The Beauty Of Turkey

Turkey is on the Mediterranean, in the Anatolian region of West Asia, with a small section in Southeastern Europe separated by the Turkish Straits (Bosphorus, Sea of Marmara, and Dardanelles). With the Black Sea to the north and the Aegean Sea in the west and Mediterranean Sea to the southwest, Turkey is surrounded by Bulgaria and Greece to the west, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia to the northeast, Syria, Iraq and Iran to the southeast.

There is evidence that the bed of the Black Sea was once an inhabited plain, before it was flooded in prehistoric times by rising sea levels. The biblical flood may be an account of this event. Mount Ararat (Ağrı

Dağı), at 5,165 m, is the country’s highest point while the legendary landing place of Noah’s Ark, lies in the mountains on the far eastern edge of the country.

Turkey was founded in 1923 from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. Soon thereafter the country instituted secular laws to replace traditional religious fiats. In 1945 Turkey joined the UN, and in 1952 it became a member of NATO.

Turkey offers a wealth of destination varieties to travellers: from dome-and-minaret filled skyline of Istanbul to Roman ruins along the western and southern coasts, from heavily indendated coastline against a mountainous backdrop of Lycia and wide and sunny beaches of Antalya Province to cold and snowy mountains of the East, from crazy “foam parties” of Bodrum to Middle Eastern-flavoured cities of Southeastern Anatolia, from verdant misty mountains of Eastern Black Sea to wide steppe landscapes of Central Anatolia, there is something for everyone’s taste—whether they be travelling on an extreme budget by hitchhiking or by a multi-million yacht.

While it may sound as a tourism brochure cliché, Turkey is really a curious mix of the west and the east—you may swear you were in a Balkan country or in Greece when in northwestern and western parts of the country (except that Byzantine-influenced churches are substituted with Byzantine-influenced mosques), which are indeed partly inhabited by people from Balkan countries immigrated during the turmoil before, during, and after WWI, while southeastern reaches of the country has little if any cultural differences from the southern and eastern neighbors. Caucasus influences add to the mix in the northeast part of the country. It can be simply put that Turkey is the most oriental one of western nations, or, depending on the point of view, the most occidental one of eastern nations.

Perhaps one thing common to all of the country is Islam, the faith of the bulk of the population. However, interpretation of it varies vastly across the country: many people in northwestern and western coasts are fairly liberal about the religion (being nominal Muslims sometimes to the point of being irreligious), while folk of central steppes are far more conservative (don’t expect to find a Saudi Arabia or an Afghanistan even there, though). The rest of the country falls somewhere inbetween, with the coastal regions being relatively liberal while inland regions being relatively conservative as a rule of thumb. The largest religious minority in the country is Alevites, who constitue up to 20% of the population and who subscribe to a form of Islam closer to Shiite sect and combines Shamanistic rituals of ancient Turks. Other religious minorities—the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Jews, Syriac Orthodox, and Catholics, the latter of whom mainly settled in Turkey within the last 500 years from Western European countries—once numerous across the country, are now mostly confined to the large cities of Istanbul and Izmir, or parts of Southeastern Anatolia in the case of the Syriac Orthodox.

via:  travelvista