it was like complete and utter anarchy out there but at the same time it was
like synchronized anarchy. merhaba hoşgeldin arkadaşlar! normally on
this channel I talk to you guys about my experiences living in Germany but for
today I'm going to talk to you guys about what it was like for me to live in
Turkey. I lived in Turkey for a year between 2013 and 2014 and I often
reflect on my time living there with such happiness because it was such a
wonderful experience. I learned how to snowboard in Turkey, I learned how to
scuba dive in Turkey, I grew so much as a person, and it's because of Turkey that I
really started to get into traveling. I lived in the city of Izmir which is
Turkey's third largest city after Istanbul and Ankara and is located on
the west coast about a six-hour drive south from Istanbul. and I would describe
Izmir as a very progressive and liberal city compared to the rest of the
country so throughout this video just remember that while I did travel all
throughout Turkey my primary experiences are drawn from living in Izmir and
during the 2013-2014 timeframe. Honestly guys, I could talk so much about Turkey.. I
could talk all day and the video would be forever long so to try to keep it
more concise I'm going to limit myself to talking about the things I most
frequently get asked by people once they find out that I lived in Turkey. Tamam!
I'm just gonna dive into my favorite topic in life which is food and
the Turkish food is so so good and I can say with absolute certainty that in the
30 years of my life I felt my most healthiest... my most healthy... when I was
living in Turkey and part of that might be because I was working out twice a day
when I was living there but it's primarily because of the food and the
quality of it and how fresh it was and I would eat out all the time because it
was relatively cheap for me to go out and I just wanted to experience all of
the Turkish cuisine and I I don't think I could have eaten more doner kebab. I
ate so much of it. my favorite dish in Turkey is Iskander which is doner kebab
served over top of fried pieces of pita bread and then you pour tomato sauce on
top of that and serve it with like a side of yogurt and often times there's
butter with it too. oh my gosh that dish is so good and I
know it's not exactly helping my argument for the fact that I thought
Turkish food was really healthy but man Iskander is so good. if you can find an
authentic Turkish restaurant that serves Iskander, I highly recommend it... it might
change your life because it definitely changed mine. I also lived in a coastal
city as I mentioned earlier so in addition to a lot of doner I also ate a
lot of seafood and I loved how fresh it was.. and guys I could talk so much about
the food in Turkey and how much I loved to eat all of it like Manti and gevrek
and Börek and pide and dolma and all of the tatlı... like I could talk about it
forever but I will talk specifically about just one more thing which is their
breakfast because there is nothing like a Turkish breakfast - Kahvaltı . so when
you order Kahvaltı, it comes out of course with some cooked eggs and bread and then
all of these little dishes filled with olives and cheeses and sliced vegetables
and butter and honeys and jams... everything that you could possibly want
to eat for breakfast and in the Black Sea region it comes with Kuymak which
is a dish that's made of cornmeal and cheese and it is so good. you put your
fork in it and if you were to pull it up it just strings along with your fork
because of the texture of it and it is so rich and flavorful and you can eat
with bread and I'm getting really hungry for it right now but it made my entire
trip to the Black Sea region completely worth it. okay it's time to move on from
food. so if you didn't know Turkey or the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923
in the aftermath of World War one and it was founded by a man named Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
and there is so much love for Atatürk among Turks and especially in
Izmir you see his face everywhere hanging, you see it on t-shirts, they even
transpose his face or his silhouette on to the Turkish flag and then hang that
flag and speaking of the flag if you think Americans hang the flag everywhere
let me tell you we've got nothing on Turkey you can't look in a single
direction without seeing the Turkish flag at least when you're walking around
in Izmir it's it's everywhere. so I've talked to a lot of people from
all different countries about my experience of living in Turkey and it
seems like there is one shared misunderstanding which is what language
they speak. a lot of people seem to think that Turks speak Arabic and while there
are Turks who do speak Arabic or at least have a cursory understanding of
Arabic the official language of Turkey is Turkish or Türkçe. I'm not a
linguistic expert by any means but I find the language of Turkish to be
extremely interesting because it was basically developed in the past hundred
years Atatürk in his attempt to move Turkey away from its Ottoman past
developed the Turkish language association or TDK and basically charged
them with the responsibility of executing Turkey's language reform and
so in concert with TDK, Atatürk, one of the strategies he used, was banning the
press from being able to use Arabic and Persian long words that were so
frequently spoken in that region and instead TDK would replace those words
with Turkish words in this strategy along with some other efforts worked to
make Turkish the way we know Turkish today which I found so fascinating I
read that there was a speech that Atatürk gave
the early 1900's has been translated three different times since then
so that Turks today can read it and understand what Atatürk was saying which
I feel like shows how much language has evolved over the past century does
anyone else find this interesting or am i like alone in my little nerd world here?
