Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQs)   

The majority of the questions and answers listed below will have been quoted from a book "101 Questions about Turkey and the Answers" written by Hakan Kutlu. Copies may be purchased by contacting Gwen Bylund at gbylund@efes.net.tr  

1. What is the difference between a police officer and a Gendarme? 

The armed forces in Turkey are made up of four branches: Army, Air Force, Navy and Gendarme (Jandarma in Turkish)  Police officers have to study for eight months and they work in town and cities,  The Jandarma are the military police and maintain security in rural and frontier areas, especially they work in villages.  Jandarma has 250,000 personnel and 25,000 vehicles (jeeps, speed boats, ambulances, motorbikes, etc.)  The Jandarma also maintain the security of TV and radio stations, prisons, football matches, airports, dams, some factories, petrol refineries, border gates, retired generals and retired members of parliament.  They perform rescues in ski resorts: check the licenses of fishermen hunters, nightclubs and cinemas.  There were 2604 Jandarma stations spread throughout Turkey in 1998. 

There is a special branch in the Jandarma, which is called Tourism Jandarma,
which operates in holiday villages providing for the security of tourists.  They
are attached to the Interior Ministry of the Turkish Republic.

2. Why are there so many half-built building in Turkey?

Many tourists have noticed that there are numerous half-built and left like that
houses in Turkey, that's true.  In Greece when they finish the building they have
to pay taxes immediately but in Turkey this is not the main reason.  Here are a
few reasons why Turks do not finish the building quickly:

a. Because of high interest rates (more than 50% annually) many Turkish people
do not prefer to get a loan from a bank or from a finance company.  They build
their houses themselves slowly.

b. Not many Turkish people can afford to pay the whole price of the house in cash.  So sometimes 50 and sometimes more than 500 couples build a co-operative and pay a quarter of the total price of the house in advance and pay the rest amount in instalments for 4 - 6 years.

c. Some families build the first floor of their house, move in and keep building
upstairs for years without hurry, so when their children marry in the future he
or she can live upstairs.

d. In touristic resorts (like Alanya, Bodrum, Fethiye, Marmaris, etc) it is illegal to
do any loud works like building between May and November so that tourists can
have a peaceful holiday.

3. Why are graveyards not well looked after??

99% of the Turkish people are Muslims and Islam prohibits wasting.  Spending too
much on anything, even on a grave or graveyard is also accepted as wasting. 
It is preferable to construct an ordinary grave just to let everybody know where
he or she is buried and to spend the money on the poor instead as alms.  Most of
the time the gravestone will include the name of the deceased, date of birth and
death and "Ruhuna Fatiha" which asks the visitors to say a prayer for the soul of
the deceased.

4.What is the average wage and what jobs are well paid?

Certainly tour guiding in Turkey is not the best paid job but it can be counted in
the top 20% of the good and well-paid jobs.

60% of the population earn between $100-$350.00 per month.  The legal minimum
salary is a bit more than $125.00, but 6% of the people receive less than the
minimum salary.  Most Turks get paid monthly, not weekly or not per hour.  Turks
working as bureaucrats (there are nearly 4 million of them) get pay rises twice a
year in January and in July.

The current government decided to give a 15% per cent pay rise last January. 
There were many protests against this decision because the inflation rate is
around 35% per year. Bureaucrats do not have a union because of the constitution. 

There are many unions but just 1.5 % of the population are union members.  3 out
of every 10 Turk are  wage earners. 7 out of 10 are self employed.  The most
popular jobs in the last decade were: economics, electronics, aircraft and computer engineering, medical jobs, insurance and tourism.  Listed below are the salaries of
some jobs: