The Turkey of today is modern, westernized and trendy but its exotic and esoteric face exists in tandem - the whirling dervishes and bewitching belly dancers, caliphs on carpets and amazing amulets, bustling bazaars and spicy smells. Discover the cosmic duality of Turkey that stands with one foot in the Christian European West and the other in the Islamic Middle East ....and happily straddles the east-west divide.

It is the first of the Muslim countries to westernize and yet is an amazing mosaic of Islamic fundamentalists, cell phone toting young professionals, burkha-covered women, scantily clad belly dancers and beach goers. While the western part of Turkey has modernized, it is quite conservative in the eastern sections.

The nation is young, only 77 years old, with an exciting religious, cultural and historical past that it has inherited from classical and ancient Greece and Rome, the Christian Byzantines and the Muslim Ottomans. Turkey is the first of the Ottoman Muslim territories to become a republic and a democracy. As a travel destination, it has a great variety of options ranging from archaeological and historical sights like cliffside monasteries and medieval churches to water sports and hiking.