Unexplored Turkey

Turkey is one of the most visited countries by our tourists thanks to the visa-free entry regime between our countries, really low-cost air travel, and of course due to the well-developed infrastructure of Turkey marine tourism, well adapted to the Russian-speaking tourists. Lots of people have visited Turkey but few of them knows anything about this country apart from Istanbul, Antalya, Ankara and maybe three or four resort cities.

No, in that case, I'm not talking about monuments of ancient history, carefully excavated, well-restored, and sometimes just invented. That is daily bread and means for subsistence for Turkey and wherever you go for vacations, you will definitely be invited to visit Troy, Ephesus or something like that. I mean Turkey itself, how it lives outside its resort area.

Non-resort zone of Turkey

I do not consider myself a great expert in non-touristic Turkey, but one of my trips to this country was a bus tour, during which, we had to drive about two thousand kilometers on Turkey's roads. Here is what I’ve seen from the window of the bus and now can tell you.

I must say that during the trip on the bus, Turkish cities and villages flash like funny pictures. All Turkish, including major cities (Izmir, Antalya, Denizli), not taking Istanbul into consideration, are very similar to each other and do not look like European cities. Medium-rise buildings, mostly five to six floors, almost no skyscrapers, fairly wide streets. There are huge factories and industrial zones on the outskirts. In general, when you are going through Turkey, you notice how intensively Turkish people work. Although it is the eastern country, there is no atmosphere of easy laziness anywhere. Turkey looks like a huge anthill.

There is a particular attitude to green plantations. In continental Turkey, the climate is really dry, and without artificial irrigation, nothing grows in fact, nothing except for stunted weeds. At the same time in the cities, you can see an abundance of well-tended greenery. Lawns, bushes, flowers, palm trees, everything pleases the eye in huge amounts. Looking at all this, you understand how much human labor it is worth.

Moreover, Turkey reminds a very big building site. Wherever you would go, you will come across building landscapes everywhere. Houses, factories, roads, and bridges are being built. Everywhere. All this grows like mushrooms after the rain. At the same time, you won’t see any construction debris anywhere. Only dust. But there is a lot of it in Turkey without any construction projects.

So, in the non-tourist part of Turkey, there are also many interesting and instructive things. I would not recommend going specifically there, but if you are already there, take with you a device to take a couple (hundreds) of pictures. You will not regret.