Turkey for the Independent Traveler

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History

Modern-day Turkey was the home of a whole series of civilizations before the Turks arrived from Central Asia around 1100 AD. Çatal Hüyük, near Konya, is the oldest urban settlement ever discovered. Anatolia has been home to the Hittites, the Hurrians, the Urartians, the Lycians, the Cimmerians, and more. Things that were in Turkey include:

• The capital and homeland of the Hittite Empire — roughly 2000-1250 BCE.

• Troy and thus the Trojan War — maybe approximately 1600 BCE.

• Two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, and the Tomb of Mausalus in Halicarnassus (now Bodrum). Plus a third, the Colossus of Rhodes just across from Marmaris.

• The setting of much of the Anabasis, a.k.a. The Persian Expedition, by Xenophon.

• King Midas and King Croesus lived here.

• The Gordian Knot.

• The beginnings of Alexander the Great's Asian campaigns.

• The place where Julius Caesar said, "Veni, vidi, vici", and Anthony & Cleopatra's hideaway.

That gets us about to the year 1 AD. Then there was:

• Ephesus and Antioch, the number two and three cities of the Roman Empire.
• Over half of the New Testament was either written to communities in Turkey, or was written while the authors were there.
• The home of the Byzantine Empire — Rome fell, or maybe just faded away. Under great leaders like Constantine and Justinian the Eastern Empire was what mattered.

After many centuries of an empire ruled from Constantinople, the Turks showed up. Suleiman the Magnificent lived up to his title, and the Ottoman Empire became one of the largest empires the world has ever seen, including much of eastern Europe, parts of Ukraine and Russia, the Caucasus, all of the really habitable parts of Arabia, east through Baghdad into Persia, all of Egypt and beyond up the Nile, and all of the North African coast. The mystic poet Mevlana Rumi founded the Whirling Dervishes, a Sufi sect. Lots and lots of history...

And also....

There's plenty of fun, and sometimes just downright strange, things to do in Turkey:

• Cappadocia — Bizarre natural formations carved into homes and churches over the past few millennia, with entire underground cities. You can explore during the day and stay in a nice guesthouse with cave rooms at night.
• Olympos — Live in a treehouse, go see the burning mountain.
• Nemrut Dağı — Strange collections of stone heads on a remote mountaintop.
• Mountain trekking — Lots of opportunities for this!

Maps and Guidebooks

Above is a U.S. government map of Turkey with some locations added. At right is a thumbnail of a larger U.S. government map showing physical features — click on it for the full-sized version.

You can also find maps of Turkey at supertravelnet.com.

Holiday Rentals in Turkey has holiday rental properties all around Turkey.

Pick your destinations for details and pictures:

