Right now, I am in Massachusetts for a school’s summer session and trying to write something interesting about my topic which is about my country.
I’m from Turkey. I’m just trying to improve my English in here. That’s why I’m writing this article. At the same time I want to give information about my culture. Yes, my culture, but you even don’t know where I come from. I’m from Istanbul, Turkey. I’m a Turkish boy who is 15 years old.
People in here are really very curious about my country. They always say: “How is your country?” “Tell us about Istanbul.” Some of them also say: “Teach me Turkish..” I even don’t know why they are interested in learning Turkish. For this reason in the nights I teach Turkish to my friends who are in same dormitory with me. Right now almost half of the boy’s dormitory basically knows how to speak Turkish thanks to me and some of my Turkish friends. They just learned most important fundamentals of Turkish, but I bet they survive without speaking English, if they go to Turkey by themselves.
What about the food? Food takes up a huge space in our culture. That’s why it’s important. I don’t know why, but I can say in my summer school there are lots people who are from around the world and almost all of them think that we have really good food. It’s very hard to explain the thing that called kebab. The only way to understand is to eat it. It’s really delicious. I have reasons that makes kebab good for me. First of all it’s a meat dish and I like meat. I bet this food can make a vegetarian, non-vegetarian. Secondly, it’s spicy and like spicy food. There are lots of kinds of kebab, but foreigners know just one or two kind of it. Even though they don’t know so much thing about “kebab”.

You probably think that our culture is just about the food. But it’s not. In fact it’s very hard to tell a culture. It has so many things to mention about. Especially if you have a long history in your culture, it gets more difficult.

Some foreign people still thinks that people are in Turkey using fez and riding camels. They suppose that we are like an Arabic Country. Turkey is a developed and industrialized country and we drive cars, not ride camels. Yes, some cities of Turkey still need to develop, but we are in a good condition now. I know that being industrialized or very developed don’t make my country so much more beautiful. Turkey has other things that makes it beautiful such as its’ natural beauty and history.

As you know three sides of Turkey is surrounded by sea. For hundreds of years Turkey has been the meeting point of three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. For this reason Turkey became a common place among these continents. People who want to go to one these continents had to pass through Turkey, because Turkey is the shortest transit way between these countries. (unless they live in America; because people use airplane for going to Turkey from America). They are using airplanes though, but there are still lots of people who visits Turkey; because it’s close to these continents. That’s why tourism is very developed in our country. Every year thousands of tourist came to our country.







My hometown Istanbul is really a big city. Approximately there are more than fourteen million people in Istanbul. It’s even more than our capital city Ankara. Istanbul is not just big, it’s also a historical city. It’s one of the oldest living cities in the world. It’s even much more older than Roman Empire. For this reason we have lots of history museums and historical places in Istanbul. It’s very hard to mention all of them. There are so much historical places in Istanbul that in specific places you can find a historical thing in every single corner. When you go to the “Sultanahmet” where used to be the heart of Ottoman Empire, you will see every mosque, every church has a different interesting story.

You have to come to Turkey for understanding all of these historical experience. For tasting perfect Turkish food you can also come to Turkey. There are plenty of reasons to come to Turkey.