Explore Turkey
With its unique mix of the exotic and the familiar, visiting Turkey can be a mesmerizing experience. More than the “bridge between East and West” of tourist-brochure cliché, the country combines influences from the Middle East and the Mediterranean, the Balkans and central Asia. Invaded and settled from every direction since the start of recorded history, its contradictions and fascinations persist. Mosques coexist with churches, Roman theatres and temples crumble not far from ancient Hittite cities and dervish ceremonies or gypsy festivals are as much a part of the social landscape as classical music concerts or avidly attended football matches.
Another facet of Turkey that makes it such a rewarding place to travel is the Turkish people, whose reputation for friendliness and hospitality is richly deserved; indeed you risk causing offence by declining invitations and find yourself making friends through the simplest of transactions. Of course at the big resorts and tourist spots this can simply be the pretext to selling you something, but in most of the country the warmth and generosity is genuine – all the more amazing when much recent Turkish history saw outsiders mainly bringing trouble in their wake.
Politically modern Turkey was a grand experiment, largely the creation of one man – Kemal Atatürk. Endowed with fervent patriotism and superhuman energy he salvaged the Turkish state from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire and defined it as a modern, secular nation – his statue gazes down from public squares across the land. While the country’s secular status remains intact for now, most of the inhabitants are at least nominally Muslim and Turkey’s heritage as home to the caliphate and numerous dervish orders, plus contemporary Islamist movements, still often deflects its moral compass south and east rather than northwest.
In spite of official efforts to enforce a uniform Turkish identity, the population is remarkably heterogeneous. When the Ottoman Empire imploded, large numbers of Muslim Slavs, Kurds, Greeks, Albanians, Crimean Tatars, Azeris, Daghestanlis, Abkhazians and Circassians – to name only the most numerous non-Turkic groups – streamed into Anatolia, the safest refuge in an age of anti-Ottoman nationalism. This process has continued in recent years from formerly Soviet or Eastern Bloc territories, so that the diversity endures, constituting one of the surprises of travel in Turkey. Another obvious aspect is the youthfulness of the country: more than half the population is under 30, something borne out in the legions of young people working in coastal resorts, and the shoals of school kids surging through city streets. This brings with it a palpable dynamism but also its fair share of problems, not least high youth unemployment and disparate educational opportunities.
In terms of places to visit in Turkey, a huge part of the country’s appeal lies in its archeological sites, a legacy of the bewildering succession of states – Hittite, Urartian, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Armeno-Georgian – that held sway here before the twelfth century. From grand Classical cities to hilltop fortresses and remote churches, some still produce exciting new finds today. There is also, of course, a vast number of graceful Islamic monuments dating from the eleventh century onwards, as well as intriguing city bazaars, still hanging on despite the new wave of chain stores and shopping malls. Modern architecture is less pleasing – an ugliness manifest at most coastal resorts, where it can be hard to find a beach that matches the tourist-board hype. Indeed it’s inland Turkey – Asiatic expanses of mountain, steppe, lake, even cloud-forest – that may leave a more vivid memory, especially when accented by some crumbling kervansaray, mosque or castle.
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Turkish identify: east or west?
Turkish identify: east or west?
Turkey is keen to be accepted on equal terms by the West. Long the only NATO member in the Middle East and uniquely among Muslim countries on good terms with Israel, it is a major recipient of US military aid. Since late 2005 Turkey has also been a candidate for EU membership, the potential culmination of a modernization process begun during the nineteenth century.
Yet staggering disparities in development and income levels persist, one of several issues worrying potential EU partners. İstanbul boasts clubs as expensive and exclusive as any in New York or London, while town-centre shops across western Anatolia are full of imported luxury goods, but in much of the chronically underdeveloped eastern interior, standards and modes of living have scarcely changed from a century ago. It’s still debatable whether Westernization has struck deep roots in Turkish culture, or rather extends no further than a mobile-phone- and credit-card-equipped urban elite.
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Storks
Storks
Between April and September, storks are a common sight across Turkey, which forms a stopover between the birds’ winter quarters in Africa and their summer habitat in the Balkans and central Europe. The clattering of the birds’ beaks is an equally common sound. Storks mate for life, and the breeding pairs – of which around 30,000 are believed to visit Turkey – often return to the same nest year after year to raise new chicks. They are considered lucky in both Christian and Islamic belief, and rarely harmed, being dubbed “pilgrim birds” in Turkish; some municipalities even go so far as to build special platforms to augment the stork’s favourite nesting perches which range from chimneys and minarets to utility poles.
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Camels
Camels
Most camels in Turkey are simply tourist attractions, used for pleasure rides or as photographic props in places like Pamukkale and Side. It wasn’t always so, however. Camel caravans once crisscrossed most of Anatolia, transporting gemstones, spices and woven finery. Before the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, they extended northwest as far as Bosnia, beyond which the beasts fell ill due to the damp central European climate. One quintessentially Turkish use of camels is for sport, more specifically camel wrestling. The bizarre sight of male camels in rut, butting and leaning on each other (their mouths are bound to prevent biting) draws vast crowds across the western Aegean region and there’s even a camel wrestling league. In Muslim folklore the perceived haughty demeanour of the animals is attributed to their knowledge of the hundredth, mystical epithet of Allah – humans only know the conventional ninety-nine.
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Mimar Sinan, master builder
Mimar Sinan, master builder
Many of the finest works of Ottoman civil and religious architecture throughout Turkey can be traced to Mimar Sinan (1489–1588), who served as court architect to three sultans – Süleyman the Magnificent, Selim II and Murat III. Probably born the son of Greek or Armenian Christian parents, he was conscripted into the janissaries in 1513. As a military engineer, he travelled the length and breadth of southeastern Europe and the Middle East, giving him the opportunity to become familiar with the best Islamic – and Christian – monumental architecture there. His bridges, siegeworks, harbours and even ships, earned him the admiration of his superiors. Sultan Süleyman appointed him court architect in April 1536. In 1548 he completed his first major religious commission, İstanbul’s Şehzade Camii, and shortly thereafter embarked on a rapid succession of ambitious projects in and around the capital, including the waterworks leading from the Belgrade Forest and the Süleymaniye Camii. Competing with the Süleymaniye as his masterpiece was the Selimiye Camii, constructed between 1569–75 in the former imperial capital of Edirne. Despite temptations to luxury he lived and died modestly, being buried in a simple tomb he made for himself in his garden in the grounds of the Süleymaniye Camii – the last of more than five hundred constructions by Sinan, large and small, throughout the empire.