Destinations in Turkey

İstanbul — Haghia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Sultanahmet, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Golden Horn, Bosphorus, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire	Cappadocia — Rock-carved churches, cave homes, 1000 year old frescos, underground cities, Göreme	Ephesus — Well-preserved Greek city, major city of the Roman Empire, home of early Christianity
Gallipoli — World War I battlefield where the ANZAC forces faced the Turks in 1915	Nemrut Dağı — Mysterious statues on a mountain peak in eastern Turkey	Olimpos — Treehouses, the Chimera or burning mountain, ruins, beaches
Silk Road Hans — Caravanserais in central Turkey from 1000-1500 AD	Hattusha or Hatuşaş — Hittite Empire capital at Boğazkale	Konya — Home of the Sufi mystic poet Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes, distinctive Seljuk architecture
Aphrodisias — Greek religious center in a mountain valley and home of some of the best Greek sculptors	Temple of Artemis — One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, near Ephesus	Halicarnassus — The Tomb of King Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, at Bodrum, Köycegiz Lake, Kaunos, and Dalyan
Mountain Trek — Byzantine monastery ruins from 800-1100 AD in the Beşparmak Mountains, the Royal Road from Constantinople to Babylon	Pamukkale — Travertine formations, ruins at Laodicea and Hierapolis near Denizli	Selçuk — Basilica of Saint John, Isa Bey mosque, weekly market, and the storks
Maryemana — The House of the Virgin Mary on a mountain above Ephesus	The last Ottoman Sultan — Ertuğrul Osman V lived on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan: searching for his home	Turkish Food — Kebabs, simit, spices, coffee, tea pide, cacık, mercimek çorbası, plav, gözleme, and more
Turkish Bus Travel — Finding your way through the otogar or bus station, luxury long-haul buses, short rides on the dolmuş	Turkish Train Travel — Cross Turkey overnight in style in a first-class sleeper compartment	Konya'da dervişleri görüyorum. Konya'da dervişleri görürüm. Konya'da dervişleri göreceğim. Konya'da dervişleri görmüşüm. Konya'da dervişleri gördüm. Konya'da dervişleri görmeliyim. Konya'da dervişleri görsem, ... Konya'da dervişleri göreyim. Ç/ç, Ğ/ğ I/ı, İ/i, Ö/ö, Ü/ü, Ş/ş Turkish Grammar — An introduction and study guide: special characters, vowel harmony, and those complicated Turkish verbs
	All the way back to the introduction	How is the plumbing?

Back to the main Travel page

Miscellanea

• Learn to speak Turkish! No guarantees that my page will help you all that much, but maybe it will help.
• Ferry schedules — — I have seen that there are a couple of potentially useful international ferry connections, but the below is all I know about:
  • Antalya to Alexandria — US$ 110, no well-defined schedule.
  • Izmir to Venice — US$ 150 for deck passage, more for a bunk, leaves Saturdays at 2100, takes three days to arrive.
• Good novels set in Turkey:
  • "A Coffin for Demetrios", Eric Ambler
  • "Journey Into Fear", Eric Ambler
  • "The World at Night", Alan Furst
  • "From Russia With Love", Ian Fleming
  • "My Name Is Red", Orhan Pamuk
• Carpets — You cannot travel in Turkey without encountering carpets, kilims, soumaks, and related textile art. Fantastic folk art, with lots of history. Good references include:
  • Oriental Rugs, Antique and Modern, by Walter A. Hawley, ISBN 0-486-22366-3.
  • The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C.
• Listen to Turkey on the radio or over the Internet
  In central North America, I have reasonable success hearing Turkey on shortwave around my sunset and until midnight. TRT broadcasts on 9445, 9460, and 11885 kHz at 2200-0800 UTC, and on 7300 kHz 2300-0500 UTC (those transmissions start and end one hour earlier UTC in the summer).
  • TRT is at http://www.trt.gov.tr/wwwtrt/tsr.aspx
  • Here are some Turkish stations accessible over the Internet:
    • Bayrak FM, Ankara, 98 MHz FM. http://brt.emu.edu.tr/bayrakfm.ram
    • Bayrak Radyo 1, Ankara, 91 MHz FM. http://brt.emu.edu.tr/bayrak1.ram
    • Capitol Radio, Ankara, 99.5 MHz FM. http://www.capitalradio.com.tr/capital.ram
    • ITU Radyo, İstanbul, 103.8 MHz FM. http://radyo.itu.edu.tr:7070/ramgen/live.rm
    • TGRT FM, İstanbul, 93 MHz FM.
      • http://www.tgrt-fm.com.tr/tgrt-fm.ram
      • rtsp://213.238.131.113:554/encoder/tgrt-fm
  • Turkish stations sending audio across the Internet can also be found at:
    • http://www.radio-locator.com
    • http://www.comfm.com/radio/
    • http://www.creatonic.com/tronline/i_real.htm
• Hear the Islamic call to prayer — far higher fidelity than what you hear on the street...
  • http://media.aicp.org/html/call_of_prayer.html
  • http://www.2mcr.com/html/call_of_prayer.html

If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate): Other travel stories and recommendations Toilets of the World web page

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