Making Friends Fast in Turkey

Ann and Hatice (Hot e jay)

We’ve been in Turkey for going on a month. I guess you could say we are Turks now. Oh wait, Turks can say more than good morning, hello, good bye, and a few other niceties in Turkish. I’m not a Turk yet, but I’m working on the language.

What Turks and Americans understand alike is the language of friendship. Although our time here has been short, we have made friends very quickly. Turks are some of the nicest people you will ever meet and they are very eager to get to know you.

While almost no one in our town speaks very much English ( not even us ), Ilknur speaks just enough of our heart language to keep our attention. She is a delightful woman, who along with her three brothers, owns a small tourist boat operation. Yesterday we ran into Ilknur as we were retuning from a five and a half hour shopping and walking outing. More walking than shopping I can promise.

Oznur, Ann and Ilknur

We were tired but we agreed to meet her at the small harbor for an hour-long tour in one her four boats. These boats are of varying sizes, but none seats more than six and rowing is the method of power. If required, she can add an outboard motor. Although I thought a motor would be nice, we took the rowing tour.

It seems we did more talking than anything, which is good when you can’t speak the language of your host country. Talking is nice, when you can do it.

Every now and then we snapped a picture of our surroundings. The viewpoint from the boat is different from the shore and we were not disappointed.

Egirdir Nearing Sunset

As the sun set the temperature dropped. We had been out for about an hour when I began seeing my breath and Ilknur had just turned the boat around. I began thinking of Gilligan and that our one hour tour could turn into something more. Nah!

Halfway back to the harbor Ilknur saw her sister-in-law, Oznur, walking along the side of the causeway. She rowed over and picked her up. Oznur is a humorous woman and after arriving back at the harbor made Turkish coffee for all of us at their home.

The Causeway to Yesilada

We laughed at each other attempting to speak the other’s language. Everyone had a laugh at me when I called her son bread (ekmek) instead of boy (erkek) in Turkish.

We saw Ilknur again today walking the island drumming up business. After lunch we walked over to the harbor and spent some time visiting once again. She said business would probably pick up around the time of Easter, when Greek Christian tourists would come and visit the small abandoned Greek church building on the island.

We long for the time when we can speak Turkish and communicate more in-depth with our new friends. Perhaps soon. Maybe by Easter?