The Best and Worst Thing About Turkey

Its People. Here is the source:

While many (but not all) of my male Turkish neighbors, friends and students like blond hair and a Russian background, I can't imagine a more beautiful woman than a Turkish woman.

I like that the women here are not afraid to be attractive. And I like that beneath the beauty there is a strength that is foreign to me.

Life has not been equal or easy for women in Turkey, but they have a power and attitude that I find impressive.

I love the traditional foods that can still be found around the city. Not just kebabs, but the old, old things that might seem to only exist in cookbooks. If you look hard enough you'll find some great restaurants making them.

I like the way that Turkey is very much like the United States in the 1940s to1970s. I was born in 1974 and I missed what happened after the two world wars.

I missed the social problems of the civil rights movement, the liberation movements, the sexual revolution in the 1960s and the explosion of credit and buying power of the 1980s.

It all seems to be happening here in Turkey at the same time. I now have a better idea of where my family came from, what they lived through, how far we have come and how much of ourselves and our traditions we have lost.

I don't enjoy the outside marketplace customs in Istanbul. I don't enjoy the chaos that passes for a queue and the people who will not wait.

It's perhaps this lack of respect for each other outside the house that I dislike the most.

Inside someone's home, you will not find better hospitality in the world, and I think for foreigners this paradox is confusing.

This is Turkey. A Turkish friend working for one of the municipal works told me, "The best thing about Turkey is the people."

"What's the worst thing?" I asked. "The people," he said.