TURKEY

Turkey has multiple identities, poised uneasily between East and West. The only NATO member in the Middle East region, the country has recently been accepted as a candidate for EU membership. Yet although in some respects Western, Turkey retains its contradictions: mosques coexist with churches, and Roman remnants crumble alongside ancient Hittite sites. Politically, modern Turkey was almost entirely the creation of one man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Turkey is an explicitly secular republic, though the majority of its people are Muslim.

It's a vast country and, though there are large disparities in levels of development, it's an immensely rewarding place to travel, not least because of the people, whose reputation for friendliness and hospitality is richly deserved. Western Turkey is the most visited and economically developed part of the country.

Istanbul, straddling the Bosphorus straits and the Marmara coast, is a heady mix of the European and Oriental. It's the country's cultural and commercial centre and also visibly the old imperial capital. Flanking Istanbul on opposite sides of the Sea of Marmara are the two earlier Ottoman capitals, Bursa and Edirne, and the former Byzantine capital of Iznik, with, just beyond, the World War I battlefields of the Gelibolu peninsula (Gallipoli). Moving south, on the Aegean Coast small country towns such as Ayvalik are swathed in olive groves, while the area is littered with ancient sites, including Assos, Pergamon and Ephesus, which have been a magnet for travellers since the eighteenth century.

Beyond the functional city of Izmir, the Aegean coast is Turkey at its most developed, with large numbers drawn to resorts such as Çesme, Bodrum and Marmaris. There are remnants of the Lycians at Xanthos, and more resorts, such as Fethiye, along the aptly named "Turquoise Coast". On the Mediterranean coast, Antalya is one of Turkey's fastest-growing cities, a useful starting-point on the stretch towards the Syrian border, featuring extensive sands and archeological sites – most notably at Perge – until castle-topped Alanya, after which the tourist numbers begin to diminish.

It's worth heading inland from here for the spectacular attractions of Cappadocia, with its famous rock churches, subterranean cities and landscape studded with cave dwellings, as well as the Selçuk architecture and dervish associations of Konya. Further north, Ankara, Turkey's capital, is a planned city whose contrived Western feel gives some indication of the priorities of the modern Turkish Republic.

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