Gallipoli to the Syrian Border Turkey with Simon Reeve

I'm on a journey around Turkey...

HE CHEERS

..a land of beauty and extremes...

This is terrifying and awesome all at the same time.

Look at the size of that!

..a nation torn by conflict and division...

It goes on and on.

Look at this over here.

The war is not something distant at this point.

..with an increasingly authoritarian regime.

Just to my left, there's a protest developing.

..crushing opposition at home and abroad...

Unbelievable. "BBC, English terror agency."

..Turkey is at the very heart of global events.

THEY CHEER

-Assalaamu Alaikum.

-Assalaamu Alaikum.

On this first leg of my journey, I'll be visiting Istanbul,

before heading to the turquoise coast of the Aegean Sea

and on to the border with Syria.

I meet the billionaire

cashing in on Turkey's economic transformation...

..Syrian families struggling to carve out a new life...

Family, family, family.

..in the country now staking a claim to be a beacon

for the entire Islamic world.

I'm on a very windy ferry,

approaching what's often called the European side of Turkey.

In that direction is Greece and the European Union,

in that direction is the Middle East.

It's the boundary between Europe and Asia.

I landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula, on the European side of Turkey.

And so the journey begins.

Look at this. Vineyards.

Wine production isn't something I'd expect to find in an overwhelmingly

Muslim country. Most Muslims believe Islam forbids alcohol.

Some experts think Turkey is the birthplace of winemaking.

Certainly it's been produced here in the region for thousands of years,

but recently, if you can forgive the pun, there's been a bit of a hiccup.

-Selim? Merhaba.

-Merhaba. How are you?

-I'm very well.

Thank you very much indeed for having us.

-It's beautiful!

-Thank you.

They look good. Look at these.

VOICE OVER: 13 years ago,

Selim Ellialti gave up a successful career in IT

to follow his dream and own a vineyard.

He now employs more than 250 growers, presses,

packers and pickers.

Merhaba.

The weapon of choice.

LAUGHTER

I will try very hard not to.

I can't even see them, where are they?

Do I just cut them there?

Happy with that? It's a little bunch of grapes, but, you know,

every bit helps.

What's your favourite part, Selim, of the process?

The most joyful part is drinking...

THEY LAUGH

..at the end of the day.

Selim's here, you'd better be careful what you say.

I'm eating far too many, but they are so delicious. Mmm!

The vast majority of the 80 million Turks are Muslim,

yet many here still like a beer or a glass of good wine.

Modern Turkey was founded as a relatively liberal, secular state,

where religion was kept in check.

For decades, religious Turks

were kept out of many positions of authority,

but now they're in power.

In a strange way,

these grapes have come to symbolise

the tensions that exist here in Turkey.

Turkey is home to both people who are pious and conservative

and people who are secular as well,

people who look to Europe for their identity.

And in recent decades,

Turkey and the Turks have really struggled

about which way this country moves,

the direction of the nation.

Does it look to the West for inspiration or to the East?

And that's never really been resolved, and now,

alcohol and wine has become the battleground.

CELEBRATORY MUSIC PLAYS

It's the start of harvest, so it's time to celebrate.

These are fresh, easy-going,

fruity, aromatic wines.

That's really delicious.

HE LAUGHS

Behind the celebrations,

these are worrying times for Selim and his wife, Pinar.

Just when Turkish wines were being recognised internationally,

the conservative government

started actively discouraging people from drinking.

Tastings, promotions and advertising of alcohol have been banned.

MUSIC STOPS

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It is a difficult year for the industry, for sure.

It was not a very nice,

polite period for me,

and most of the wineries, er, wine brands

are diminishing.

The marketing side, presumably, has become more difficult?

-Yes, exactly.

-You need to be more creative.

We have a small group of bloggers

-who came from Istanbul to see our festival.

-A small group of bloggers.

I love it. This country is so rich and varied, isn't it?

Of course, you have ladies wearing headscarves doing the picking and

-you have bloggers from Istanbul.

-It's a very colourful country.

We have different types

of people, different lives, different beliefs

and we have to learn to live altogether in respect.

If we can achieve this as a country, we are, for sure,

will be capable of making much better wines.

