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Tourism in Turkey By İlker Temir When it comes to tourism, Turkey is usually known for sea, sand and sun with its 8,333 km long coastal line, stunning beaches and warm climate especially in southern and south western regions, averaging 300 sunny days a year. However this is only a small piece of the complete picture. Turkey, with its magnificent past, is the home of historic and cultural treasures from 13 different civilizations spanning more than 10,000 years. It is a bridge between East and West, a melting pot where different cultures have been interacting for thousands of years. "Turkey, not Mesopotamia, is the cradle of Western civilization". These lands witnessed the world's first beauty contest between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, the famous Trojan War, march of Alexander the Great's armies towards the Persian Empire, Battle of Issus, birth of the written history's father Heredotus and much more. It is on these lands where two of the seven wonders of the ancient world reside. Merchants of the past once walked through Anatolia while going along the Silk Road... Being the graceful host to so many civilizations for thousands of years, it keeps a secret in its every corner still waiting to be explored. Aside from the well known coastal region, other regions have unique attractions as well. In Eastern Anatolia rises the 5,137m high Mount Ararat with its astonishing immensity. It is considered to be the world's largest single mass mountain. "(There) is a very high mountain, shaped like a cube, on which Noah's ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark. It is so broad and so long that it takes more than two days to go round it. On the summit the snow lies so deep all the year round that no one can ever climb it; this snow never entirely melts, but new snow is for ever falling on the old, so that the level rises. But on the lower slopes, thanks to the moisture that flows down from the melting snow, the herbage is so lush and luxuriant that in summer all the beasts from near and far resort here to batten on it and yet the supply never fails..." wrote Marco Polo about it in 1295. On a 2000m plateau near Mount Ararat, stands one of the most spectacular structures of Anatolia, the Ishak Pasa Palace. It is one of the most distinguished and magnificent examples of the 18th century Ottoman architecture and the most famous of the palaces built at recent decades. It is the second administrative campus after the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. In Eastern Anatolia, 90 km away from Adiyaman rises the 2,159m high Mount Nemrut with a tumulus 150m in diameter and 50m in height at its summit. This is the tomb of the 1st century BC Commagene king, Antiochus I Epiphanes. On the eastern and western terraces of Mount Nemrut are the fascinating statues of the five gods, namely Apollo, Tyche, Zeus, Antiochos and Herakles, each of which rises to 8-10 meters. Mount Nemrut has been designated a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987. 42 kilometers away from Kars, also in Eastern Anatolia are the Ani ruins which date back to 5,000 BC and illustrate the uniqueness of the location on the Silk Road. Certain parts of the ancient city were built by the Karsaks in the 4th century where many civilizations flourished afterwards. The city used to have eight churches, two Seljuk Turkish baths and a mosque. In South Eastern Anatolia is the City of Prophets, Sanliurfa. It has a very rich and far reaching background, due to its location in the great fertile plain of upper Mesopotamia. It is believed to be the birthplace of Abraham, the patriarch claimed by three global religions. Sanliurfa was praised as the city of the prophets Hiob, Jethro and St. George, besides Abraham, who were said to have lived here. Nemrut, the king of the time, once had a dream witnessing the end of his rule. His oracles interpreted the dream and told the king that a child to be born that year would put an end to both his religion and reign. Thus Nemrut decided to kill each and every child to be born that year. Nuna, then pregnant to Abraham, delivered him secretly in a cave. Abraham lived in that cave alone until he became 7 and then started to struggle against the paganistic beliefs of the king and his people. The king caught Abraham and cast him into fire from the hill where the a crusader castle stands today. God ordered the fire "to be cool and saving for Abraham" and the fire turned into water and firewood into fish, forming Balikli Gol (Carp Pool). In the center of Turkey is the "land of beautiful horses", Cappadocia. Famous with its spectacular natural rock formations and valleys, Goreme National Park, as it is known today, is strewn with underground cities, stone chapels, monasteries and dwellings that were hewn out of the weirdly eroded volcanic rock from 400 BC. Thousands of years of wind and rain erosion on a landscape of soft volcanic stone topped with hardened larva caps has created a fascinating landscape of rock cones and pinnacles that are known as "fairy chimneys".