Turkey and Diaspora Reconnection

What this page is

The framework item this page fills is about diaspora and reconnection. Turkey has two versions of that story running in opposite directions, and both are worth understanding before a trip built around family.

The people who left

From the 1960s onward, labour agreements sent very large numbers of Turkish workers to Germany and then to the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, France and beyond. What began as temporary migration became permanent communities, and there are now second, third and fourth generations abroad for whom Turkey is a grandparent's country rather than their own.

That produces a particular kind of trip: a returning visitor who speaks some Turkish, holds a family village in mind, and wants to spend time in a specific province rather than on a circuit of sites. It is a different itinerary from a first-time tourist's, and it usually needs more time in fewer places.

The city everybody arrived in

Istanbul is the other direction. UNESCO describes its value as residing in the unique integration of architectural masterpieces reflecting the meeting of Europe and Asia over many centuries, and that meeting was made of people. Strategically placed on the peninsula between the Balkans and Anatolia and between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the city was successively the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and it has drawn populations from across both for more than two thousand years.

Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Balkan, Levantine and Anatolian communities all built parts of the city that are still standing. Walking Istanbul with that in mind, rather than as a sequence of monuments, is the single best thing a visitor with any connection to the region can do.

What a reconnection trip needs

Time and a driver, mostly. A day in a provincial town, an afternoon at a cemetery or a village mosque, a long lunch with people who remember. Those do not fit in a coach itinerary and they are the whole point.

What we can and cannot do

We can build the itinerary around the places that matter to you rather than the places on the postcard, arrange a driver and an interpreter, and give the days enough room to be useful. We do not do genealogical research, and we will not promise access to records, property or individuals that we cannot arrange.

See Historic Istanbul and culture and etiquette.

Sources

• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: the inscription of the Historic Areas of Istanbul in 1985 under criteria (i)(ii)(iii)(iv). Accessed 14 September 2026.
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Turkey’s State Party record: twenty-two properties inscribed on the World Heritage List. Accessed 14 September 2026.