Turkey has an embarrassment of things to see. The challenge isn't finding highlights — it's deciding which ones to chase.
Istanbul is the obvious starting point and genuinely earns its reputation. The Hagia Sophia — built as a Byzantine church in 537 AD, converted to a mosque in 1453, made into a museum in 1934, and converted back to a mosque in 2020 — is a building that carries the whole weight of civilisational history. Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, the Bosphorus crossing, the neighbourhood of Beyoglu with its bars and galleries — Istanbul could absorb two weeks and still leave things undone. Most people give it 3-5 days before moving on.
Cappadocia is unlike anything else in the world. The landscape — fairy chimneys, cave churches, underground cities carved into soft volcanic rock — looks as if it were designed for a science-fiction film. The Goreme Open-Air Museum preserves Byzantine cave churches with frescoes from the 10th-13th centuries. Sunrise hot-air balloon flights over the valley are expensive but extraordinary. Allow at least two full days.
Ephesus is one of the best-preserved Roman cities on earth. The marble Library of Celsus, the Great Theatre (which held 24,000 people), the colonnaded Curetes Street — this is what Rome looked like when it was alive. The site is large; go early before the cruise ship crowds arrive. The small town of Selcuk nearby has good accommodation and is the better base than Kusadasi.
Pamukale — the Cotton Castle — is a hillside of white calcium terraces formed by mineral-rich hot springs cascading down the slope. It looks genuinely strange. Above the terraces sit the ruins of Hierapolis, a Roman spa city where invalids came to bathe in the healing waters. The combination of the two is worth the journey.
Gallipoli and the World War I battlefields are more moving than a simple historical site has any right to be. The Allied landings of 1915 and the months of brutal fighting that followed — with enormous losses on both sides — shaped both Australian/New Zealand national identity and modern Turkish identity (Ataturk commanded here). The cemeteries, the memorials, and the physical terrain of the Gallipoli Peninsula make this one of the most affecting war sites in Europe or Asia.
The Turquoise Coast — roughly from Bodrum down to Antalya — is where Turkey meets the Mediterranean properly. Clear blue water, pine-covered headlands, ancient Lycian ruins sitting beside coves. Fethiye, Kas, and the Blue Lagoon at Oludeniz are the benchmarks. A Blue Voyage by gulet (traditional wooden boat) — sailing between bays and anchoring for the night — is the classic way to experience this coast.
Nemrut Dagi is one of Turkey's strangest sights: a mountain summit in the remote southeast where the first-century BC king Antiochus I built a tomb-sanctuary and lined the terraces with enormous stone heads of gods and kings. The heads have toppled from their bodies and lie around in the rubble. Sunrise and sunset here — with the heads silhouetted against the sky — are memorable.
The Kurdish Southeast — Diyarbakir with its massive basalt city walls, Mardin draped across a hillside, Midyat with its Syriac Christian churches — is a Turkey most tourists never see. It's historically more complex, ethnically distinct, and frankly more interesting to some than the well-worn Aegean trail. Check current conditions before visiting, as the political situation in parts of the southeast can be tense.
Konya is the spiritual center of the Mevlevi order — the Whirling Dervishes founded by Jalaluddin Rumi in the 13th century. The Mevlana Museum, in the green-tiled mausoleum that houses Rumi's tomb, is visited by millions of pilgrims and tourists. Every December, Konya holds a week-long Sema festival with public whirling ceremonies.