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TURKEY
Istanbul
Overview:
Turkey is a country with a multiple
identity, poised uneasily between East and West.
The only NATO member in the Middle East region,
the country has recently been accepted as a
candidate for membership of the EU. Yet although
in many respects Western, Turkey retains its
frustrating differences, and its contradictions:
mosques coexist with churches, and remnants of
the Roman Empire crumble alongside ancient
Hittite and Neolithic sites. Politically, modern
Turkey was a bold experiment, founded on the
remaining Anatolian kernel of the Ottoman Empire
and almost entirely the creation of a single
man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk . An
explicitly secular republic, though one in which
almost all of the inhabitants are at least
nominally Muslim, it's a vast country and
incorporates large disparities in levels of
development. But it's an immensely rewarding
place to travel, not least because of the
people, whose reputation for friendliness and
hospitality is richly deserved.
Western Turkey is the most visited and
economically developed part of the country.
Istanbul , straddling the Bosphorus straits
and the Marmara coast, is a heady mix of the
Oriental and state-of-the-art modern. It's the
country's cultural and commercial centre and
also visibly the old imperial capital, and would
take months of exploration to truly do it
justice. Flanking Istanbul on opposite sides of
the Sea of Marmara are the two earlier
Ottoman capitals, Bursa and Edirne
, and the former Byzantine capital of Iznik
, with, just beyond, the World War I
battlefields of the Dardanelles .
Moving south, on the Aegean Coast small
country towns like Ayvalik are swathed in
olive groves, while the area is littered with
ancient sites like Assos, Bergama and
Ephesus , which have been a magnet for
travelers since the eighteenth century. Beyond
the functional but not unattractive city of
Izmir , the Aegean coast is Turkey at its
most developed, with large numbers of visitors
drawn to resorts like Çesme , Bodrum
and Marmaris , beyond which the
Mediterranean coast begins. There are remnants
of the Lycians at Xanthos , and more
resorts in Kas and Fethiye , along
the aptly named "Turquoise Coast".
On the Mediterranean coast, Antalya is
one of Turkey's fastest-growing cities, a
sprawling place that is the best starting-point
on the stretch towards the Syrian border,
featuring extensive sands and archeological
sites - most notably at Perge and
Aspendos - until castle-topped Alanya
, where the tourist numbers begin to diminish.
It's worth heading inland from here for the
spectacular attractions of Cappadocia ,
with its famous rock churches, subterranean
cities and landscape studded with "fairy
chimneys", as well as the Selçuk architecture
and dervish associations of Konya .
Further north, Ankara , Turkey's capital,
is a planned city whose contrived Western feel
gives some indication of the priorities of the
modern Turkish Republic. |
