Taurus Mountains to Istanbul Turkey with Simon Reeve

I'm on a journey around Turkey.

A place of beauty and extremes...

This is terrifying and awesome all at the same time.

Look at the size of that.

..where conflict and division

threatens to tear the country apart...

It goes on and on. Look at this over here.

War is not something distant at this point.

..with an increasingly authoritarian regime...

So just to my left, there's a protest developing.

..crushing opposition at home and abroad...

Unbelievable. "BBC English terror agency."

..Turkey is now at the very heart of world events.

Bye!

-As-salamu 'alaykum.

-Wa'alaykumu s-salam.

On this second leg of my journey around Turkey,

I'll travel from the country's southern borders,

north to the Black Sea coast

and on to the capital city,

before I reach my final destination, Istanbul.

In the northern highlands,

I visit a remote community keeping an ancient language alive.

BIRD-LIKE WHISTLING

In the volatile south, I meet the Kurds

singing a lament to oppression and conflict.

You can see this is a police station

guarded and protected from bomb attacks by these blast barriers.

And I get a speaking part in a Turkish mega-drama taking the world

by storm.

What do you think?

I began the second part of my journey in the south,

where the rugged peaks of

the Taurus Mountains provide breathtaking views.

-Do you want to ring them?

-Yeah.

Shall we just stop on the left somewhere here?

My guide was Buket Sahin,

whose family once lived as nomads in these mountains.

If we just go quickly.

SHE SPEAKS TURKISH

It's a hell of a landscape here, eh?

We've come to find the Yoruk people,

who many believe are the original

inhabitants of the country now called Turkey.

The Yoruk still spend much of the year living a nomadic life,

travelling long distances, often on foot, moving with their animals.

Merhaba!

When we finally found Mahmood, he'd just set up camp for the night.

While the sound of goats signalled

the arrival of his wife, Songul, with the herd.

-Merhaba.

-Simon.

-Merhaba!

It's a lion.

Wow! That's been in a few scrapes, hasn't it?

Look at that.

Where have you brought the goats from?

Hundreds of years ago, it's said that there were a million of these

nomadic people living in the central plains of Turkey...

..in something like 200,000 huge tents.

Now there's just a handful of families left

who live a nomadic life.

A sort of link with the past, I suppose.

For all of us.

But life isn't easy for Mahmood and his family.

They're a minority group in modern Turkey,

a country with an authoritarian Islamic government and they often

face hostility.

What just happened?

Yoruks are Muslims but they generally don't pray in mosques.

Turkey's recently become more Islamic and Yoruks are sometimes

seen as inadequately religious by more pious Turks.

Locals just came up and basically threatened you

and told you you had to leave.

Do you ever feel unsafe on the road?

You've got two small boys with you.

Did you say wolves?

What a way of life, eh?

Incredible.

21st-century.

As you can hear, there's a lot of dogs out there.

BARKING At least, I hope they're dogs!

BLEATING

Night, all.

BARKING CONTINUES

These dogs make more noise than cockerels.

Barking, barking, the entire night.

On the plus side, no wolves and no snakes.

After the warning, the family were

packing their belongings and moving on.

Do you want me to lift him in?

It feels like you really love them.

We were heading off on our separate journeys.

Bye-bye.

Mahmood and the children will drive on ahead to set up camp

while Songul follows ancient trails through the mountains

that only a Yoruk would still recognise.

The last of the Yoruk nomads...

..heading off into the sunrise.

Just over 50 years ago, almost all Turks were rural.

Now they're almost all urban.

Nomads don't quite fit the mould.

I headed east along Turkey's volatile southern border with Syria,

towards the historic Turkish city of Mardin.

So-called Islamic State was still holding positions a few miles away.

Turkish forces have been involved in the war in Syria.

It's a conflict with huge consequences for this country as well.

So, look, the border, the fence is right here.

Just by the side of the road.

The name of this city, Mardin, means fortresses.

And this place is no stranger to war and conquest.

This really is such an ancient city.

It's such an ancient region, actually.

