The Culture of Turkey

 

Grace Thoen

AP Human Geography

Mrs. Sanders

JAN 6 2015

                                                                                           Reflection Paper

              Turkey is a country like no other, from its specific folk culture, and traditions to its modern day advances it really is on its way towards greatness. Being an LDC at the moment doesn’t mean it has none of the technology we have, just that its resources aren’t spread out as equally. One reason why Turkey might face a couple setbacks is its lack of Tertiary jobs, which means it doesn’t have as many specialists in that area, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t have jobs. Many people have jobs in agriculture there, more and more of it being commercial agriculture, especially in their bigger crops like wheat. Hopefully in the future these crops will get big enough so more companies can start in Turkey. Turkey has a unique folk culture, it is very Ottoman infused. Some examples of this could be tiles of Bursa and Beykoz glassware. A huge economic factor in Turkey is its marine businesses. Cargo shipping, fishing, and many other things help stimulate Turkey’s economy. Shipping things out to surrounding countries is very easy with over 4000 miles in coastline. One of the big fish crops is Horse Mackerel which is not only exported but also eaten by many in Turkey. The pop culture in Turkey is also increasing significantly. This usually indicates that a country is on the right track towards becoming a developed country. It shows that more people have a bigger disposable income so that they actually can buy all sorts of electronics and music, and maybe even make some of their own.

               How I went about doing this project was simple. I started by researching basic Turkish culture. With the websites I found from that search I collected the information I found important for this project. After that I found a few holes in my research, Architecture and Folk culture were a couple of things I had to especially search for because they weren’t included in basic Turkish culture websites. After I collected what I thought was the appropriate amount of data, I started to analyze it and find the big points as well as some interesting specific examples. Then, I decided which format to make my project. I thought a pamphlet or brochure was too small and a scrapbook needed too many things I didn’t have available. I then decided that a website was the best option because I have experience making them and I can put cool animations in it, and it isn’t overdone like a PowerPoint. I added my information to the website and then proceeded to find fun visuals to make the site interesting. To do this I went to the original sites I got my information from and got a few pictures from them. For the moving pictures I used google and searched for specific “gif” images. I then had to make my Geographic Significance page. This page was a little harder for me to conjure but I think I captured the current state of Turkey economically and socially. To create my annotated bibliography I got together my 5 biggest sources and used EasyBib.com to create them and add an annotation. Overall, I think the most challenging part of this project was the Geographic Significance portion because I wanted to use parts of Turkey that I hadn’t already talked about in other parts of the site. I’m very happy I chose this project because of my background knowledge on Turkey from writing a paper on it in the beginning of the semester, and because of this I am very happy with my work.