There are equally large disparities in levels of development and income. Istanbul boasts clubs as expensive and exclusive as any in New York or London, while town-centre shops are full of imported luxury goods, yet in the chronically backward eastern interior you’ll encounter standards and modes of living scarcely changed from a century ago. Following a severe crash in early 2001, the Turkish economy languishes on the ropes and the country is heavily in debt, threatening the modernization process begun during the late nineteenth century. It’s make-or-break time for a country aspiring to full EU membership: has Westernization struck deep roots in the culture, or does it extend no further than a mobile-phone- and credit-card-equipped urban élite?
Turkey has been continuously inhabited and fought over for close on ten millennia, as the layer-cake arrangement of many archeological sites and the numerous fortified heights testify. The juxtaposed ancient monuments mirror the bewildering succession of states Hittite, Urartian, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Armeno-Georgian that held sway here before the twelfth century. There is also, of course, an overwhelming number of graceful Islamic monuments dating from the eleventh century onwards, as well as magnificent city bazaars, still holding their own despite the encroachments of chain stores and shopping malls. The country’s modern architecture is less pleasing, the consequence both of government policy since 1950 and of returned overseas workers eager to invest their earnings in real estate an ugliness manifest at the coastal resorts, where the beaches are rarely as good as the tourist-board hype. Indeed it’s inland Turkey Asiatic expanses of mountain, steppe, lake, even cloud forest that may leave a more vivid memory, especially when accented by some crumbling kervansaray, mosque or castle.