Some of the earliest human settlements found anywhere on this

planet have been found here in this area.

I think because the area, the region, is so old,

it's sometimes easy to forget that

Turkey itself is a relative youngster.

Turkey, the country, is less than 100 years old.

Of course, Turkey was formed out of the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Lots of different ethnic groups,

all coming together under one flag and supposedly all becoming Turks.

Turks are a proud, patriotic people

but not all of the ethnic groups here

have wanted to unite under the one flag.

On the right, just here, look,

you can see this is a police station and it's guarded and protected from

bomb attacks by these blast barriers here.

And that's designed to deflect the shock wave

from a car bomb...or a truck bomb, for that matter.

So-called Islamic State has infiltrated

and launched attacks here but war

in Syria has also helped reignite a bitter conflict inside Turkey.

Just stopped by the side of the road to take a look at the foggy view.

These are Kurdish communities out here.

Kurds are an ethnic group found

living in different countries throughout the Middle East

but they lack their own nation or state and, for decades,

many Kurds here in the south-east of Turkey

have been campaigning or fighting for independence or autonomy.

There are millions of Kurds in Turkey.

They are at least one in five of the population.

I headed into the heart of the Kurdish region

to the ancient city of Diyarbakir.

Kurds have a proud history, culture, and their own language.

But for decades, they faced

repression at the hands of the Turkish state,

particularly the Turkish military.

SINGING

I met up with Kurdish activist Mehmet Kaya at a cultural centre...

..where a group of local singers meet

to perform traditional Kurdish songs.

Is it true that it hasn't actually been possible,

always possible, for the gentlemen to sing like this?

So just to be clear, singing in Kurdish was illegal?

Speaking in Kurdish in public was illegal?

Mehmet is a moderate but, for decades,

some Turkish Kurds have resorted to violence in their fight for autonomy

for an independent Kurdish state.

The main Kurdish armed group is called the PKK.

It's classified as a terrorist group by the Turkish government and other

countries like Britain and the US.

So we're right next to the old walls of Diyarbakir now.

During the long conflict between Kurds and Turks,

tens of thousands have died on both sides.

There had been a ceasefire but the war in Syria helped end that.

The conflict here has restarted and escalated.

Oh, my God.

In Sur, the historic centre of Diyarbakir,

street battles erupted.

We're one of the only TV crews to see the consequences.

This is where,

just months ago,

a smallish group of Kurdish rebels, or terrorists, decided they wanted

to declare autonomy for this area of the city.

They dug trenches and erected...

set up booby-traps.

The Turkish state didn't react very

well to that, as you can probably imagine,

but they reacted with what I think it's fair to say

is overwhelming force.

Turkish security forces rolled in here with tanks and artillery.

The PKK fought back with assault rifles and explosives.

Look, and it goes on and on, look at this over here.

It's unbelievable.

There were buildings

all around us here.

This place has been levelled.

This is ground zero.

The authorities say the damage from fighting was so extensive,

they need to flatten the area to rebuild.

There is a real question about

proportionality here.

Elements within the Turkish army thought it was perfectly acceptable

to bring tanks in to this area,

and use tank weapons and artillery against citizens of Turkey.

Of their own country.

It's unbelievable.

Amnesty International is reporting that up to 40,000 residents

were forced to leave this area.

Hundreds of homes have since been demolished.

I start to get, here,

a real sense of the tragedy

that lies at the heart of this tortured relationship.

There have been tears and death

on both sides for so long here.

The government blames all this destruction on Kurdish terrorists.

Much of Sur has now been expropriated by the state.

Officials say they'll rebuild this historic area.

Metin Evsin is in charge of the project.

Is this all damage from the fighting as well?

Have you got to restore and rebuild there?

The residents that used to live here are now being told they can

buy subsidised high-rise flats on the outskirts.

Some here say Kurds are being deliberately displaced from Sur to

change the political landscape.

It looks extraordinary. Suddenly, secret police appear.

Jonathan, stop filming - right now.

There's a heavy security presence around here

and it's very difficult for us to film.