-Much better business.

-THEY LAUGH

-It's all about the business, isn't it?

-That's why we're all here.

It feels like different aspects of Turkey

coexist quite happily here at this party.

I wonder if this level of harmony

is something I'll see on the rest of my journey.

I went east, around the Sea of Marmara,

to a city I love...

..Istanbul.

We're still a hell of a distance from the centre of the city but...

we're in it. It is huge.

Istanbul is now a proper mega city.

Stretching over more than 2,000 square miles,

Greater Istanbul is now six times the size of New York.

Ah!

With traffic to match.

The city is home to 16 million Turks.

It's been the scene of extraordinary recent events -

terrorist attacks, political crisis and, of course,

a failed attempt to overthrow

the nation's hugely controversial leader.

Come and have a look at this.

So, that's the president of Turkey, President Erdogan.

He's a hugely significant figure in recent Turkish history,

probably THE most significant figure in recent Turkish history.

You see his poster up all around Istanbul,

and that's actually something

that's pretty rare in a serious democracy.

Opponents often portray the president as a would-be dictator.

He portrays himself as a devout Muslim from a humble background

on a mission to make Turkey great.

Under his rule, the country's experienced dramatic change.

Millions of people from the poorer east of Turkey have migrated here

to Istanbul, and they've transformed it.

The new arrivals are mostly conservative religious families.

Many settled in what were originally shanty districts within the city.

I think we're here.

CALL TO PRAYER

This is a part of Istanbul that's away from the tourist trail -

an area of often illegally built blocks known as Gezi condos,

houses that landed in the night.

I went to meet a family who call it home.

Merhaba. Merhaba. Merhaba. Merhaba.

VOICE OVER: Many outsiders still call this a shanty town,

but domestic life for the Jamar family

looks surprisingly comfortable.

Oh, look. Look at this!

Slippers for visitors.

They're very nice, thank you very much.

It's the new bride that does all the work.

I have been in a lot of shanty areas in a lot of countries on the planet

and, honestly,

this is unlike any I have seen before.

President Erdogan's success has been built on improving the lives of

millions of families like this.

He's become a hero to the pious and the poor,

providing housing, jobs and growing the economy.

After winning multiple elections,

Erdogan's now arguably

the most successful democratic politician in the world.

And during the recent failed coup,

when a faction of the Turkish military blocked bridges and streets

with tanks, his millions of supporters remained loyal.

The people who live here have not been forgotten.

They are being looked after, if you like,

they're being provided with the essential services of a state.

Sewerage, for goodness' sake!

And if you're the politician who makes this happen,

you're guaranteed votes.

The religious majority here used to be often oppressed and silent.

Now they run the government.

Secular Turks worry that religion

will soon rule every aspect of daily life,

as it does in much of the Middle East.

Wow.

President Erdogan isn't exactly reassuring them.

Rising over Istanbul for all to see is his signature project -

the giant Camlica Mosque.

Look at the scale of it!

This is one of the largest mosques in the world.

I met up with the man in charge of the build, Ergun Kalunk.

The president personally asked you to be involved in the project?

No pressure, then.

The Ottoman sultans were the last to build huge mosques in Turkey.

Right.

Modern Turkey emerged from the ashes of the vast Ottoman Empire

and the president makes no secret of his respect for the Ottoman sultans.

I'd arrived during a landmark in the build,

the completion of the mosque's central dome.

Turkish flag goes atop grand mosque.

It's quite a moment.

It's up.

What does that moment mean to you?

It really is going to dominate the skyline of Istanbul

for centuries to come.

It's extraordinary.

Supporters of it would doubtless say

that it's sort of helping to rebalance the country,

moving cultural power, religious power as well,

away from the secular elite and towards the religious majority.

Critics, of which there are many,

have been a little bit ruder about it and quite cheeky.

Some of them have said that it's a vanity project for the president

and have labelled it the Mosque of Erdogan the Magnificent.

A more charitable view might be

that Ottoman history and Turkey's Islamic faith are being used

by the president to unify the country and make Turks proud.

Many love his grand projects and big vision for Turkey.

It's not just mosques he's building.

Turkey's had a property boom that has made some here very rich.

