It's not all oriental splendour, mystery, intrigue and whirling dervishes but it is a spicy maelstrom of history knocking up against the present, the present bursting out all over the place, and the future peering back at the posse.
Turkey is a blend onto itself.
It's also a great country to visit. The Turks are mostly overwhelmingly friendly to foreign visitors, the cuisine is frequently excellent, the cities are dotted with majestic old buildings and the countryside is often worth a good old-fashioned gasp. There's an enormous variety of things to see and do ranging from water sports to mountain trekking, archaeology to night-clubbing and river rafting to raki drinking.