We've just had an encounter with Turkish police officers

who were pretty bloody rude, to be honest.

The authorities here prefer it when the media are under their thumb.

There's been a huge crackdown on

free speech and the opposition across Turkey recently.

Hundreds of journalists have been arrested or fired.

Foreign writers have been detained.

The situation here in Diyarbakir is only compounded

by the Kurdish-Turkish conflict.

Tensions are high. So just to my left,

there's a protest developing

with lots of young, youngish men who've left the mosque

after Friday prayers.

You can see the armoured vehicles on my left.

There's water cannon. There's a lot of armed cops around.

We can't film clearly, overtly.

I can't look at the camera because they'll guess

and then we could be arrested ourselves.

We can't afford that to happen because we could lose all of

the footage that we have shot so far in Turkey.

There's not really a process of discussion.

There is confiscation.

I think we're going to go around to the right here.

OK.

What a place.

Under the current government,

both sides in this struggle had taken a step forward towards peace.

But now, they've gone two steps backward.

Popular elected Kurdish officials have been arrested.

Kurdish militants have launched deadly attacks.

The conflict shows little sign of resolution.

I headed north towards Turkey's

eastern border with neighbouring Armenia.

I was on my way to a dramatic and beautiful,

yet rarely visited, part of the country.

Who the hell gets on the train at ten to eight on a Saturday morning?

No wonder there's nobody here!

With rolling plains and huge mountains,

Eastern Anatolia is little known to foreigners.

But outside the tropics,

this is one of the richest countries

in the world for plants and wildlife.

I don't know about you,

but I don't really associate Turkey with amazing plants and wildlife.

But they are here.

Turkey, it turns out, has incredible biodiversity.

In fact, Turkey has almost as many endemic plant species as all of

Europe put together.

I think this is my stop.

My destination was the Sarikamis forest.

Can, Can!

Good to meet you.

Lovely to meet you.

Can is one of Turkey's leading conservationists.

So we're now in the Sarikamis forest.

We always keep an eye open for any wildlife that might pass by.

Even brown bears,

very rarely wolves during the day,

and lynx are possible so just keep your eye open.

-Brown bears, wolves and lynx?!

-Yes. They're all here.

-Really?

-Oh, yeah.

-They're here in the forest?

-That is very exciting.

-Yeah.

Can has been carrying out the first detailed survey of Turkey's

brown bear population.

ALARM SOUNDS

Oh, there's the bear alarm!

So Can has just had an alert from one of his bear traps

suggesting that maybe there's a bear that's been...

-caught.

-We have caught a wolf once

in one of these bear traps, so even a wolf is a possibility.

OK. And it's important to get there quickly for the animal's welfare,

presumably also so it doesn't escape and nothing else finds it...

-Exactly.

-..trapped there.

-Exactly.

Right, there's a van up ahead.

BLEEP.

So what do you think has happened?

I don't know.

False alarm.

He activated the trap, got caught, and pulled it out.

And he's denying it, of course, we can see.

So we are now setting it up.

We set it up so that the bear is forced to enter the trap,

either this way or the opposite.

Cos, you know, there's a dead sheep in there,

so the bear will come and eat it.

-There's another entrance here. Is there a trap here?

-Right there.

-Where?

-Well, that's the point.

You're not supposed to figure it out.

Walk in there on all fours like a bear would.

You want me to walk in there on all fours like a bear?

Yeah, so you see how it works.

-OK.

-So go down on all fours.

So just go in there. Go towards the sheep.

Right, yeah, the sheep does look particularly inviting at the moment.

-You're not going to get to the sheep.

-Are you sure?

-Whoa! So then I... Oh, my goodness!

-Now pull,

-like a bear would.

-Look at that.

So it would just pull away.

Of course, he will try to pull out,

but what happens is, after a couple of minutes,

they just stop and kind of wait until we show up.

Can and his team then sedate the bear and fit a radio collar,

so that its movements can be tracked

and they've made an extraordinary discovery.

The data we collect has shown that some of the bears we

collared migrate to the more

productive temperate rainforest facing

the Black Sea, where they have access to a lot of acorns

and forest fruits and then they migrate back.

