The Truth About Life Style in Turkey as a Foreigner. How to Adjust Yourself to the Culture and minimize the Culture-Shock?
Living in another country might be difficult for you if you don' t prepare yourself for the cultural differences. Turkey, like every country, has a unique daily lifestyle and culture. It's a big country and has so many different cultures within it. Even though they share common values of the Turkish culture you can easily notice the differences between eating habits, conversations, and conservatism.
First of all, do not ignore the cultural differences you will face when you go to Turkey. Try to understand people until you get used to the Turkish lifestyle. For this reason, we can give you some hints about Turkish culture and general information about people in Turkey.
Things You Should Know About Culture and People of Turkey
- There are many nationalist people in Turkey who are bounded to symbols of their country, such as the Turkish flag. Infact, perhaps nationalism is the one common theme everyone agrees on.
- They have so many social greetings that they use in daily life for different situations. For example, they wish others ease for their work when they go inside their shop and wish for good income when they leave the shop. "Kolay Gelsin" is Turkish for this, which can be translated as "I hope whatever you do will be done at ease." There are plenty of these kinds of social greetings so you can check for more online or learn in Turkey. They would love to teach you.
- Turkish people are passionate to express their feelings in their conversations and this can be seen as an argument for a person who doesn’t know the language. Like Italians, Turkish people love to use their hands when they speak. Even though they may sound loud or shake their hands and heads while talking that doesn’t mean they are trying to be disrespectful to you.
- They love tea. And they love animals. You will see so many street animals (cats and dogs) sharing the daily life with people in a sense.
- There is a group of conservative people in Turkey but not all the people have the same level of conservatism. Women's dress code changes depending on the city/region of the country. Westside of the country is less conservative than the eastern side.
- Many people in Turkey are not good at being somewhere on time.
- It is not that difficult to spot ones who do not care about queues and privacy. They can jump or push while getting into public transportation.
- About transportation and traffic, you can find one of the most careless drivers and wayfarers but this is how they are used to getting around. You can even see a harmony in this carelessness. However try to be careful if you are on traffic, especially in Istanbul. Slowly your idea of how traffic works may change, and you may find yourself as the jaywalker who waits for the traffic, rather than running across the street and think that the traffic will accomodate to you.
Besides all these challenging differences and funny facts, you can find the most hospitable and warm-hearted people you have ever seen in your life in Turkey. They would love to show you around, help you learn their language, protect you against dangers and support you. This also comes from their culture. Of course, everything can be different depending on the place but even in Istanbul, you can find these kinds of people. Just don’t ignore the cultural differences and try to be open-minded. The biggest mistake of many people who moved into Turkey is not being ready for these basic challenges and not be patient, so try to be patient on people and on yourself because getting used to the country can take a year.
A sudden change of the language around you can be hard and sometimes annoying but it is always a plus to learn new languages. When you move into Turkey, try to learn their language to understand people around better and to build conversations easily. Turkish might sound hard at first but the language itself is not complex at all.
Leaving your past daily life behind and moving to another place puts many people into holiday mood naturally. Of course, seeing a new place and experiencing different things is exciting but eventually, life has the same flow in any country around the world, in terms of economics. So, be a part of daily life in Turkey and do not stay in the holiday mood for a long time. If you establish an economic order for yourself then you can find money and time to travel around the country.
