Istanbul, this Istanbul, is an extraordinary sight . And my colleagues said oh, they know nothing about geography. I said don't blame, you have to explain them. They don't need to learn where Istanbul is. It's my job to explain that Istanbul is between Asia and Europe.
Turkey has major public relations problems.
It isn't just the 1978 film Midnight Express that associates the country with brutality. For centuries, the Ottoman Turks were viewed as savage pirates by Europeans who were both fascinated by and terrified of them. A bridge state, Turkey shares a border with Greece to the West, and with Armenia and Georgia to the East. It's a Moslem country that uses the Latin alphabet and enjoys close relations with the United States and Israel. As have Turkey's spotty human rights record, its conflict with Greece over the island of Cyprus, and its problems with the country's Kurdish population.