Istanbul is now one of the major bases

around the world for billionaires.

And we're off to meet one.

It might seem like a contradiction,

but while the nation's leaders stress modesty and piety,

the flash and the super-rich can thrive here.

We're here.

People like the shy and retiring so-called king of real estate,

Ali Agaoglu.

HE KNOCKS

Should knock, knock.

-Merhaba.

-Merhaba.

-Mr Ali.

-Merhaba.

-Merhaba.

Is this your home?

It feels like we're being invited into a very personal space here.

It's an incredible view, an astonishing location.

Connected at the highest levels,

Ali is rarely out of the national newspapers

for his colourful and extravagant lifestyle.

VOICE OVER: Ali's appeared almost from nowhere

and now owns a 50-acre estate

in one of the swankiest areas of Istanbul.

It's a billionaire's home, look at this.

The mind just boggles.

Come on.

These aren't your shoes or your handbags, are they?

Next, it was his cars.

Oh, my goodness.

Ali took me to see his latest and largest development so far.

Whatever you think of him, Mr Ali's a powerful man.

Look at this view.

It is astonishing.

VOICE OVER: I wondered what he made of the changes affecting Turkey.

It was time for me to leave Istanbul.

I crossed the Bosphorus from Europe

and began travelling around the Asian side of Turkey.

So this is the Osman Gazi Bridge.

It's named after the founder of the Ottoman Empire.

This bridge is part of a number of projects around the country

that's designed to connect up Turkey,

connect up the transport infrastructure, if you like.

Look at this, nothing on the road.

These mega-developments have cost billions

and been made possible by enormous borrowing.

SHE SPEAKS TURKISH

HE LAUGHS

Maybe that's why the bridge was so empty.

It cost us more than 20 quid to cross it.

President Erdogan wants Turkey to be one of the world's top ten economies

by the middle of the next decade.

It's a tall order. Like the empty bridge,

some of his mega-developments seem to be white elephants,

and during the last few years, the economy has stumbled.

My route around Turkey was taking me towards the beaches

and crystal clear waters of the Aegean Sea.

It looks amazing.

We're just approaching the Turkish Riviera,

which is the heart of the Turkish tourism industry.

This is such a classic example of how the world has changed,

how Turkey has changed in the last few decades.

You know, you see, driving down into the town,

you arrive into this extraordinary bay.

The hills around covered in trees, absolutely stunning.

You come round here and then you see what the result of that is -

people want to come and have a holiday here,

so look at all the hotels along the front.

This is just a small bit of Turkey's enormous tourism industry.

It is not just a small part of the economy,

it is a massive employer and revenue provider for the entire country.

This is the Turquoise Coast.

HE CHEERS

40 million tourists come to Turkey every year.

At one point,

it was the sixth-biggest tourist destination in the world.

Legend has it that Mark Antony gave this stretch of coastline

to Cleopatra as his main wedding gift.

Wow.

You can see why.

It's really stunning.

The country completely depends on tourism.

But for hotel and boat owners like our skipper, Ethem Yeet,

times are hard.

Ethem, it's beautiful here.

-Thank you.

-Really gorgeous.

How is business at the moment?

How bad is it getting, are you having sleepless nights?

Turkey's position between Europe and the Middle East

makes it strategically vital but also incredibly vulnerable

to the catastrophes that have afflicted the region.

War in neighbouring Syria has been a hammer blow

to millions in the tourism industry here.

It is weird to be here.

Looking out onto Greece over here, this is the island of Lesbos.

A year ago, I was on Lesbos watching as hundreds and hundreds of migrants

and refugees landed there.

It was a complicated and upsetting situation then,

it remains a complicated and upsetting situation today.

There is still no solution to it.

There is still war in Syria,

there are still hundreds of thousands of people

who are refugees,

and, of course, there are plenty of other migrants on the move

around the world at this time of unprecedented migration and crisis.

At the height of the crisis, thousands of migrants and refugees

were leaving Turkey for Europe every day.

The credibility of the entire European Union was threatened.

The EU says it stopped the influx by striking a deal with Turkey

to keep migrants and refugees in the country

and it's giving Turkey billions of euros in aid.

