Traffic

Cars vs. Pedestrians
Cars win every time. We were told before we left for Turkey that the drivers here are crazy. Full stop. Crazy. And it’s totally true. I lived for awhile in Rome and thought those roads were lawless, but it turns out that the Turks take the cake on this one. And I think the biggest difference is that if you walk out into the street in Rome, the cars will stop for you, they just won’t be happy about it. Here, the cars will 1) hit you 2) narrowly miss hitting you while they go around you 3) you may get lucky and have found a good Samaritan who will stop for you. This is in play everywhere: crosswalks, the highway, driveways; and applies to everyone: pregnant women, small children, the elderly. Nobody gets a pass.

We’ve never seen anyway actually get hit, but we’ve seen close calls and perhaps the aftermath of a hit. We were walking home one day and turned a corner to find a car stopped and a man sitting on the side of the road looking shocked and rubbing his head. (The man was sitting next to a large dolly fitted with a nylon tarp bag. The people who use these make a living by collecting recyclables/cardboard and turning them in.) The car belonged to a couple: the man was returning to the car to turn it back on to leave, and the woman was grabbing a bottle of water to give to the man they presumably hit with their car. Again, we did not witness any incident happen, but we come upon a scene and made reasonable inferences.

Driving Itself
We've seen some crazy things while we've been riding in buses and taxis. 

One day Joe's school bus missed its exit and then backed up on the highway to get to it. 

Turn signal? What's that?

Bus drivers shouting at other drivers who pissed them off, then trying to cut them off at the red light. You tell him, Ahmed!

Sometimes we take a double decker bus across to the European side and we prefer to sit in the top front. This can be a harrowing experience when you're in a traffic circle and a tiny car won't let the double decker bus go first and we almost hit them because they refuse to be intimidated by a double decker bus.

One time, when we got on a bus at the terminal station and waited for the driver to arrive, we're pretty sure that he made a bet with some fellow drivers to race their routes. Our route was mainly city streets, minimal highway time. It was crazy. The driver was accelerating and breaking like crazy. At one stop, an elderly lady (with a cane, mind you) signaled for the bus to stop, then looked down at her wallet and fumbled for her bus card. The driver started to stop, but in the second it took the woman to look down, the driver decided that no, she didn't want this bus after all and took the chance to gun it past the stop and left her in the dust.

Child car seat? What's that?

Of course, cutting people off is commonplace in crazy traffic situations. But sometimes there will be someone who wants to turn right, and they will proceed to do so by slowly sticking their nose out in front of rapidly oncoming cars until the cars have stopped for them, and then complete their turn.

There are many bus stops along the highways here, and they are often combined with the highway's entry and exit ramps. These are usually very congested because 1) the buses  and minibuses need to stop to pick up and drop off passengers 2) cars are entering/exiting 3) taxis are lurking for potential fares and slowing down traffic 4) people step into the street to see which buses are arriving 6) it's Istanbul, there isn't any order, and it's already crowded as is.

Traffic Circles
One of the weirdest things about driving here is that the rules for traffic circles are backwards here. When a car approaches a traffic circle, instead of yielding to traffic within the circle, the car entering has the right of way and just drives head on into the circle. The cars that are already in the circle then end up yielding to the cars entering the circle. It seems unsafe and irrational, but then again, wouldn't you rather be in front of someone than behind them? Don't you know that it's me first, then you?