Why TURKEY? Oh, boy...

The Danish Customs Official
On the way back from Turkey, our groggy and exhausted group passed through Danish customs as we switched planes in Amsterdam.

The inspectors questioned us most thoroughly: "where exactly did you stay?" "did you pack your own luggage?" "so your roommate had access to your luggage -- do you trust her?" "do you trust all the people you're traveling with?" -- etc.

The most amusing and revealing question, however, was my inspector's response to the answer, "We were on a senior trip with Hillsdale College Honors program."

"Ah," he said, "so why go to TURKEY?"

I mumbled through some kind of an answer. Something about a religion professor heading the trip, and early church sites. Which was indeed why our group headed out to Turkey instead of some other country.

But the question, "why Turkey, of all places?" was admittedly on my mind sometime before the trip as well.

Because...well...where do senior trips usually go? France! Germany! Italy! Greece! Plus this is Hillsdale, where we prize the Grand Old Western Heritage and Tradition. You'd think we'd end up at least in Europe. But, no -- we strike out for the Middle-Eastern just-pulled-itself-out-of-the-third-world Islamic country of Turkey.

It's a good question, "why Turkey?"

After two days in Turkey I had half an answer. After four weeks I have a fuller one, which I shall attempt to mangle my way through. Because, right now, I can't think of a better country to have visited.

Geography and Ancient-Modern History
Turkey is a difficult country to process, at first. For one thing, it possess vast geographical variety -- plus it's a got complex and layered interweaving of thousands of years of immensely varied history.

The geographical variety was one of the first elements that struck me. There are deserts, and fertile croplands, and hills covered with flocks of sheep. There are rocky coastlines, and mountains that continue row upon row...not just a chain, but a whole square region. There are regions with European architecture and red-tiled roofs, and regions with flat-top roofs where you swear you are in the middle-east.

Then you have layers of history: the ancient Hittite mountaintop capitol of Hattusa, stone-age settlements. The Greeks Hellenized large portions of Turkey, and the Roman empire layered itself on top of that. Combined with these, you have innumerable varieties of traditional Turkish cultures and customs; our tour guide, Arzu, listed at least five distinct regions, from the supremely hospitable eastern sheep-herders, to the blue-eyed fishermen of the Black Sea coast.

Then you had early Christianity flooding Turkey...it's full of hidden cave-churches, and monasteries, and the Hagia Sophia...the center of Eastern Christendom.

Then...WHAM! On top of all this came the Ottoman Empire! And with it Islam. Ottoman imperial castles (and Arabian architecture), every church turned into a mosque, stricter gender roles, the whole shebang.

Westernization
And then, in 1920, there was Ataturk. General, war hero, revolutionary, statesman...He united Turkey into an independent nation-state. He secularized the country. He made Ottoman-empire Turkey into a constitutional democracy. He changed the alphabet from Arabic script to western letters. He changed their numbers to western numerals. He made everyone wear western clothes. He transformed the economy. He instituted an education system, from elementary schools to universities. He established gender equality; women were elected to the senate a few years later.

So throw Ataturk into the mix that is Turkey as well. And with him throw in the eighty recent years of super-intensified industrialization and westernization. Turkey's done a heck of a lot in that time, turning itself inside out, and catching up to the rest of the world. It's pulled itself out of the third world into the first, and it hasn't yet completed the process. Walking through Turkey, one sees a constant juxtaposition of the old and the new. Rundown mud-brick houses, with laundry hanging in the wind...and a satellite dish on the roof. Snazzy commercial-district streets (you would swear you're in Europe) -- but go back a block or two and you're in third-world-ville. On a larger scale, there's the highly industrialized and westernized west...and the impoverished, ill-educated, underdeveloped east, into which the government is now crazily pouring money and college graduates.

Ye Olde Conclusion
I can't think of another country where such variety exists -- geographical, cultural, western/non-western, 1st world/3rd world, secular/Islamic -- in such a convoluted and complex and contented tangle. Turkey has weathered culture after empire after culture, and engrafted large portions of all of them into its rhythms of life. And, unlike many other third-world countries, it hasn't destroyed itself in the upheaval entering entering the 21st century.

For these reasons, among others, I've come to greatly respect the country and its people. GO visit it, if you have the chance. I shouldn't judge European countries, as I haven't visited any since I was five...but right now I personally think Turkey pretty much pwns them.

And, if nothing else, Turkish food is amazing. ;)