Troy in Southeastern, Not Southwestern Turkey?

[The Wizard]

Just chanced onto this on ZDF, the German public TV station.

http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/#/bei...er-Fall-Troia/

Not sure if everyone can reach this, thanks to the existence of IP blocking software, and it's in German (sorry about that), but it has some interesting claims and, for those who can't understand German, some great CGI and scenery.

Basically this German comparative linguist Raoul Schott claims that Troy was not where Schliemann and present academic consensus traditionally place it, i.e. in northwestern Turkey on the Dardanelles, but rather in southeastern Turkey, in Cilicia, north of Aleppo and northeast of Adana. He bases himself on passages in the Iliad and excavations carried out at a site called Karatepe in Cilicia, which he says was the ancient Troy. Schott claims that this is the case because the area around Karatepe corresponds, according to him, closely to the story, and because unearthed stone reliefs from the site show warriors in outfits that look a lot like those of hoplites.

He therefore holds that the Iliad was a piece of historical fiction referring not to the past but to the present, and that Homer was a Greek scribe in Assyrian service. Supposedly there was an uprising against Assyrians in the area by the locals (I didn't quite get it in German but I assume it'd by the Neo-Hittites) and there was a 9 year siege of Karatepe as a result. Homer experienced and based himself on this.

Pretty wild claims, obviously, but interesting nevertheless. The documentary is a bit bombastic, especially towards the end ("this is the first time the story of brave heroes is given a historical background") and doesn't cross-examine Schott's claims with excavations of Troy VII and linguistic evidence found in Hittite records apparently referring to an Ilion in that area. I've also seen people claim Troy was in Croatia (???) before, so...

Still though, it's an interesting argument. Especially the way the area corresponds to the story and the stone reliefs...