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 travellers 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.
