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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Batman, known under the name Elih in the Middle Ages and up to the 1950s, is the capital of the Turkish province of Batman in southeastern Turkey.
Every country, including Turkey, needs energy in the form of electricity in immense amounts.
In the long history of the Siirt region, there were a multitude of peoples who settled the country or only appeared as occupiers just to be replaced by history.
Kilis is a city in South-Central Turkey on the border with Syria and capital of Kilis Province. It is generally associated with the city of Kilisi, noted in Assyrian texts.
The Öncüpınar Syrian border crossing is 5 km (3 mi) to the south and the large city of Gaziantep is 60 km (37 mi) to the north.
Bingöl is a Turkish province in eastern Anatolia. The provincial capital is called Bingöl too, the old name is Çabakçur.
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.
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.
Erzurum is the biggest city in Eastern Anatolia and is the capital of the province of the same name. With about 800.000 inhabitants, it is also one of the ten biggest cities in Turkey.
Bitlis is a city and at the same time the name of a province in the South-east of Turkey, bordering the province of Ağrı in the North, Muş in the West, Siirt in the South and Lake Van and the province of Van in the East.
We, that are 20 members of the HÜR-TÜRK-Verein Alanya (Free Turkish-German Friendship Association) and another 4 guests, had the common wish to travel to Van Lake.
During the 10th century A.D. Kars was the capital of a kingdom ruled by the Bagratides, a people originally from Armenia. During the 11th century Kars was destroyed by the Seldjuks, during the 13th century by the Mongolians, and later was conquered and destroyed by Tamerlan.
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)