Top Things You Never Knew About Turkey

If you’ve never visited Turkey before, your first sight of the country might be when you’re taking your Dalaman airport transfers to your final destination. If that’s so, some of the following facts about Turkey might prove interesting when planning an itinerary.

The Dalaman airport transfers will take you through countryside that was once the ancient kingdom of Lycia. This country’s origins go back to the 1400s BCE and arguably even further. By the time of Alexander the Great, Lycia had become largely Greek in character, with their language having replaced the original Lycian tongue.

Greece remained a very strong influence in the area, which contained a sizeable Greek population until the wars of the 1920s resulted in the removal of most people of Greek origin back to mainland Greece.

The area your Dalaman airport transfers are travelling through is full of ancient ruins, cities and temples. Unusually, in Lycia even under the Greeks and Romans, ancient stones don’t seem to have been removed from the ruins of earlier buildings for subsequent re-use. The reasons for that are unclear but, as a result, the region is a historian’s (and archaeologist’s) delight.

In the nearby town of Dalaman sits Egypt’s Alexandria railway station. Sound odd? In the early 20th century, an Ottoman Empire notable was planning to build himself a plantation here. Due to an incredible error on the part of the French company responsible for the plans and materials, they instead shipped the plans and framework they’d constructed for the proposed new Alexandria (Egypt) railway station. As no money was available to re-ship, the Egyptian railway station was built here anyway and still stands today. Apart from being in the wrong country, there is no actual railway service in the town anyway!

Although alcohol is permitted in Turkey, most Turks are in fact more-or-less teetotal. Much recent publicity arose after the Turkish government introduced restrictions on the sale of alcohol. In fact, these restrictions are less severe than those in place in some European countries.

Until the 1920s and the reforms of Mustapha Kemal (Kemal Ataturk), the country used a form of Arabic script. Today, it largely uses the Latin alphabet.

It’s possible to take boats trips (fast hydrofoils in some cases) from some of the Turkish ports along the coast to the nearby Greek island of Rhodes. It’s only a few miles from Rhodes to the Turkish mainland.

Until very recently, women were forbidden to wear what is sometimes wrongly called ‘The Islamic Veil’ in public buildings, including parliament and universities. This goes back to the reforms of Kemal Ataturk, but has recently been overturned in favour of personal choice.

With the convenience and ease of the Dalaman Airport transfers, you can look forward to discovering myriad other interesting things in the course of your stay in this incredible country.

Lukas Johannes is a driver for Shuttle Direct. If you’re looking for Dalaman airport transfers, Shuttle Direct provide pre-booked shuttles to major destinations all over Europe. Wherever you travel, Shuttle Direct can make sure that you don’t miss your car on your holiday abroad.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.