So this, I would say, is the most important discovery of the project.

It's a global first.

So these are the only bears of their kind in the world that migrate.

We checked the entire literature.

The world's only known migratory brown bears...

-Amazing.

-..period.

So the trap has been set

and there are traps throughout the forest here.

Hopefully, later, there will be some bear activity.

So far, Can has trapped and tracked more than 30 bears.

And his research has resulted in a rare triumph for conservation and

for wildlife in Turkey.

-It's pretty amazing here.

-It is very nice.

Sarikamis forest has some of the highest numbers and densities of

brown bears in Turkey.

These animals cover massive areas.

You cannot have a sustainable, viable wolf or bear population

in a small city forest. So we have to be connected.

We have convinced the government to create Turkey's first

wildlife corridor.

Can's wildlife corridor links and connects pockets of forest -

the bear's fragmented habitat.

His aim is to create an unbroken 100-mile band of forest,

stretching north all the way to the Black Sea,

giving bears the chance to move freely and, crucially,

spread their gene pool, which lowers their chances of extinction.

This is an enormous environmental and conservation success, I think,

-for Turkey, isn't it?

-Yes. It's one of the few positive conservation

stories to come out of Turkey in the past decade.

Despite the new forest corridor,

the bears still face serious threats.

Can's tracking shows that while

some bears are using the wildlife corridor,

others have stopped migrating...

Straight ahead, one just went over the top.

..gathering instead at their favourite diner.

It's the Sarikamis landfill.

Landfill? A dump.

The town dump is the best place to see bears.

Look at that!

My God!

It's a huge, beautiful brown bear.

Look at the size of that!

Some of these males at this garbage dump because, you know,

they're feeding all the time,

they do reach grizzly sizes - up to 364 kilos.

Wow! I can see the black shapes moving around.

-There's...what?

-The maximum count was 42.

I personally counted 33 in one night.

-33, here?

-Personally.

-At one time?

-Yeah, one time.

-That's extraordinary.

Yeah. So they don't migrate

because there is food here in the rubbish dump.

Yeah, I mean, migrating is quite...work, you know.

A 250-kilometre round trip to eat acorns and fruit.

I mean, why would you do that?

So these bears have learned this behaviour.

But there's a lot of plastic here so they swallow plastic bags along

the way, chemicals, so it's very unhealthy.

The bears need to migrate through

the forest corridor and eat a healthy diet

and spread their genes around.

At the town dump, it's not only a dangerous diet they're getting,

but unwanted attention.

The locals come in. See, just local guys.

-Sightseeing.

-They want to see bears.

It's not safe, because you get people who get out the car and I've

even seen people taking selfies with the bears right behind them.

People get out of their cars next to the bears?

Yeah, and we're worried it's going to lead to an attack one day and

the bears will be blamed for it and they will be all culled - or killed.

About four, five years ago, we said a gate needs to be installed.

The gate was installed the next day.

The problem is, within three days,

that gate that only garbage trucks could open,

it was dismantled and thrown away.

What I was told by the garbage-truck drivers,

because it was too much of a hassle to get out, open the gate,

-to close it again.

-Ah, right.

Yeah, so we just talked to the new governor of Sarikamis,

and he totally agreed with us.

So we're hoping there will be a gate installed, like, that's automatic,

just for garbage trucks.

-OK.

-But it is like, you know, groundhog day.

Every year, we tell the same thing to different people again and again

for, like, a decade now.

It's saddening to see these majestic bears

scrabbling around in plastic bags.

They are a Turkish national treasure.

The failure of the local authority to protect them is part of a much

bigger problem in Turkey.

Nationally, conservation hasn't just been a low priority,

it's been forgotten.

It's really sad. Really disappointing.

I think it's an area of life in Turkey

where things really need to improve

dramatically, drastically.

Turkey is ranked 177th out of 180

countries for conservation.

Two of the only countries that come

beneath it are Somalia and Afghanistan.

