. An 80-year-old granny in a village, in the province of Kars, made her pelicans wear booties and helped them to dance. After we filmed this, she said ‘Let’s have a hug now.’ I got used to people’s affection but it was something different,” he said.
The show visited 50 provinces in total, said van Herpen, but he confessed that he could never answer the question, “Which one do you prefer living in?”
“All are beautiful in a different way. I think the reason this program was popular is because I was talking with people independent from the text in my hand and was acting spontaneously. Somehow mothers liked me more and men were jealous of me. They said, ‘This total stranger from another country comes here, strolling around places we don’t know of.’ Despite its popularity, the program was shelved a few months ago, but we see reruns all the time,” he said.