I met up with a people smuggler.

He insisted his identity must be concealed.

At the moment, the flow of refugees and migrants

across the water to Greece seems to have almost stopped.

Why?

So it's not the Turkish government that has switched off the tap,

it's the Macedonian government

closing the border that has really made the difference?

With European borders finally closed,

many Syrians believe their best options are back in the Middle East.

It's not the wealthiest Islamic states they turn to,

like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait -

many Syrians see their future here in Turkey.

Good Lord, people are paying

to be smuggled back out of Europe into Turkey. That's astonishing.

There are now more than 65 million people around the world

displaced by conflict, the largest number since the Second World War.

Almost three million Syrian refugees are living in Turkey.

Many have found work in the country's black economy.

They're hard to track down, living on the margins of society.

Jump in, jump in.

VOICE OVER: So I met up with Musab Yousef,

a photographer who's been documenting the refugee crisis.

Hi.

He's heard about a group of Syrians

working at a stone cutting factory inland.

-Assalaamu Alaikum.

-Assalaamu Alaikum.

Syrians are rarely paid as much as Turkish workers,

leading to claims businesses are exploiting a cheap new labour force.

Employers here have said they're training and often housing Syrians,

which is why they're paid less.

It's very hard to make a judgment on the morality of this situation

because this is not...

This is not a normal situation, this is a time of chaos in this region.

The West and the Middle East are not providing enough support,

so people are going to have to look after themselves

and they're going to need to earn some money for their families.

Jassim Mohammed taught electrical engineering at a technical college

in Syria before he was forced to flee across the border

with his young family.

I'm sorry to ask, but why did you leave Syria?

So is this where you're living now?

-Assalaamu Alaikum.

-You're living in here?

Is it OK to come in?

Assalaamu Alaikum. Assalaamu Alaikum. Hi.

Family, family, family.

Wow.

In a building not much bigger than a garage,

there were dozens of people living together.

We're near the Turkish coast here, we're near a coastline from which

tens of thousands of Syrians left to try and find their way to Europe.

Were any of you planning to go to Europe?

Turks and Syrians share a faith, but their culture and their language are

profoundly different,

yet Turkey is doing more than any other country

to host refugees like these.

I wondered what Jassim thought the future holds for his two boys.

Do you think you'll ever be able to take them home?

The war across Turkey's southern border in Syria continues

with devastating effects.

The refugee crisis isn't the only consequence for Turkey.

The country has been the victim of brutal terror attacks

by so-called Islamic State, targeting cities,

the main national airport and holiday-makers.

I headed back towards Turkey's glorious Aegean coast to Antalya,

past huge themed hotels built like palaces, castles and wedding cakes.

There's even one modelled on the Kremlin.

Well, this really is the resorty bit of the coastline.

This has the feel, to me, of Dubai.

The perfect storm of crises that have hit Turkey have come after

many resorts here had invested heavily

to appeal to wealthier western and Russian guests.

Wow.

That's a statement all right.

Let's get our bags.

I had come to the most expensive hotel ever built in Turkey.

-Hello.

-Hi. Welcome to Mardan Palace.

-Thank you very much indeed.

Cetin Pehlivan has been general manager of the Mardan Palace

since it opened eight years ago.

Costing an eye-watering £1 billion, the hotel has more than 500 rooms.

Wow, look at the size of the chandeliers,

-I was going to say singular, but plural.

-We have five chandeliers.

Sun is shining in Antalya

and Mardan Palace also is shining with that chandelier.

I look at it and I worry about the cleaning.

-We have a special team for that.

-I'm sure you do.

-Yeah.

-I'm sure you do.

-Yeah.

With 10,000 square metres of gold leaf...

..and three football pitches of Italian marble...

..the Mardan Palace appeals perfectly to guests who like luxury

and a tonne of bling.

SIMON CHUCKLES You've got a gondola here.

-Yeah.

-Of course. And we're going to go on a gondola?

-Yeah.

-Of course, of course. What could be more normal?

-Should be unique.

Merhaba.

Right now when you go to Istanbul

-you can see the same in the Bosphorus.

-Yeah.

But we're in a gondola inside your hotel.

Yeah.

