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 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.
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