I was lucky to be able to spend several months traveling in Turkey and then living in Istanbul. I was there when the bombs went off in Istanbul, killing the British consul and many Turkish passerby. Back in the US, people didn't understand why I'd wanted to go, and why I wanted to stay. as you say, most people in the US have a pretty vague idea of where Turkey is, and assume there are lots of camels etc.

there are so many beautiful places, so much history. and while the people are almost always friendly, which is nice, they are also so diverse and complicated. Some parts are extremely modern, european, citizens-of-the-world. Other parts are from another century. There is so much going on there, they are caught in the middle of so many different worlds.

well, although I'm jealous, I'm glad you got to go! I might need to look into some airfares now too...

Jeeze. Not even one mention of the many ancient Armenian churches in Turkey which were razed by the Turkish government, pursuant to their continuing policy of genocide denial?

How about THOSE ruins, Gary - did you miss those?

That last paragraph describing Constantinople (As a lover of all things Byzantine, I try not to use the I-word) was simply magical. Very evocative and poetic. Thank you for it. It helps soothe the sadness for what that great city has lost in its many centuries since the dark times that followed the Fourth Crusade's sacking.

Oops, check your map. Antalya is on the Mediterranean. I was there for last year's solar eclipse and for the tranist of Venus two years before.

Kamiya makes passing reference to the country being "non-Christian" but no discussion of how it got that way -- namely, through the second worst genocide and ethnic cleaning (after the Holocaust) in human history. (Indeed, Hitler modeled his extermination of the Jews off of Turkey's actions.) In the early part of this century, millions of Armenians, Greeks and Nestorian (Arab) Christians, the then-majority of Asia Minor's population, were systematically round up and exterminated or (if lucky) deported in order to create a pure-Muslim state. To walk over the blood of these millions of victims, without even passing reference to (or apparently even knowledge of) their fate, is appalling and contemptible. But the important thing is that Kamiya had a great vacation.

Me likey!

During the collapse of the Ottoman empire, millions of Muslims were deported from what is now Greece and the Balkan nations to the country that is now Turkey. The population exchanges between Greece and Turkey resulted in deaths and hardships among both Christians and Muslims. We can rightfully criticize the Turkish government's position on the Armenian genocide without launching into hyperbole about how the country was founded. It's simply inaccurate to say modern day Turkey became a muslim country by cleansing other religious minorities.

Some people should just give it a rest for a minute. I too was in Antalya for last year's total eclipse, in the spring, the weather was great. I was there for the TSE, but also to absorb the milleniums of history. Troy, not just a pile of rubble, (though the horse from the Hollywood movie as a monument in the nearby city of I believe Canakkale was bizarre). Byzantine churches in caves in Cappadocia, the Hittite's in the Ankara archaelogical museum, the Dervishes. There you just feel it. Was a wonderful experience, even with the police shoot out first night in Istanbul, and missing a PKK bombing in front of our hotel in Taksim by a day.

Sorry for this long tirade, but I have to say the following 467 words. I have been to Turkey several times because I am married to a woman born in Turkey, and my in-law family is Turkish. I totally agree with Gary Kamiya about the complexity of Turkish culture, history and contemporary society. Although it is true that the Armenian population of Anatolia was victim of a genocide, and no one should deny that, there are still a few Armenian churches open in Istanbul. Paradoxically the residence of the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church is still located in Istanbul. My wife and I visited it several years ago in spite of the uncooperative attitude of the bus driver, who refused to give directions to my wife, and thanks to the kind intervention of a police officer who explained to my wife how to get to the residence of the Greek Patriarch.

Although the war between Greeks and Turks was extremely traumatic for both peoples, the fact is that the majority of Byzantine Greeks converted to Islam over the centuries of Ottoman rule, and probably because of convenience. Otherwise, it would be rather difficult to explain the survival of a cultural produce such as Raki, the Turkish version of the Greek Ouzo In fact there is extraordinary overlapping between Turkish and Greek culinary traditions. Since my first visit to Turkey, I have been fascinated by the reasons Kamiya mentions in this article. From personal experience I know that when Turks, at least some of those I have met, are on a festive mood, they do not hesitate to listen to Greek music. Moreover, some of the Mikis Theodorakis’s and Georges Moustakis’s compact disks I have were bought on the record stores of the Beyoguglu quarter in Istanbul. One final note, those people visiting Turkey’s Mediterranean coast can visit the ruins of a village evacuated by the Anatolian Greeks at the end of the war when the first exchange of population between Greece and Turkey took place. Ironically, these ruins have been declared a national moment by the Turkish government.

The only three gold medals won by Anatolia in the first International Olympic Games were adjudicated respectively to an Anatolian Turk, an Anotolian Greek, and an Anatolian Armenian. There must be no doubt that it would have been preferable for Turkey to have remained as an example of Convivencia, which is the Spanish word for the coexistence of Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Spain, Turkey,and Bosnia-Herzegovina are instances of how much convivencia has been destroyed in the Mediterranean Basin. I wonder if those who demonize Turkey care for the other two instances of forced cultural homogenization, or if they write to the President of the United States of America asking for an apology on behalf of the Native Americans

A. Dalmau