Turkey: Something I Don't Know

First off, I figured that this would be a basically easy assignment. After all, my background knowledge of the Republic of Turkey is extremely limited. And since I love folklore, I tried a google search for it. And came up empty. Ok, I didn't look very hard. First off, one of our guests said folklore wasn't a big thing anymore in the middle east. Also, I suffered a lapse of ADD and got distracted. I found the website for the Republic of Turkey: Ministry of Culture and Tourism http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/Default.aspx?17A16AE30572D313D4AF1EF75F7A79681D9DD78D03148A6E

Guess what caught my attention? They have a whole section on works that have been stolen over the years. Now there's a greeting; "Hi, welcome to the Republic of Turkey. I'm Jan, and I'll be your hostess for your visit. Now, here at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, we welcome all nationalities and faiths. Incidentally, here's our section of what famous works have been stolen. Now over here to the left..."

These are artifacts stolen from museums and libraries. The one I thought was the funniest was the bibliographic list of the 62 stolen bindıigs from Yusuf Ağa Library. I guess some Rent-A-Cop wasn't doing his job. The one commonality of them all is that they were made of leather. I wonder if the local vegans were suspected. But seriously, it's bit strange to have that on the official home website. On the other hand, they also had a Recipies section.

When I checked the all-knowing wikipedia for something, all I could find that was interesting was this segment from Prose of the Republic of Turkey: Orhan Pamuk is a leading Turkish novelist of post-modern literature. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He is the recipient of major Turkish and international literary awards. The most recent of his novels is "Snow." Pamuk is the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.

That was really all I could find that was remotely entertaining.