Turkey from Space: As Viewed by Astronauts

Throughout the more than 40-year history of manned spaceflight, astronauts have taken hundreds of thousands of photographs of Earth from orbit. Turkey with its volcanic mountains, beautiful rivers and lakes, more than 8,000 km of shoreline, straits and an inner sea, is one of the most beautiful countries on the Earth’s surface. Featuring more than 200 photographs taken by astronauts on board five space shuttles, the International Space Station and Mir Space Station, this book tells the past and present of a land that is literally the cradle of many civilizations. Each photograph is accompanied by a short description and interesting information about the area shown. An inset map on each page indicates the area shown in the photograph in relation to the rest of the country. At the end of the book is a section listing detailed photographic data about each photo, followed by a complete index

The gathering of so many distinct geographic features within a single country is a rare occurrence. No other country has a sea completely surrounded by its land, for instance. Nor is there another one with two major straits. On the one hand, Africa and Sahara are closer to Turkey than many think them to be; on the other, the Caucasus Mountains and the Russian steppes beyond are not too far away. Historically two very important rivers cut beautiful valley in eastern-southeastern turkey whilst the lacelike contours of the Aegean coastline offer a visual feast for the space voyager. Great Mount Agri displays its majesty even from a height of hundreds of kilometers and all the while the island of Cyprus, with its interesting shape, is but one step away from Turkey. Your gaze is fixed on the different colors of the lakes, which are all printed indiscriminately pale blue on atlas maps, in the Lakes Region in Western Anatolia. You become absorbed in the plankton blooms in the Black Sea off the coast of Sinop.

You see contrails from airplanes passing over Turkey and discern some of the Turkish cities, the two bridges spanning the Bosporus, many highways, most major airports and harbors. But you can not see any humans... Or so you think at first. You soon come to realize that we, the people of Turkey and her neighbors, are all there…..