Since the founding of the republic in 1923 as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has been secular and Kemalist in orientation. The country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, initiated a modernization of Turkey through social and legal reforms modelled on various European nation states.
The current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been at the helm of the country since 2003. Since around 2012, he has led the country in an increasingly authoritarian manner. Freedom of expression and freedom of the press in particular are considered to be severely restricted. The currency and debt crisis triggered by its economic policies as well as high inflation have continued since 2018, which makes Turkey quite attractive from a tourist perspective.
The culture of today's Turkey is a fusion of the ancient Turkish nomadic culture of Central Asia and Siberia, the Greco-Roman era, the culture in the Ottoman Empire with its Byzantine, Persian, Arabic, Caucasian, Armenian and Kurdish influences, as well as the strong European direction since the founding of the Republic Ataturk. The cultural centre of the country is the metropolis of Istanbul.
With the political changes, the content of Turkish literature also changed. Early representatives include Fakir Baykurt, Sabahattin Ali, Sait Faik Abasıyanık and Yaşar Kemal, who put ordinary people at the centre of their work. With the turn to describing living conditions, social and political criticism of the state is inevitable. The state reacts with censorship and political violence. Authors like Nâzım Hikmet, Yaşar Kemal and Aziz Nesin spend many years in Turkish prisons because of the persecution of their publications. Kemal therefore referred to the prison as a “school of Turkish literature”.
Turkish cuisine has also influenced Greek and the rest of the Balkan cuisine - including etymology. For example, tzaziki comes from the Turkish cacık, and Ćevapčići comes from kabapcik. Yogurt also comes from Turkish Yoğurt. Doner kebab is made from beef, veal or poultry. In Turkey, but also in other countries, the kebab is also served on a plate.
The Diyarbakir city walls were first constructed by the Roman Emperor Constantine. The city walls were enlarged during the Seljuk and Ottoman periods and 82 towers were added. These walls are the second longest walls in the world after the Great Wall of China and actually rank first in terms of wall height.
Older Near Eastern roots indicate the shape of the northern Mesopotamian weather god Hadad, Babylonian Adad, who was depicted standing on a bull with a double ax and a lightning bolt.
The Atatürk dam (Turkish Atatürk Barajı) on the Euphrates is the first finished, most important and largest of the 22 dams of the Southeast Anatolia project GAP (Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi) in Turkey.
Nemrut Mountain, much better known as the Mountain of Nemrut, is in the province of Adiyaman to the west of the Euphrates valley in the south east of Turkey and is one of the most important tourist sites in the country.
Sanlıurfa as a city is mostly known by the Europeans with her antique name, Edessa. Sanlıurfa is the central part of a city in Turkey with a population of about 390.000 and is located in the hot climate zone in southeast Anatolia. In geographical terms, she is part of Northern Mesopotamia.
We had designated Göbekli Tepe as the most important destination and the highlight of our Şanlıurfa journey. We had as such communicated with an archaeologist, Mr. Klaus Schmidt for this purpose.
On our tour through the southeast we also reached Gaziantep, whose mosaics in the Zeugma Mosaic Museum are known far beyond the country's borders.
Like the years before the 14th of July, the day of “Appearance of the great Gods” will be celebrated at Mount Nemrud having some meetings and festivals.
Hakkari (Kurdish: Colemêrg) is one of Turkey's 81 provinces and borders Iran to the east and Iraq to the south. To the north is Van and to the west is Şırnak.
We have already reported several times about the relationship of the people in Anatolia to high mountains, whose imagination of nature resulted in mountains becoming something divine, inexplicably large and powerful.
Van, located on the south eastern shores of Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey, was known as Tuşpa and was the capital city of the ancient Urartian State (1000 B.C.).
Van
Mount Nemrut near Tatvan in the province of Bitlis is very often and easily confused with the mountain of the same name in the province of Adiyaman, which houses the famous lion horoscope and the statues of the gods erected by King Antiochus.
The city of Erzincan, which lies at an altitude of approx. 1200 m on the north bank of the Karasu River, is the junction of the main roads from Sivas to Erzurum and from Erzincan to Elazığ.
Like lot of other Turkish towns, Erzincan has a long history. Even though Hittite settlements have not been found to date, Erzincan is named as belonging to the Hittite Empire.
Malatya already existed in Hittite times with a former places name when it was called Melid (today Arslantepe). After the fall of the great empire, it was ruled by the descendants of Kuzi-Teššup of Karkemiš, a grandson of Šuppiluliuma II, the last ruler of the Hittite empire.
The Hittites had already settled in the region around Malatya and founded a settlement called Melid, which in Hittite means something like honey and was probably a synonym for the economic importance of the settlement.
If you only deal a little with the history of the city of Van, you will also find a very long history that can be traced back to around 5,000 BC. The first traces of human settlement can be found on the Tilkitepehügel (fox hill) in the vicinity of the town Van.
Bingöl is a Turkish province in eastern Anatolia. The provincial capital is called Bingöl too, the old name is Çabakçur.
Iğdır is a province in eastern Turkey, which borders on the one hand with Armenia and on the other hand with the Azerbaijani exclave Naxçıvan and Iran.
The region around Elazığ, like the surrounding districts of Bingöl, Tunceli, Malatya and in the South of Diyarbakır, has a long history, traces of settlement are around 5000 years old. (Image source Klaus-Peter Simon - own work CC BY-SA 3.0)