Actually, we have not only one gondola, we have two gondolas.

-Every night...

-Why have one gondola when you could have two?

The Mardan Palace employs 1,500 staff.

Thank you.

It has a monthly electricity bill of a quarter of a million pounds.

With overheads like that, it needs to fill every room,

especially its most expensive.

Whoa. How much does it cost to stay here?

-Would you like to learn?

-Yes, please.

15,000 euro per day.

15,000 euros per day.

Who is this gentleman who's walking around, who is this?

-Your butler.

-What do you mean, MY butler?

He will assist you during your stay, our guest.

Are you suggesting I am staying here?

-I'm staying here?

-Yeah.

-Hello, by the way.

-Hello.

-Merhaba, I'm Simon.

-Merhaba.

-Nice to see you again.

I didn't realise you were going to be, you know,

accompanying us into the room. THEY LAUGH

It's... It's...

-It's very nice to see you.

-Yes, OK. Thank you.

HE GASPS

Look at this!

This is the most...

how the other half live place I think I've ever been to.

Just to be absolutely clear,

we are not paying thousands of pounds for me to stay in this hotel.

No letters to Points Of View, all right?

Or the Daily Mail.

A simple breakfast.

Like most tourist businesses here,

the Mardan Palace is feeling the effects

of the drop in holiday-makers.

It's quite sad to see, it's really empty out there.

I mean, maybe a dozen of the sunbeds are occupied.

You're going to have to find new customers

and some hotels around here

think they've got the answer.

The solution could be a new tourism market that seems to fit very neatly

into President Erdogan's new, more religious Turkey.

While the rest of the tourism industry in Turkey sees a slump,

Ufuk Secgin is an entrepreneur who sees opportunity.

How is business for you in Turkey at the moment?

It's booming. Year-on-year, compared to last year, we doubled our sales.

-Doubled?

-Doubled, yes.

So, Ufuk, is this one of yours?

This is one of our top-selling resorts, yeah.

-Right.

-This is called halal-friendly tourism.

-Halal-friendly tourism?

-Halal-friendly tourism, yeah.

Ufuk runs a booming firm offering tailor-made holidays

specifically for Muslims.

What did you have to...?

You had to convert it into a halal-friendly hotel,

no pork and no alcohol, presumably?

Absolutely. No alcohol.

Those are really the basic requirements.

What we then focus on more is the facilities.

-Swimming pool or...?

-Yeah.

There's a complete separate swimming pool for women and one for men

and there's also a mixed zone as well for families.

-So three swimming pools, then?

-Yes.

And what's this here?

So this is, basically,

behind the walls that's the area for all the ladies.

So that's the outdoor pool area.

That's the ladies swimming pool area?

Absolutely.

To cater for Muslims,

the hotel has built a 50-foot barrier through its existing pool.

It's a high wall here to stop people seeing in from the rooms over there,

-is it?

-Yeah. I would say that's the most important thing,

to have the outdoor pool area 100% private.

So what is this area here now?

So this is the mixed pool.

There's a rule in terms of the swimming dress,

so ladies are wearing a burkini.

The mixed pool for families,

ladies can go there generally but they would wear a burkini?

-Burkini, yes.

-So inside...

They can wear a bikini.

Behind the wall there. Bikinis in there, burkinis out there?

-Burkinis, yeah.

-All right.

-And so...

-Usually, people... It's a common understanding.

-Yeah.

-People who choose these type of hotels,

they understand and that's actually why they're coming here

because they know people are observing the rules.

This hotel used to host lobster-coloured Germans and Brits.

The wall down the middle of the swimming pool

is a bit of a shock to me.

I struggle with that.

Demand for halal-friendly holidays here is rising.

Within the next few years,

the global industry is expected to be worth almost £200 billion.

The point is that this industry,

this sector of the industry is booming.

This, clearly,

is the future.

For many here, segregated swimming pools are part of a larger battle

over women's rights. Many women, especially in rural areas,

have struggled to achieve equal rights in Turkey.

The country ranks low on global studies of gender equality.

Only half of all girls between 15 and 19 are in any kind of education.

Some suggest the increasing dominance

of traditional Islamic values won't help matters.