Turkish is writing with the Latin alphabet and it has 29 letters most of
which are the same as the English alphabet except they got rid of Q X and
W and then they added six additional letters two of which my German audience
would recognize. there are some Turks who know English or who are at least a
little familiar with it but it is not spoken or written nearly as much as it
is in Western European countries and especially in Germany. and I showed up in
Turkey not knowing any Turkish so I had to learn some very creative ways to be
able to communicate with people and get past this language barrier and sometimes
that meant playing an elaborate game of charades other times if I had Wi-Fi or
as the Turks say wee-fee, I would be able to pull up Google Translate and type on
my phone whatever I was trying to communicate and once I got to Turkey I
also took a class in Turkish and just that little bit that I learned in that
class was able to help me a lot more in getting around on my daily life in
Turkey. a lot of Germans have commented on my channel to express their disbelief
that someone could live in Germany without knowing German and I will just
say that if I could live in Turkey without knowing Turkish living in
Germany and not knowing German is like a cakewalk. so again I lived in the city of
Izmir which is extremely westernized and is even nicknamed "Infidel City" and
the clothing that people wore walking around Izmir was just like anything you
would see in Europe or in the US in fact I think I saw girls wearing shorts that
were just as short as what you would see walking around Miami so I never had to
wear a headscarf I never had to cover up unless I wanted to go and visit a mosque
otherwise I just would wear my usual clothes while walking around
I will say though that throughout my year of living in Turkey I noticed some
changes regarding what women would wear. I got to Turkey in September of 2013 and
I saw some women wearing the hijab so I wouldn't say that I saw many women
wearing hijabs and I very rarely saw women wearing burkas. now this is just in
this city if you started to move outside of the city you would start to see more
hijabs and more burkas especially if you started to move more into the eastern
side of Turkey so remember this is me just talking about what I observed
in Izmir. Atatürk never banned the headscarf or anything but as part of
this shift towards secularism that he was always pushing for he highly
discouraged women from wearing them and there was a law in place that forbade
women from being able to wear the hijab inside government buildings which
included schools but shortly after I got to Turkey in October 2013, Turkey's
President Erdoğan lifted that prohibition and started to allow women
to wear the hijab anywhere they wanted and because of that with every passing
month I felt like I was seeing more and more hijabs and burkas than I did the
month before. I get asked a lot if I liked living in Turkey and if people in
Turkey were nice. Turks have a reputation of being hospitable which they
completely deserve. I felt so welcome and everyone was very friendly to me and the
friends that I made in Turkey are some of the most giving and caring people
I've ever met in my life. and I'll just give some examples of what
I experienced. so I would be eating outside at a cafe and a total stranger
would walk by and say to me afiyet olsun which basically means may it
bring you help may it be good for you you use it it's
similar to how you would use Bon Appetit or Guten Appetit and of course the
server when they bring you food will tell you afiyet olsun but it just was so
charming to me that total strangers would wish you a happy meal just out of
the kindness of their heart while they're passing you by.
I was also a member of hiking club when I lived in Turkey and
even though there were only a few members of the club who could speak
English every time we would break for breakfast or for lunch people would come
over and offer me some of their food just out of kindness. the scariest part
of living in Turkey from my very personal experience was anything to do
with vehicles I cannot explain to you how scary and aggressive the driving is
there it is like something I've never experienced in the US or in Western
Europe at all it was like complete and utter anarchy out there but at the same
time it was like synchronized anarchy where everyone kind of knew what was
going on but nobody was following any sort of laws so like this speed was just
a suggestion. and everyone was Hadi Hadi, the lines on
the road were guidelines and you could cross them if you wanted, whenever you
wanted, for any reason without any sort of indication and pedestrians never
had the right-of-way even on the sidewalks pedestrians never had the right of
way so it wasn't even that I was scared when I was in a car driving around
Turkey but I was also scared anytime I was walking on a sidewalk
because I honestly didn't know if that was going to be the day that I would get
hit by a car. it did however keep me on my toes and I always felt alive while
walking around the city of Izmir.
alright guys I have legitimately at least 17 more things that I could talk
to you all about my experiences living in Turkey but I think that's a good
introduction for now if you like this video don't forget to give it a thumbs
up because if I get a lot of likes on this video then I will know okay they
like this one maybe I should do another video about Turkey and if you have any
questions about what it was like for me to live in Turkey make sure you put them
in the comments if your Turkish yourself or you've lived in Turkey and you want
to weigh in on some of the things I say you are more than welcome to I'm excited
to see what you guys have to say. thank you so much my patrons for all the
support you've given me and inshallah I will see you guys next time! bye! hey guys
don't forget to subscribe to my channel and hit me up on Instagram and Kelly
does her thing I just posted a photo of me from when I lived in Turkey for you
guys to check out