Welcome to Turkey….

… where suicide bombers and trigger-happy anti-aircraft gunners are busy stirring up mayhem.  A country whose security forces have been accused of complicity with Islamic State in northern Syria, Turkey’s immediate neighbour, by allowing passage, and even supplying arms, to jihadis and facilitating sales of their oil; a country whose President is busy scratching at every old sore – be it the Russians, the Kurds or the domestic secular opposition – but still finding time to clamp down on writers and commentators who would dare to criticise him.  Then there’s the economy – on the wrong end of an outflow of international investment funds.  And the migrant crisis.

And here I am, with a new website that’s all about visiting this wonderful country.

You’ll have gathered that I’m not on the payroll – as, God help us, a ‘brand ambassador’ – of Turkey’s tourism authority.  For while the tourism ministry does occasionally fund my flights and accommodation when I’m on travel assignments for publications, there’s no understanding, not by me at least, that this in any way muzzles me or limits my right to voice opinions.  Which is good because after three decades of exploring the place I have my own views as to what makes Turkey special.  And that’s what this website is about.

First, though, a little more on what I don’t like about Turkey’s tourism scene: the dreadful architecture which has blighted many of the coastal developments; the unpardonably free hand given to the mining companies in areas like Mount Ida and the Beşparmak Mountains, and to the water companies in the Meander and Tigris valleys; and the electronic turnstiles – a particular bugbear – which ‘welcome’ visitors at an increasing number of ancient sites and put the former site guardians out of a job (you’ll be hearing more on this).

Turkey too often removes, bulldozes or otherwise does away with what is beautiful or distinctive, partly in the belief that modern must be good.  A common presumption is that most tourists, be they Turks or foreigners, care for nothing beyond the beach bars and banana boats.  Take the site watchmen; many tourism officials fail to appreciate that many visitors to the country’s stupendous ancient ruins might actually be enchanted by offers of tea from a man who has stood guard there for decades, through the seasons, as his father did before him, and is a treasure trove of local knowledge. And with communication skills which belie his limited English.

This alternative, independent experience of Turkey is easily realized. One reason for this website is that many first-time travellers to the country struggle to categorise it as either ‘easy’ (where travellers feel confident about making their own arrangements, driving hire cars, generally getting about and finding places to eat and stay, like France, Australia or Sweden) or ‘difficult’ (where they don’t expect to manage without drivers, guides and organised itineraries, like Ethiopia, Iran or Georgia). With its vast, often high, hinterland and reputation for occasional unrest, Turkey can look ‘difficult’ but is in fact easy, with good roads, cheap and efficient car hire, regular food stops, friendly locals and a general lack of the tourist bureaucracy that plagues independent travel outside the western democracies and south-east Asia.  It’s the very much the place for independent and imaginative travellers.

One reason is the wealth of archaeological and cultural treasures, with new ones being uncovered all the time.  Last month, not far from the dispiriting bustle at Ephesus, I was the only visitor at Magnesia.  Beyond the city, with its wonderful Roman colonnades and Byzantine basilica, I followed a dusty track through fig orchards to round a final corner.  And to gasp.

I found myself at the open end of a vast stadium, much of which was overgrown and buried so that its stepped contours showed only vaguely through the soil.  At the far end, however, excavations had revealed the colonnaded walkways and exquisite friezes – of gladiators, gods and charioted heroes – of what archaeologists consider the most intact and impressive of all Anatolian stadia.   I had all this to myself, though an azure and orange-coloured flock of bee-eaters did briefly fly overhead.

I write about these places because they deserve to be known.  They are the reasons you will fall in love with this country.  I hope this website leads you to some of them.