The Lifestyle You Want at a Fraction of the Cost in Turkey

We all fantasize about what our ideal home could look like. Maybe it includes a beautiful setting, great food, lots of interesting things to do. Well, Turkey’s got all that and a very attractive cost of living. 

Generally we’ve found that people are familiar with Turkey as a bucket list destination. It’s where you go to see a few main sights in Istanbul and then take a hot-air balloon ride over Cappadocia. But Turkey has so much more to discover than just a handful of experiences, especially for anyone on the lookout for a new home base. 

Lots to discover 

There are thousands of years of history everywhere you look in Turkey. We could definitely spend months in Istanbul alone discovering all the historic sights. Just visiting the Sultanahmet area alone offers a truly remarkable collection. This is the historic centre of Istanbul which features so many iconic sights: the Aya Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Blue Mosque, Basilica Cistern and more.

But don’t just stop with Istanbul. During our first visit to Turkey, we spent over a month on the Turquoise Coast. During that time, we visited the ancient Roman sight of Patara. It was quite something to be the only people in the ruins of a 60-thousand person amphitheatre. And there are plenty of these incredible sights with just a fraction of the visitors that you would see in Greece or Italy. 

For more recent history, we also spent an afternoon exploring the ruins of Kayakoy. This town was evacuated by the Greeks in the 1920s during the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey. And it’s been empty ever since.

We experienced all this and we only covered a very small part of Turkey during our trip. There’s enough to keep you busy exploring for years. 

If you’re interested in a more modern take on Turkey’s culture, Istanbul is a huge city with many distinct neighbourhoods. We really enjoyed staying in Cihangir which has a hipster restaurant or cafe on just about every corner. We also had a great time heading across the Bosphorus for a day in the markets of Kadikoy. This is a vibrant neighbourhood and much less touristy than Sultanahmet or Istiklal. 

People

The next reason that Turkey is a great place to settle is the people. Before we visited Turkey, family and friends had concerns about our safety. It seems like there are a lot of misconceptions because of headlines in the news. In fact, what we found was that Turkey felt like a very safe country and the Turkish people were incredibly warm and friendly. This was everywhere we went, from the big tourist areas to the small towns. 

We were also worried about how people would react to our dogs. But people of all ages just fell in love with our dogs; they wanted to meet them and take pictures with them. It was really unexpected and a lot of fun.

Natural beauty 

Because it’s us, the great outdoors is going to be pretty high on our list of reasons to make a home anywhere. We love spending time in nature and Turkey has so much to offer. It’s a huge country with a very diverse landscape: miles and miles of coastline, mountains ranges, forests, incredible rock formations and more. We hiked a few segments of the Lycian Way, which is a 500 km path along the Mediteranean. And along the way we stopped at beautiful beaches and ancient ruins. 

We also enjoyed Patara beach, which is Turkey’s longest beach at 18 km and seemed to go on forever. Even just an everyday walk with our dogs in Fethiye was spectacular. This is a seaside town with a beautiful waterfront and mountains in the background. 

We saw all that natural beauty and yet we barely covered even a small percentage of Turkey. Cappadocia and the Black Sea Region are just a couple of the places still on our list to visit.

Food

Where to begin with the food? This was one of the most memorable aspects of our time in Turkey.  The food is what brought us back a second time and will certainly bring us back again. Just walking down any street, you can see right away all the interesting food available. Let’s start with borek, which we’re a little obsessed with. It’s a pastry that’s also similar to a pasta and there are many varieties in terms of the shape, flakiness or type of filling. 

We also love lamacun, which is a thin bread spread with a meat sauce, baked like a pizza and then rolled up and eaten right away. Another one of our favourites are midye dolma or stuffed mussels. We would order 10 or 20 of these and just eat them on the spot. And when you’re out and about in Istanbul, a grilled intestine sandwich is the perfect on-the-go snack. For an even more daring option, there’s the sheep’s head where the meat is sliced off for you right there. This turned out to be pretty tasty so we actually tried it a second time. 

This is just a very small sampling of the amazing variety of food available in Turkey. A lot of these foods we just mentioned were grab-and-go snacks but, of course, we had many elaborate sit down meals as well. Our absolute favourite meal in Turkey has to be the Turkish breakfast. This is a long, leisurely meal with breads and spreads, cheeses, jams, olives and more. And the best part is that it costs just a few dollars. 

Cost of living

The low cost of living shouldn’t be your only reason to retire to Turkey but it’s a huge benefit once you’re there. Because we’ve gone there as tourists, we’ve paid higher prices for our accommodations. If you were staying long term, you would pay half or even a quarter of what we paid. And once you’ve settled the cost of accommodations, everything else is very inexpensive. Certainly it’s been the cheapest location we’ve gone to on our journey so far.

A ferry across the Bosphorus is 50 cents; a grilled fish sandwich at the waterfront is just a couple dollars; a lavish breakfast is only $4. We ented a car for just $10 USD per day although Gillian did research pretty hard to get that deal. 

The cost of living, the food, the great hiking, all that history and culture — these are all great reasons to make a home in Turkey. But there are a few considerations for anyone thinking of staying long term. 

Reality check

First of all, yes the cost of living is low but the currency is unstable at times. When we were planning our trips to Turkey, we saw many swings up and down with the exchange rate. This could work out your favour and you might get even more value for your dollar. But if you’re staying in Turkey long term, you could also see inflation. Generally you might need some flexibility in your budget as your costs could change month-to-month and year-to-year.

Our next consideration relates to Istanbul. We really enjoyed our time there but it is a huge mega-city. And it comes with a lot of the issues that you would expect in a city of 16-million people. So you do get all the culture and dining and shopping that you would expect in a big city but there’s also poverty, homelessness and the streets aren’t always the cleanest in every neighbourhood. If we were staying in Turkey long term, we might choose somewhere quieter on the coast, like Fethiye or Bodrum. 

Another factor is that local integration might be challenging. Yes, we found the people in Turkey to be very warm and welcoming. However, outside the tourist areas, English is not as commonly spoken. So it might be harder to make connections with locals. Of course we recommend learning the language in whichever country you settle in. But this won’t happen overnight and Turkish pronunciation can be a bit tricky for english speakers. 

And then there’s the weather. Most of the country gets all four seasons. If you’re looking for 12 months of t-shirt weather, you’re not going to get it in Turkey. The Mediterranean coast is the warmest place to be during the winter — but you’ll still be wearing a jacket on most days.