My Selfish Reasons To Keep Turkey A Secret!

I spent 3 wonderful weeks learning much more than I ever had about a country. Turkey is a place that I would have never imagined visiting this time last year, but a place that I can’t wait to visit again. I feel ashamed that I never knew about Turkey. In fact I barely knew where it was geographically, and even though I’ve learned so much I know there is still a lot of things I am still ignorant about. Something that I notice about turkey that I have talked about many times before is very apparent to me now that I’ve spend a few days in Paris. Turkey is new and exciting, there are few Americans wondering the streets and that is why it’s such a magical place to visit. Unlike Paris, it hasn’t been spoiled with tourists. During our program there were situations where we would avoid the “tourist spots” until now I was unsure of what exactly that meant and why these spots must be avoided. Well, I can understand exactly what that means now, when I visited the Lourve yesterday it was madness. A museum saturated with humans, everywhere, bumping into you, taking pictures and standing around… just in the way! I was excited to see the Mona Lisa, but the experience was almost shattered since I had to wait in line and was then pushed out of the way by people taking pictures and using there flash (although that is forbidden!). Now, there were of course some situations in Turkey where there were lots of people, but nothing like what I encountered yesterday. Turkey has lots of tourists, but the people were respectful and actually seemed to care about what they were doing.
In my last blogs I questioned the European Unions choice not to admit Turkey immediately like they have done for all the other nations that applied. Although it is not at all for the reason of preserving Turkeys authenticity I would be nervous that Turkey will become what places like Paris are. I have heard that Turkey is similar to Paris 30 years ago. It was new and excited and although many Europeans traveled there it was not something that thousands of Americans did every year. Turkey has many European tourists, but not many Americans know enough to travel to its cities. If it were accepted to the EU it would open many doors, and be a very fortunate opportunity for many of the residents. Yet, it would also open the door of the unknown. More people would learn about how brilliant the country is and less people would fear it as a scary country that boarders Iran and Iraq. So then, I would expect that the tourists would start flooding in from all around the world. Soon it would no longer be classified as a “Hidden Jem” but as a tourist hot spot. Maybe it’s selfish of me to want to keep this wonderful secret, it’s obvious that the only thing that tourism is hurting are the other tourists and also just annoying the locals. I want Turkey to be successful, I want people to finally understand how amazing it is, but at the same time I don’t! I want to keep it just as it is.