Nature & animals
Van kedisi
The white cat of Lake Van, famous for eyes of two different colours.
The Turkish encyclopedia
Nature & animals
Animals and landscapes with Turkish names of their own — the Van cat, the Kangal dog, Mount Ararat and the Bosphorus running through a city.
4 pages in this category.
Nature & animals
Kangal
The great shepherd dog of Sivas, guardian of Anatolian flocks.
Nature & animals
Ağrı Dağı
The country's highest mountain, the Ararat of the Noah story.
Nature & animals
İstanbul Boğazı
The Bosphorus, the strait that divides İstanbul between Europe and Asia.
Questions
Do all Van cats have two different coloured eyes?
No, and the odd-eyed ones are simply the famous ones. The cats of the Lake Van region are chalk white and strongly built, and some individuals have one blue and one amber eye, which is where the picture on every postcard comes from.
Is the Kangal a sheepdog?
It is a livestock guardian rather than a herder: its job is to stay with the flock and face down wolves, not to move the sheep. It takes its name from the Kangal district of Sivas, and how it relates to other Anatolian shepherd dogs is argued over by breed registries.
What exactly is the Bosphorus?
A strait about thirty kilometres long that joins the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and cuts Istanbul into a European and an Asian half. It is a working shipping lane, a commuter route by ferry and the reason the city is where it is.