Be informed that Turkey is not an Arabic country. It is the only Islamic country which is secular. The big majority of the population is muslim (over %90).
The daily and social life is quite liberal.
Turkey is a parliamentary republic founded in 1923. Governments are elected by the citizens every four years.

Although the capital city is Ankara (the second largest city), Istanbul is the largest city and the center of culture, tourism and businness.


- Money:
The currency is New Turkish Liras (YTL.)
Currently 1 USD approx. equals to 1.15 New Turkish Liras.
1 Euro approx. equals to 1.70 New Turkish Liras.

- Weekends and Working Hours:
In Turkey the official working days and hours are as they are in the western world. The weekend is saturday and sunday.
Office hours are generally 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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-TIME DIFFERENCES:

USA:
NY.......-7
LA..........-10
Miami.......-7
San Francisco...........-11
Boston.......-7
Chicago........-8
Houston........-8
Dallas........-8
Washington dc.......-7

UK:..-2

Australia:
Perth......+6
Melbourne........+8
Sydney........+8
Brisbane........+8

Central European Time..+2

New Zeland.........+10
Hong Kong......+6
Malaysia......+6
Singapour.........+6
Tokyo.......+7
Russia.+1
Greece.0
Egypt..0
South Africa.0
Jerusalem.0

Brazil:
Fernando de Noronha....-4
East Brazil.....-5
West Brazil......-6

Canada:
Ottowa.......-7
Montreal.......-7
Toronto.......-7
Vancouver..........-10

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- WATER:

Tap water, drinkable water.
Beware that tap water may not be drinkable in some regions especially in big cities although it can be used for cleaning and hygiene.

- FOOD&DRINK:

Turkish cuisineis one of the largest and richest cuisines in the world.
A large variety of food is available. Such as spicy kebab sorts from eastern Turkey, olive oil based meals from western Turkey and pastry sorts from central Turkey.
In most of the places various kinds of alcohol is available. You can taste turkish national drink raki (made of aniseed) or local wine (made of the grapes of various regions.)
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- NEIGHBOURS:

Northwest: Greece, Bulgaria
Southeast: Syria, Iraq
East: Iran, Armenia
Northeast: Georgia


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- LANGUAGE:

The offical language is Turkish. Turkish is an Asian language, a member of the Uralic-Altaic languages family, with no difference in spelling and pronunciation. The languge is also a relative of those languages: Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian as Uralic and Mongolian, Korean and Japanese as Altaic. Similarity with these languages is usually grammer wise. But Turkish has got many foreign words in it, mostly from Arabic, Persian and French. The modern alphabet of Turkish since 1923 is the Latin alphabet with a few differences acording to the sounds of the language. For example letters as “x”, “w”, “q” don’t exist in Turkish but in addition we have letters such as “ü”, “ö”, “i”, “ç”, “ş”, “ğ”. Another local language which is spoken by quite a number of people is Kurdish which is an Indo-European language. It’s spoken in eastern and south-eastern areas of Turkey.