Turkey's history reads like a Best of Human Religious and Cultural Development. Istanbul (not Constantinople):
Sorry I couldn't resist. I won't do it again. Honest.
As I was saying Istanbul alone has a history that is the envy of all cities. Is there any other with such an illustrious past? It is unique in straddling two continents. It has flowered as Byzantium, Contantinople and Istanbul, names that still trip off the tongue of any school child.
Turkey was inhabited thousands of years BC (about 20,000 it is reckoned). Smelting metal was a new found skill here: the earliest items ever made in copper were made in Anatolia in about 5,000BC. The world's first ever town was likely here, near Konya. teh first examples of a written language were found here courtesy of the Assyrians. Turkey was home to Troy, of the horse and the stealing of fair Helen. Alexander the Great and St. Paul both walked its soil (at different times natch).
Turkey hosted and fostered many waves of religious belief and expression: Greek, Roman, Christian. Constantinople, as was, lost a thousand years worth of riches in one year when Crusaders sacked the city. In subsequent years, many Christians coonverted to Islam as the ruling Mongols gave tax breaks to Muslims. Of course the great Ottoman empire was Muslim and placed Turkey at the heart of a opulent crossroads between Europe, Norther Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought Turkey to its current form. On the negative side, it lost a huge amount of land after backing the wrong sides of several wars, but on the positive side was Ataturk, a visionary leader who fostered the Latin alphabet and a new Turkish language, established a multi-party democracy, abolished relisious-based education and law in favour of a secular state and civil constitution. It was these achievements that allowed economic modernization and politicall stability even fathomable.
It a bit of a "watch this space" at the moment however. The banking system collapsed under racing inflation in 2001. Entry into the European Union is an on again off again negotiation. Issues with the Kurdish population and most recently with Syria undermine confidence in its security. The island of Cypress is divided between Greece and Turkey. Poverty is not uncommon. Earthquakes are common.
I can't wait to see it!
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