In October 2007 I visited Turkey. A friend and I went to the seaside town of Antalya. We arrived at the airport at 8pm with no hotel reservations. Generally this is not a good idea but we had to do it because of travel agency problems in Ukraine, where we departed. A man outside the airport advised us to go with him to a good hotel. He seemed OK so we went.  He took us to a resort hotel about 10 miles outside of town. It was a very nice place although we paid a little too much for it. After a few days we decided to move to a hotel in town to get better exposure to the local people and culture. It was still a tourist town but we tried to see as much as possible of the area.

The Turkish people are somewhat diverse. Some of them look a bit Arabic while others would not be noticed as foreigners in places like America or most of Europe. During my entire 10 day stay in Turkey I only saw two black people, one was French, the other was a German mulatto. I imagine there are more in Istanbul. However the workers at the Istanbul airport looked rather homogeneous unlike the workers I observe at the airports in Germany and even Vienna.

Turks seem to be ‘good’ salespeople. There are many little shops in the city selling similar things. The spices cost a little more than they would at home because of the way they are displayed. Like Arabs, they can make something appear to be much more than it is. Turkish Delight is a candy which looks good in the box but is disappointing after tasting it. And they were selling instant tea, which was not much more than Cool-aid. 

Some Europeans oppose Turkish entry into the European Union. But I am wondering why more Turks don’t oppose it as well. If Turkey gets sucked into this Union the people will suffer. Turks will face an immigration problem and be forced to teach degenerate values in their schools as they lose control of their sovereignty and destiny. Turkey appears to have a high enough standard of living that they should not consider giving up freedom for some slight financial gain which might come anyway.