I mean, Turkey is not doing well

when it comes to protecting something

that is so fundamentally wonderful about this incredible country.

I went north towards the valleys and highlands of Turkey's Black Sea

region and to another area of extraordinary beauty.

I love those moments when just nature can be so stunning and brings

a lump to your throat.

Its deep valleys and rugged terrain has meant that this region's always

been isolated and cut off from the rest of Turkey.

But now, that might be about to change.

So we think this is a relatively modest linking road,

connecting up to what will be called the Green Road.

It's going to be built snaking

through the upper hills and highlands here,

more than 1,000 miles long.

It's the kind of grand national infrastructure project that's

marked the leadership of Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It's very tricky. Part of the reason that President Erdogan is now quite

possibly the most successful democratically elected politician in

the world, he has won that many elections,

is because he is building things.

He is transforming the country.

He's building roads,

loads of them, and lots of people love that

but it doesn't endear him to everyone.

The government says the Green Road will link up isolated communities

and encourage tourism and economic development, but some locals here are unconvinced.

People here have a bit of a reputation - strong-minded,

strong-willed, a bit eccentric.

In an isolated and beautiful valley,

Metin Akunju runs a bed-and-breakfast

with a slight access issue.

Lovely to meet you.

SIMON LAUGHS

Flipping heck.

Metin, what on earth is this?

What is the drop beneath your cable car?

It turned out the crate had

been built by a bloke in the local village.

Right. OK.

Oh, bloody hell.

But Metin assured me he had designed it to take the weight of a cow.

It all looked pretty sturdy.

OK.

Aargh!

Oh, my God!

It wobbles a bit. In a rather scary way!

This is terrifying and awesome, all at the same time!

Very good, Metin.

Very good.

What inspired you to create this system?

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, wow!

Look at this.

Ho, ho, ho!

It's fantastic, Metin.

Beautiful.

COCKEREL CROWS

Your eggs from your chickens.

Your honey from your bees.

From "the outside"?

What do you mean "commercial road"?

You think the Green Road is actually to encourage and enable mining?

You keep living your incredible life.

An inspiration to us all, Metin.

-Bye-bye, Metin.

-Bye-bye.

-Are you going to send me off?

-Hope to see you again, eh?

I hope so, too.

It is a bit tricky to get to,

but Metin's extraordinary B&B gets five stars from me.

Driving through these valleys,

you do realise just how isolated the communities were

before the arrival of roads.

The villages are nestling in these incredibly steep valleys

and, historically, it was very difficult, of course,

before mobile phones, for people to communicate when they were on one

side of the valley from their loved ones.

But in the village up ahead, they came up with a solution.

Kuskoy.

We are here.

BIRD-LIKE WHISTLING

Mustafa still uses a language that

is thought to have originated in these valleys hundreds of years ago.

So just to be clear, many of you communicate here by whistling?

HE WHISTLES

Flipping heck!

It's a rather beautiful sound coming out of your mouth there.

All the way up there?

Wow!

Does Eren speak whistling?

Merhaba, Eren. Merhaba.

HE WHISTLES

HE WHISTLES

SHE WHISTLES

HE WHISTLES

WHISTLING

It felt like time to go.

Just to the north, I reach Turkey's Black Sea coast.

The most powerful figure in recent Turkish history, President Erdogan,

grew up around here.

Huge posters glorifying him are everywhere.

I can't stress enough what a significant figure he is

in modern Turkey.

He's a political colossus here.

But Erdogan isn't the first controversial charismatic politician

to dominate Turkey.

I headed to the nation's capital.

The city of Ankara became Turkey's seat of government

when the nation was founded in the 1920s by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

His mausoleum still draws millions of Turks today.

I mean, this is incredible.

Look at the scale of this.

All for one man.

MILITARY DRILL COMMAND

Ataturk, the father of the nation, closed Islamic schools,

gave votes to women

and aggressively insisted Turkey should be a secular state.

Most Turks, but especially secular Turks,

still revere Ataturk.

The military here have long been seen

as the ultimate defenders of Ataturk's ideals.

They've launched a series of coups,

particularly when they thought a government has become too Islamic.

