This time we would like to tell you about a country which is not even a 100 years old. A country which is extremely proud on its young history. A country where the national flag is shown everywhere and anytime. A country with a lot to offer. Of course you guys know we are in Turkey. For a good reason this country is one of the favorites for German travelers. So maybe you guys can find a few spots to remember or to put on the next travel itinerary. It’s definitely worth it.
So first things first. This area has been settled for more than 900 years now. Strategically this has always been a very important spot. So no wonder that one of the central parts of the famous silk route evolved in here. Today there are still a couple of the caravanserai to be seen. Even underground. With Sultanahani and the Ihlara Canyon we were able to see two of the most impressive ones. Christian monks settled in the caves around the Ihlara Canyon and Cappadocia. Seeking shelter they built their housing into the very soft tuff rocks. Just a little further to the west one of the oldest Christian communities overall. 50 years after Christ the apostle Paulus came here on one of his missionary trip. Ephesos is today still a very impressing city and the location of one of the seven wonders of the world. Until the Ottoman empire the Christian religion was widely spread over the country. As part of the empire Turkish influences can be seen all the way up to Belgrade. So since Serbia we got to enjoy the influence of the Turkish kitchen. Only after the first world war the country as we know it now was founded.
Today Turkey is more than ever a very popular country. People come here from everywhere to either relax from the busy working days or to flee from war in their own country. While the first ones will go back to their homes within a few days, the other ones will stay for longer. With more than 2.7 million, turkey is hosting almost twice as much refugees as Germany. We have to admit: they are used to growth of population. When Turkey was founded in 1923 they had 14 million inhabitants. Today, Istanbul has more than that and overall they count just as many people as Germany. With Atatürk Turkey was transformed radically to a very modern country. One of the first steps was to establish a compulsory schooling for everyone in 1924. They imported whole Systems from Europe during their first years of existence. The Swiss civil rights, the Italian criminal laws and the German trade laws. The people are quite proud on this guy. You can see his picture pretty much everywhere. Even though there is a law prohibiting criticism, we get the feeling that people are truly proud. This law in line with a few others is quite outdated. But with their anti-terrorism laws Turkey is just as modern as all the others. Our polish neighbors, the US, China and Germany, just to mention a few of them. The laws are quite popular in Turkish government as we can see on the consequences for media. Unfortunately it has definitely not become better regarding freedom of speech and press since 2005. This is when they started negotiations with the EU. Anyways we found there were a lot of police checkpoints to pass while we were crossing the country. For us as tourist this is actually not bad. At no time we had to worry about us or our truck. The locals we met were not so amused though.
Despite those politics people really keep moving forward. Cities and infrastructure are growing superfast. Within in a few years they built roads, railroad tracks, dams and industrial parks from scratch. After 3 megacities we had enough and moved on to the countryside. This is where Turkey is even more beautiful.