Life as an English Teacher in Turkey

The social institution

Çay: the glass that runs Turkey

Turkish tea — çay (pronounced “chai”) — is not a drink. It is a social institution, a greeting, an offer of hospitality, a reason to pause, and the medium through which Turkish social life operates. It arrives in a small tulip-shaped glass on a small saucer, usually with two sugar cubes, usually without being asked for, usually repeatedly. In a carpet shop you didn’t intend to enter. In a teacher’s staffroom before the first lesson. At every meeting that involves any kind of transaction. Accepting çay is the beginning of human interaction in Turkey; refusing it is a minor social snub.

Turkish tea is brewed in a double-stacked pot (çaydanlık): the lower pot boils water; the upper pot holds a concentrated tea; when serving, the two are mixed to individual strength preference. The resulting drink is a dark amber, slightly bitter, and genuinely different from the milky tea tradition of British culture or the bagged tea of American hotel breakfasts. Teachers consistently mention learning to drink çay as one of the earliest cultural adaptations — and coming to love it as one of Turkey’s great pleasures.

Turkish coffee (kahve) exists too — thick, unfiltered, made in a copper cezve, served in a tiny cup with water, grounds settling at the bottom (which are then read for fortune-telling: fal). Less ubiquitous than çay but part of the cultural vocabulary. A teacher who learns to say “Bir çay alabilir miyim?” (Can I have a tea?) within their first week has done more for their social integration than anything else.

One of the world’s great culinary traditions

Turkish food: the cuisine built on empire

Turkish cuisine is one of the world’s great traditions — the cooking of an empire that spanned from Vienna to Baghdad and assimilated culinary influences across that entire range. The daily food that teachers eat most:

Simit: The sesame-encrusted circular bread ring that Istanbul runs on. Sold from street carts and simitçi shops everywhere; ₺10–20 (29–59 cents). Eaten at any hour. Best eaten warm with white cheese (beyaz peynir). The unofficial symbol of Istanbul street food.

Kebab: The word is a category, not a dish. Döner kebab (rotisserie meat, thinly sliced); şiş kebab (skewered grilled meat); Adana kebab (spiced minced meat on a flat skewer; from Adana; beautiful); İskender kebab (döner over bread with tomato sauce and butter; from Bursa; extraordinary). ₺80–200 per portion depending on venue.

Börek: Thin pastry (yufka) layered with fillings — white cheese and parsley; spinach and cheese; minced meat. Baked or fried. Found at börek shops (börekçi) throughout every Turkish city from dawn. ₺30–60 per piece.

Meze: The Turkish approach to dining — a spread of small dishes shared at the table. Hummus; babaganoush; cacık (yoghurt with cucumber and mint, similar to tzatziki); mücver (courgette fritters); sigara böreği (fried cheese pastry cigars). Often served with rakı (aniseed spirit — Turkey’s national drink) at meyhane (taverns) in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district.

Baklava: The layered nut-and-syrup pastry that Turkey claims as its own (Greece contests this). Gaziantep’s baklava is considered the finest. Pistachios over walnuts in the Turkish tradition. ₺15–40 per piece.

Breakfast (kahvaltı): The Turkish breakfast spread — olives, tomato, cucumber, white cheese, eggs cooked multiple ways, butter and honey, jams, bread, simit, and endless çay — is one of the world’s great meal traditions. Weekend breakfast in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu or Kadıköy restaurants, lasting 2–3 hours over multiple çay refills, is what Turkey offers teachers who value the quality of daily life.

Cultural context

Islam, hospitality, and Turkish cultural life

Turkey is a majority Muslim country (approximately 99% of the population identifies as Muslim) but with a complex, secular constitutional tradition established by Atatürk in 1923. The balance between secularism and Islamic cultural practice varies significantly between Istanbul’s more cosmopolitan western neighbourhoods and more conservative areas of the city and country. Teachers in Beyoğlu or Kadıköy encounter a largely secular, progressive urban culture; teachers in more traditional neighbourhoods or outside major cities encounter a more observant Islamic cultural environment.

