The Purple Culture Guide to Turkey

Chapter 1: First Impressions

The first thing that hits you in Turkey isn't a sight or a sound. It's the pace. If you've arrived from Northern Europe or North America, you'll notice it within an hour: the pace of life is a little quicker, the people are a little louder, and the space between you and the person next to you is a little smaller. You'll be standing in a queue for tram tickets on a Tuesday morning, and a man will lean past you to ask the ticket machine a question personally, as if it were a neighbor who owes him money. A woman will cut across your path on the pavement without breaking stride, and somehow it won't feel rude. It will feel like the city is running on a different set of rules, and it is.

Turkey's overall personality is that of a gregarious, argumentative, deeply hospitable, and unexpectedly modern country that is very sure of itself, yet still a bit twitchy about its place in the world. It is a land of extremes rubbing up against each other. You'll see a woman in a full black chador negotiating a selfie with a man wearing a Ramones t-shirt outside a mosque. You'll see a mega-mall made of glass and steel sitting a hundred meters from a 500-year-old Ottoman bazaar, and both will be packed. The cliché about East meeting West is overused, but it's not wrong here; it's just that the two tend to barge into each