Safranbolu: Asian Tourists' Favourite UNESCO World Heritage Site in Turkey

Every nationality has its own favourite place to visit in Turkey. For the Germans, it is the region between Antalya and Alanya. The British prefer the stretch of coast between Fethiye and Altinkum. For tourists from East Asia, it seems no tour of Turkey is complete without a visit to Safranbolu, a small mountain village tucked away in a lush green valley.

The town of Safranbolu consists of two different parts: the New Town (called Kirankoy), and the Old Town (Safranbolu itself). Kirankoy is the town's administrative centre, with modern buildings and apartments blocks built on top of a small hill overlooking the valley of Safranbolu. Long distance buses stop at the bus station outside Kirankoy's town centre, and passengers continuing towards Safranbolu's Old Town will have to transfer to the free mini-shuttle provided by each bus company and get off at the bus company's town office in Kirankoy, before getting on a blue city bus which connects Kirankoy with the Old Town of Safranbolu.

Lefkosa/Nicosia: A Divided City and the Last Green Line in the World

Lefkosa is the capital of a divided Cyprus. The Green Line patrolled by the UN serves as the de facto border between Northern and Southern Cyprus, and this line runs through the centre of Lefkosa and virtually cuts the city into two separate ethnic enclaves.

The view of the giant flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus carved onto a hillside for all to see. In the night, the flag is lighted with thousands of light bulbs twinkling non-stop in the darkness.

Kyrenia/Girne: the No.1 Tourist Attraction of Northern Cyprus

Kyrenia (Girne in Turkish) is the most picturesque town in Northern Cyprus, as well as its most popular tourist attraction. The view of Kyrenia's scenic harbour appears on virtually all the tourism publications about Northern Cyprus, and for years European holidaymakers (especially the English) have been flocking to the hotels and resorts gracing the fine sandy beaches near Kyrenia in spite of the international economic embargo imposed upon the Northern Cyprus administration by the UN since the early 1980s. Previouly a predominantly Greek-Cypriot town, the majority of inhabitants in today's Kyrenia are Turkish-Cypriots and settlers from Turkey.

An Endangered Medieval City: Famagusta/Gazimagusa, Northern Cyprus

Famagusta (Gazimagusa in Turkish), a beautiful medieval town in Northern Cyprus, is probably among the biggest losers of the long-drawn-out political saga otherwise known as the Cyprus  conflict. This serene historical town, with  a pretty medieval centre and a natural  deep-water harbour, used to be an A-List holiday paradise in the 1960s and early 1970s, with some of the regions' most luxurious hotels and bars frequented by big-name Hollywood stars, as well as the rich and the famous from nearby Lebanon, the Levant and other countries in Europe.

 The heydays of Famagusta as one of the top tourist resorts in the whole of the Mediterraean was put to an abrupt stop in 1974. In the aftermath of Turkey's military intervention in Northern Cyprus, the entire district of Varosha - the tourist quarter of Famagusta - was sealed off by the Turkish army and has since remained closed to this day. No entry into Varosha is allowed except for UN and Turkish army personnels. Although the Turkish-Cypriot government had agreed to hand over Varosha to Greek-Cypriot control under the Cyprus peace agreement mediated by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, the fact that this peace agreement was rejected by the Greek-Cypriots means that Varosha remains a closed ghost-town in the foreseeable future.

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus: the Forgotten Country

Tucked away in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the island of Cyprus has been a place fought over and over by various regional powers ever since the times of the Crusaders. In contemporary world, the power struggles between Christians and Muslims takes on a different twist, with a dose of ethnic-nationalism thrown into the fray.
Since the division of the island in 1974 into two separate administrative zones following the failed coup by Greek military junta and the subsequent military occupation of the northern part of the island by Turkey's armed forces, Northern Cyprus ( since 1983 the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) has become a state that virtually disappeared off the political map of the world. To 99% of the international community, the country known as TRNC never exists, as the only country that recognizes Northern Cyprus as an independent country is Turkey. As a result of the international trade embargo and political sanctions imposed by the United Nations against Northern Cyprus in the aftermath of Turkish Cypriots' unilateral declaration of independence in 1983, the economy of Northern Cyprus becomes totally reliant upon Turkey for survival.

Mardin: Honey-Coloured City in a Mystical Land

Being a historian by training, the very name of Mesopotamia immediately invokes the mythical image of the 'fertile crescent', where human civilisations first flourished amid the green lands between the two Rivers of the Paradise - the Tigris and the Euphrates - that flow out of the Garden of Eden.

In reality, this vast stretch of land between the two great rivers is no paradise on earth, but a troubled zone plagued by cross-border sectarian conflicts, political instability, and chronic economic under-development.

Tucked away in the southeastern corner of Turkey's border with Iraq and Syria, both the town and the province of Mardin suffers long periods of neglect and under-investment until recently, when the ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces, in conjunction with the arrival of state investments aimed at improving the region's infrastructures, gave Mardin a new lease of life. Unlike some of the better known ancient towns in Turkish Mesopotamia, tourism was not a mainstay in Mardin's economic life until the last few years, when the sudden rise of Mardin to touristic stardom as one of the 'must-see' places in Turkey saw a rapid rise in the number of tourists visiting the town. Nowadays there are several high-end boutique hotels in Mardin and nearby towns, offering good-quality accommodation to affluent visitors from Turkey and abroad.