The ezan (call to prayer): Five times daily; broadcast from mosque loudspeakers throughout Turkish cities and towns. The sound is genuinely beautiful — the muezzin’s chant rising above the city in the pre-dawn dark or at sunset — and becomes part of the daily soundscape. Most teachers report adjusting quickly; some describe it as one of Turkey’s defining atmospheric elements that they miss when they leave.

Ramazan (Ramadan): The Islamic fasting month; dates shift earlier by approximately 11 days each year. During Ramazan in Turkey: many restaurants close during daylight hours (particularly outside tourist areas); iftar (breaking the fast at sunset) is a major social occasion with special foods; school and work schedules sometimes adjust. Showing awareness and respect for fasting colleagues is expected and appreciated.

Turkish hospitality: Misafirperver (hospitality towards guests) is a deeply held Turkish cultural value. Foreign teachers are guests in Turkey, and this status generates genuine warmth and generosity from Turkish colleagues, students, and neighbours. Invitations to family homes, gifts of food, offers of help navigating bureaucracy — this hospitality is a consistent and valued part of teacher experience in Turkey that distinguishes it from more transactional social cultures.

The defining experience

The Bosphorus: Europe and Asia separated by 700 metres of water

The Bosphorus Strait connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, separates Europe from Asia, and is the reason Istanbul exists. The strait is approximately 700 metres wide at its narrowest point — you can stand on the European shore and clearly see cars on the Asian shore. The Bosphorus ferry — the vapur, operated by İDO — crosses between continents for ₺30–50 (under $1.50). Teachers who commute from the Asian Side to the European Side (or vice versa) take this crossing daily as their commute, looking at one of the world’s most extraordinary urban waterscapes.

The Bosphorus cruise — public ferry lines that travel the full length of the strait, past Ottoman palaces, wooden mansions (yalı), and the two Bosphorus Bridge crossings — is one of Istanbul’s great free or very cheap experiences. The sunset Bosphorus view from Üsküdar on the Asian Side, looking west at the minarets of Sultanahmet silhouetted against the sky, is an image that stays with teachers long after they have left Turkey.

Language

Turkish: beautiful, logical, and genuinely different

Turkish is an agglutinative language in the Turkic family — unrelated to Arabic, Persian, English, or any European language. It operates on a suffix-stacking logic where complex meanings are built by attaching suffixes to a root word. “I cannot make you love me” becomes “Seni sevdiremiyorum” in Turkish — one word. This logic is actually very systematic and learnable once you grasp the principle, but it requires building from a completely different grammatical foundation than anything in European language tradition.

Turkish uses the Latin alphabet (since Atatürk’s 1928 language reform replaced the Ottoman Arabic script) with some additional letters (ş, ç, ğ, ı, ö, ü). Pronunciation is almost entirely phonetically regular — far more so than English. Basic survival Turkish — greetings, ordering food, giving taxi directions, market transactions — is achievable within 4–6 weeks of daily practice. Teachers who invest in Turkish language learning describe it as one of the most personally rewarding aspects of their Turkey posting, and as opening Turkish social life in ways that English-only existence cannot.

The country as playground

Turkey as a travel base

• Cappadocia: 1 hour flight from Istanbul; volcanic fairy chimney landscape; hot air balloons at dawn; underground cities; Byzantine rock churches with intact frescoes
• Aegean coast: Ephesus (best-preserved Roman city outside Italy); Pamukkale (white travertine thermal terraces; Hierapolis ruins); Çeşme beaches
• Mediterranean coast: Antalya and the Turquoise Coast; ancient Lycian cities; Blue Cruise (gulet sailing); Aspendos Roman theatre
• Eastern Turkey: Mount Ararat; Lake Van; the ruined medieval city of Ani; unique Anatolian landscapes rarely visited by tourists
• Black Sea: Trabzon; Sumela Monastery (5th-century monastery carved into a cliff face); Kaçkar Mountains trekking; tea plantation culture
• International: Istanbul’s Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen airports connect to Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Budget carriers (Pegasus, SunExpress) make European city breaks affordable

The honest picture

What teachers actually experience in Turkey