Now President Erdogan's ruling party

is openly Islamic.

He thought he had the military under control,

but then, in 2016, a faction within the military launched another coup.

So this is the Turkish parliament building.

On the night of the failed coup,

several dozen MPs, Members of Parliament, lawmakers,

took shelter inside the building,

partly as sanctuary and partially to defend it,

because they could hear gunfire in the streets around.

And while they were inside,

a Turkish Air Force fighter bomber came over

and tried to bomb the building.

Can you imagine how bizarre that would be

if you transposed that attack,

that event, to London or Washington?

What an assault on democracy that would be.

The coup attempt was defeated.

Erdogan emerged as a hero,

a defender of democracy.

People rallied to him.

He blamed the coup on the secretive Gulen movement,

led by a US-based Turkish preacher.

A state of emergency was declared

and a massive round-up of suspects began.

It's since become a purge on an incredible scale.

Tens of thousands, including army officers

but also journalists, teachers and doctors

have been arrested, detained or sacked.

I'm trying to meet up with somebody

who's been caught up in the purge.

But we can't meet too openly,

so we've come to a location outside the city.

Hopefully, she's going to turn up.

I'm meeting one of the few brave enough to speak out.

She was suspended as a teacher without warning.

-Nice to meet you.

-Lovely to meet you, too.

TRANSLATION:

She denies any link to the plotters.

So why do you think, then,

that you have been targeted and suspended from your job?

Some say the purge is a legitimate reaction

to a secret, dangerous organisation.

Others fear it's being used to crush all opposition to Erdogan.

He's elected and has huge support,

but some commentators now believe he wants to keep power for ever,

even taking the country down a path towards dictatorship,

while also shifting Turkey to become a fully Islamic nation,

governed by religious principles and laws.

They point to the enhanced role of the Diyanet,

the government department responsible for religious affairs,

as evidence of this new direction.

I think I'm about to get as close as I will

to the heart of power and influence in this country.

I'm off to meet the man who's been described

as the calm power in Turkey.

The Diyanet is the religious authority

that oversees Turkey's 85,000 mosques.

It writes the crucial Friday sermons.

The Diyanet is central to the lives

of millions of people in this country,

even if they don't know it.

Under President Erdogan's rule,

the budget of the Diyanet has quadrupled during the past decade.

It's powerful and influential.

I met the boss, Professor Mehmet Gormez.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you, too.

-Nice to see you.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

-That's lovely.

-Thank you so much.

-Thank you. Tesekkur.

-OK.

-Tesekkur ederim.

-Tesekkur ederim, yes.

-It's OK?

-Yes.

-Yes.

-Thank you. It's OK.

I've been practising. All right.

So, Professor, I would really like to try and understand

the direction that Turkey is taking.

TRANSLATION:

'President Erdogan has said women can't be treated equally to men,

'and that, as good Turks, they should have at least three children.

'But the professor was keen to stress

'Turkey's more liberal Islamic values.'

'In the Islamic world,

'Turkey's always been a more tolerant moderate voice

'than ultra-conservative countries like Saudi Arabia.'

President Erdogan has said that Turkey is the hope

of the Islamic world.

In the Middle East, we've seen areas that are in complete turmoil.

Does the Diyanet have a role to play in guiding and inspiring Muslims

around the world?

I thought that was really interesting.

I'm not looking to airbrush out the problems of this country,

from the treatment of minorities and women

to human rights abuses,

the quashing of free speech.

There are terrible things happening here,

and yet, in many of the neighbouring countries,

in this part of the world,

things are much, much worse.

I really hope Turkey as a nation

can deliver on the high morals

that he said this country embodies.

'Below the offices of the Diyanet...'

Looks like I'm going down to the car park.

'..work is already well under way

'to spread Turkey's religious messages and values -

'around the globe.'

Look at this!

So this is Diyanet TV.

Here, brand-spanking-new,

state-of-the-art television and radio stations

broadcast 24 hours a day.

Oh, my goodness. Look, it's the gallery.

