About Turkey
Straddling Europe and Asia , modern Turkey is a geographically diverse country covering some 780,000 square kilometers, a small proportion of which lies west of the Bosphorus and is thus classified as belonging to mainland Europe. Sharing land frontiers with Bulgaria and Greece in Europe and six Asian countries ( Armenia , Azerbaijan , Georgia , Iran , Iraq and Syria ) Turkey is bounded on three sides by the sea: the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean to the west and the Mediterranean in the south. This peninsular geography provides the country with an extensive and attractive coastline, certain parts of which have proved to be the main foci for Turkey 's current foreign buyer-driven property boom.
Turkey 's climate is generally described as temperate; however, the great diversity of the terrain – especially the distribution of mountain ranges running parallel to the coast – leads to a variety of different climatic conditions. These climatic variations have resulted in the development of a great many different types of flora and fauna: over 9,000 different varieties of plant can be found in the country.
Potential for property development
As well as climatic variations, Turkey 's landscape has created a noteworthy population distribution. Most of the country's large settlements are located on the coast while the Anatolian plateau, with the exception of the capital and second-largest metropolis, Ankara , is home to much of the country's agriculture and accompanying rural population. Almost half Turkey 's inhabitants live in rural areas. The mountainous regions are relatively sparsely inhabited but their often wonderful scenery indicates that there is potential here for property development assuming the necessary infrastructural support.
Throughout most of history, the area now known as Turkey has been extremely prominent; some argue that the first true permanent human settlements can be found on Turkish soil while the more recent influences of the Eastern Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires have been incalculable. The country has played a vital role in the development of two world religions and has an incredibly rich cultural heritage, affecting almost every field of artistic, scientific and philosophical endeavors
Turkey joined the UN in 1945 and became a NATO member in 1952. Modern Turkey 's society is one of the youngest in Europe and is increasingly dynamic in nature. The economy has seen significant growth in the last couple of decades, interrupted by periodic but short-lived declines.
While 99 per cent of the population is Muslim, the secular state guarantees freedom of religion to all its citizens and the country does not have the same problems with radical or fundamentalist Islamic organizations as those suffered by certain of its neighbours.
An established player
Although Turkey is categorized as an emerging market the country has been to a substantial number of foreign national for some time. For all intents and purposes, however, it's only during the last few years that the country has become an established player on the overseas property scene, and even more recently that its assumed its current prominence. As recently as July 2003, large areas of the country's interior were out of bounds to foreign buyers. However, the government moved to open up the majority of the country to the overseas ownership having seen the beginnings of the current boom in coastal areas bring in a substantial (and growing) amount of revenue – and also, one imagines, as another concession to the European Union.
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