Shall we just stop on the right here?

Brilliant.

This is a large mosque that's being built over here.

It's part of a huge programme of mosque building

across the entire country.

Supporters, I think,

would say that it's a recognition of the faith of the majority of Turks

who are actually really rather religious.

Critics would say Turkey could do with a few more hospitals rather

than yet more places of worship.

More interesting for me, actually,

the workmen have just told us this is a religious education centre

that's being built.

And religious education here's hugely controversial.

I'm off to the town of Konya now,

to a religious school that's agreed to let me visit.

I was heading into the rural heartlands of Turkey,

to the country's most religious and conservative city, Konya.

President Erdogan has said he wants to raise a pious generation,

and religious schools have proliferated in Turkey

in recent years,

with the number of students rising from tens of thousands

to more than one and a half million, an important issue.

The government's proud of the schools, or so I thought.

So, I've arrived in Konya

expecting I'd be visiting a state religious school this morning

but at the last moment

the government has pulled the plug and said no.

Tesekkur.

I was hoping that it would be a chance to learn more

about the growth of religious schools in Turkey,

which is happening at quite a pace at the moment.

I think the fact that we've got here and then we're told we can't go

to the school might make a suspicious person think

that the government has got something to hide.

Certainly, one thing we were told is that people were worried that if

we saw rows of young schoolgirls wearing headscarves,

wearing hijabs and studying the Koran it might make viewers think

that they were looking at a classroom in Iran.

Many Turks feel the curriculum in the religious schools

is far too narrow.

The government here hasn't responded well to their criticism

or to anybody else's.

In fact, freedom of speech is taking a battering here.

In the wake of the failed coup, newspapers have been shut down

and Turkey now jails more journalists

than China and Iran combined.

The remaining pro-government papers

have become a mouthpiece for the regime.

Foreign media organisations are also under suspicion.

Unbelievable. This is the front page main article

on one of the big Turkish newspapers

and the main headline, the banner headline, is,

"BBC English terror agency."

Apparently the BBC has been supporting

or supportive of the organisation

which is suspected of having organised the coup.

And they're basically saying the BBC has been involved in plotting

against the Turkish government.

It's completely unbelievable.

The BBC can't even...

Well, it struggles to get Top Gear right,

let alone organise a bloody coup in another country.

Look at what the increasingly authoritarian Islamic government

here says about faith, women, democracy,

human rights, and it can seem the country's lurching in a direction

many in the West find alarming.

But traditionally this country's been a moderate force

in the Islamic world.

Turkey's a centre for a mystical strand of Islam known as Sufism.

Every year, millions come to Konya to pay their respects at the tomb of

a great Sufi poet and scholar called Mevlana, who preached tolerance,

love and respect.

It's one of Turkey's holiest sites.

Even the president regularly visits.

Is this, as much as anywhere, the soul of Turkish Islam?

Esin Celebi is a descendant of Mevlana and deeply respected figure.

In fact, she's something of a celebrity.

Why did you want to get your photo taken with her?

I am...I'm astonished to see all these police officers.

They've got their feet covered and they've still got their side arms.

Sufis believe in a loving God, not a vengeful one.

One of this nation's most famous symbols is a dance Mevlana inspired.

But it's so much more fundamental than that.

These are the whirling dervishes of Konya.

As they spin, they try to connect their souls to the Almighty.

Their deeply spiritual dance is part of a Sufi tradition that has helped

to shape the traditionally tolerant nature of Islam in Turkey.

And I think what I take away from this is,

fundamentally Turkish Islam,

it is different to how Islam is thought of

and practised to a certain degree in other parts of the world.

For example, Saudi Islam, Wahhabism, which is such a dominant,

powerful force in Islam around the world.

Rather than fearing the rise of religion in Turkey,

some leaders here say the world should welcome it

as a healthy balance to rich, ultraconservative Islamic nations.

President Erdogan has said a powerful, pious but moderate Turkey,

certainly when compared to other countries in the Middle East,

is nothing less than the hope of the entire Islamic world.

I was coming to the end of the first part of my journey around Turkey

as I headed to its volatile and dangerous

southern border with Syria.

Another refugee camp.

And another on the left-hand side as well.