'Critics complain the Diyanet is the religious mouthpiece

'for a president intent on creating

'a more conservative, authoritarian nation.'

They get seven million viewers here in Turkey alone.

They have YouTube videos up

that are watched by more than 25 million people,

so there's a lot of influence coming from this room

through the channels.

President Erdogan's supporters say

this is for the majority of Turks who are religious,

and they claim it allows the moderate values of Turkey

to be broadcast around the Islamic world.

It can be hard to get a handle on Turkey.

Is it European or Middle Eastern?

Religious or liberal?

Perhaps it's a bit of both.

For decades, people have been wondering and worrying about Turkey.

And they've encouraged and pressed the Turks

to make a choice between the East and the West,

between being part of Europe or part of the Middle East.

And most people said that Turkey needed to choose,

it needed to make a decision,

but the sense I have, the strong sense I have,

is that Turkey's going to do something different.

Turkey is not going to choose East or West.

Turkey is going to choose its own destiny,

it's going to take its own path.

And that really matters,

because Turkey is powerful and it is influential.

Both in terms of religion and faith,

but politically, militarily, and through culture as well,

as I hope I'm about to see.

Turkey hasn't been so key to global affairs

since the time this land was ruled by the Ottomans -

part of the greatest Islamic empire the world has ever seen.

Under President Erdogan,

the popularity of the all-powerful Ottoman sultans,

grand rulers, has soared.

Perhaps that's no coincidence.

The Turks are calling it Ottomania.

Look at this!

Merhaba.

All very normal.

I don't know why they're looking at us

like we're out of place.

Exactly! Yeah, they are.

This is Magnificent Century: Kosem,

a huge period costume drama

set within the sultans' royal palace.

You might have missed it, but it's broadcast to the world,

watched in prime time in scores of countries

and making lead actors like Farah Zeynep Abdullah -

who partly grew up in Maidenhead - global superstars.

You're a big star...

-Thank you.

-..in a mega-drama.

Your one goes out to a quarter of the world.

-Yeah. Wow!

-A quarter of the world!

It does, yeah.

Scary. What role do you play?

I play Faria,

who is a Hungarian princess

and a warrior at the same time,

-so she's a...

-You're a warrior Hungarian princess.

-Yeah.

-That's pretty cool.

This drama is even popular in conservative Islamic countries,

where the strong female characters

have become heroines, and even role models.

I'm just admiring your empire.

The show was the brainchild

of executive producer Timur Savci.

TRANSLATION:

Timur's drama has even been blamed

for rising divorce rates.

You've created an incredible world.

Have you heard about this?

Men have been coming, from some of the Gulf states, to Istanbul,

to get their moustaches cosmetically enhanced

so they can look like a sultan.

Is this true?

-Yes.

-Unbelievable!

You're not going to believe this.

I'm getting roped in to the production.

What do you think?

-So...

-Hey.

-It's a tricky moment.

I rather like it.

It's not a difficult part.

-Are you seriously saying I have to say a line?

-Yes.

-In Turkish?

THEY SPEAK IN TURKISH

HE SPEAKS IN TURKISH

Sorry to interrupt,

but they're ready and they're there waiting for us.

We can practise over there.

Wow. OK. Thank you very much.

HE PRACTISES HIS LINE

You cannot act but you must stay like this.

Yeah, OK.

Right hand over to the left.

THEY PRACTISE LINES

I've forgotten the words!

Bloody hell.

(That was all right.)

-Perfect.

-Oh! No.

My coach, my mentor.

This is a huge Turkish success story.

A project with a massive audience,

a global reach that promotes a powerful story

and strong characters.

It is a lot of fun to be just a tiny, tiny part of it.

I headed back to Istanbul,

where the real-life palaces of the former Ottoman sultans

and the magnificent mosques they built

still draw millions of visitors.

This is close to where my journey around Turkey began,

and it's where it ends.

I do feel that my travels in this country

have shown me many of the huge problems and issues

that Turkey is facing -

and nobody should deny they exist -

but I do also think this journey

has shown me much of what's best about this great country.