I didn't think I'd be back in Turkey so soon, but I'm glad I am!  Just to recap, I'm here in 2013 as an Intern at the US Embassy in Ankara, though I'm writing from Bursa where I've been the last week. I plan on really restarting the blog soon, but in the meantime,  something to think about:

"Political perception... is a matter of date.  If you want to judge anything written by a foreigner about a country, you need to know when the writer first went there... So often the first encounter is formative.  Emotionally and implicitly,... it remains the standard by which all subsequent developments are judged."

-Timothy Garton Ashe