They're scattered throughout this region,

housing tens of thousands of men, women and children.

The Turkish government has built more than 20 huge camps

hosting around a quarter of a million Syrians.

It's an extraordinary act of generosity and friendship.

Turkey's done more than any other country to give shelter

to the millions of people fleeing the unfolding tragedy in Syria.

And we are now arriving into one of the main refugee camps in this area.

Government official Orhan Gurbuz was keen to show me the facilities.

So it's a fully functioning small town, effectively?

-Exactly.

-Does the camp...?

DISTANT THUDDING

What was that noise?

Bombing.

-That was artillery?

-I think so.

-I'm not expert, but, yeah.

-No.

It's common here, we hear all the time.

The hairs on my arms are going up at that sound because that is the war

and that is just beyond this wall right here.

And this, in fact, is basically the Turkish border with Syria.

Just a few miles in that direction was a so-called Isis stronghold.

The Syrian city of Aleppo is a short distance that way.

War is raging there right now.

And we're here inside a refugee camp

with children around playing on their bicycles...

..people going about their business.

It's like a porthole view into another world.

After four long years of war...

-ALL:

-Bye!

..for many Syrians this is the closest they'll get

to some kind of normality.

Look at this!

There's a kiddy play area here.

This is really, really unusual.

And there's so many other things about this camp

that really mark it out -

satellite dishes on loads of the homes, there is street lighting,

there are fire hydrants, there is a sewage system,

there's electricity for people, shops, schools.

They've done something fundamentally different here

and I do think Turkey should be congratulated for it.

Some say these are the best refugee camps ever built.

Turkey spent more than £8 billion on the refugees.

With help from abroad, they even hand out cash cards

topped up with credit, so people can buy what they need in shops.

It's the supermarket.

The cost of all this has hit Turkey hard,

but there could be a solid political reason

behind the government's policy here.

President Erdogan has talked about the possibility

of giving citizenship

to refugees in this country and, of course,

if he was to grant them citizenship,

it's quite likely that they would feel rather grateful to him

and would want to vote

for President Erdogan and his political party.

As predominantly conservative Muslims,

Syrians might be natural Erdogan supporters.

There we go - Turkish language school.

There are signs here that many Syrians think they won't leave.

Thousands have already taken advantage

of state-sponsored Turkish lessons.

THEY SPEAK TURKISH

Sir, is it possible to interrupt for just a couple of minutes,

is that all right?

Why do you think you all need to learn Turkish?

Who wants to be a doctor?

One, two, three doctors.

Four. Maybe, four doctors.

Five doctors.

Who wants to be an engineer? Any engineers?

Is the fact that you are learning Turkish

a sign that you don't think you will necessarily be able to go home?

We were standing out on the main street, I suppose, in the camp,

and I was really shocked to hear the thud, thud of artillery fire.

Turkey is now playing a key role in negotiations

aimed at ending the war.

Millions of Syrians have come to see Turkey

as their ally and possible saviour.

It's all part of the country's increasing global reach.

I have personally been in a number of struggling and stricken countries

where the Turks are delivering aid,

where they're opening and running hospitals,

and I think that's all part of the rise of Turkey,

of Turkey becoming a wealthy and powerful and influential country.

Turkey's one of the most important countries on the planet -

a place where East and West meet and sometimes collide

and with conflict raging in the Middle East, Turkey, more than ever,

finds itself at the centre of world events.

My God!

We've just come up a hill just...

The camp is here.

And rockets...

There's outgoing anti-aircraft fire or rockets,

I'm not sure, just coming from there.

There's a farmer down there,

look, just wandering across his field.

There's another tractor just there.

It's extraordinary how quickly people who live here

become accustomed to it -

how the abnormal becomes the normal.

What happens in Turkey affects the Middle East, Europe,

the great religions and us all.

And this is where the first leg of my journey around Turkey ends.

Next time...

This is terrifying and awesome all at the same time.

..I'll discover some of Turkey's extraordinary wildlife...

Oh, my God.

..I'll see the internal conflict tearing this country apart...

It goes on and on, look at this over here.

..and I get a speaking role in one of Turkey's biggest successes.

What do you think?