Van is a city and province in the far east of Turkey, on the shores of Lake Van, and has been a large settlement since the first millennium B.C., initially as the capital of the kingdom of Urartu in the ninth century B.C. and later as the center of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan during the Middle Ages. Today Van has a Kurdish majority and a sizeable Turkish minority.

A colleague tells me that the vegetable for sale is called eşkın, known as the banana of the yayla (highland pasture area).

Van wildlife, posted earlier: