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One day in Istanbul - an alluring, tantalising, frustrating prospect. From the 11th floor of the swish Polat Renaissance Hotel I looked across the Sea of Marmara. Ships glided up to the Bosphorus which cuts through the city dividing east from west, Asia from Europe, the only city in the world to span two continents. There was a pregnant sense of place, which would endure for the six days of my first visit to Turkey, taking me to Gallipoli, across the Dardanelles and down to Troy and the Aegean coast.

During this time I got used to seeing portraits and statues of Ataturk at every turn, smiling benignly like a 30s movie star from huge banners fluttering down the fronts of buildings. What I could not get used to was the money, huge wads of notes amounting to virtually nothing. My eyes blurred as I counted the zeros to see if I was parting with a ten million lira note, a million lira note or a mere hundred thousand lira note, less than 10p. Yet nowhere was my befuddlement exploited, in a country where courtesy and respect are the norm.

Greetings and requests are formalised to such a degree that on entering cafes it was as if the waiters were obligingly performing their side of the dialogues from my 'Get By in Turkish' tape. The language has a velvety, unhurried tone. The Latinisation of the script, like everything else on which Turkey prides itself - in particular its secular, democratic status - is thanks to Ataturk, who practically single-handedly transformed the nation in the 1920s and 30s.

'If we did not have Ataturk we would be like Syria or Iran,' my Istanbul guide explained. Did I think Turkey would be accepted into the European Union? he asked. It was a matter of great importance to him. He was concerned about the bad publicity the football killings had caused. Unmentioned, in the way that heartfelt tragedies often are, was the Bursa earthquake in 1999, which left 40,000 dead. My tour over, we were drinking tea on the roof of the Blue House hotel in Sultanahmet, the deep blue Bosphorus on one side, the Blue Mosque on the other. Earlier I'd swathed my bare arms and legs in cool blue cotton, handed out at the entrance of the mosque for the unsuitably dressed, my bare feet luxuriating in the deep pile of the carpet.

That morning the guide had driven me along the old city walls, over the Goldern Horn and across the city to the Bosphorus Bridge. He would not have attempted this were it not a Sunday, he said. Free from the weekday congestion, the traffic raced wildly, shifting lanes as if in a video game. We swept across the huge, elegant suspension bridge. Below the water flowed between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. On the other side we entered Asia and stopped at the top of Camlica, a pine-covered hill, where families strolled and drank tea in the dappled shade and photographed each other in front of the view over Princes' Islands.

Back in Europe the crowds were gathering at old Istanbul's main tourist venues, conveniently close to each other. After the Blue Mosque we entered the vast gloom of Aya Sofya, built in 532 AD. Under its 100-foot dome Islamic inscriptions in black and gold hang beside mosaics of the virgin and child from the 8th century. The building has amazingly survived the vicissitudes of 1,500 years of political and religious intrigue.

A rest in the Pudding Shop before tackling Topkapi Palace. Here the owner proudly showed us a 1979 diary packed with signatures and messages from travellers setting off on the hippy trail to Afghanistan and Nepal. Then the opulent rooms and ornate gardens of Topkapi, built in 1470 and home of the Ottoman Dynasty that ruled three continents for six centuries. I continued on foot over the Galata Bridge where Sunday fishermen stood shoulder to shoulder, hauling up their catches from the Golden Horn. Up steep, narrow dirty streets to the brashly modern expanse of Taksim Square, where young crowds milled and red flags fluttered.

In Haci Baba restaurant the enticing selection of starters left little room for a generous mixed grill. Below the open dining area, on a dirt track, hens paraded and wild cats waited for scraps. Evening time, walking back to the Golden Horn to look for the railway station on the other side. Speeding yellow taxis, six abreast, hooted past, balloons floating from their windows. Fireworks exploded over the city to celebrate Galatasaray's last match of the season. At the station I bought cherry juice and sat in the train waiting for it to leave. In the seats opposite a family petted a baby rabbit and smiled at me.

Too many impressions, too much to take in. Then the next day, perfect peace. A secluded narrow beach with gently lapping clear water, green hills and pine forests rising all around. Birdsong, fluttering wild flowers, purple, yellow and the bright red of poppies. The sun beats evenly and again the sense of place is overpowering. Embedded in the green grass, facing out to sea in low ranks are humble tombstones. 'Well done, Ted,' one says; another: 'In Rembrance of Simpson and his donkey.' Seventeen thousand Anzac troops landed here on April 25th 1915. That night 2,000 died. By the end of the Gallipoli campaign ten months later, 100,000 allied and Turkish troops were dead and a further quarter of a million wounded.

The words of the Turkish commander, Mustahpha Kemal (later called Ataturk) are inscribed here at Anzac Cove: 'You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.' In trenches only yards apart the Turks and Anzacs became close, throwing grapes and chocolates to each other during breaks in shell fire, even picking up each other's wounded and laying them back near their trench. 'We weren't the devils they thought we were,' said the commander of the military museum in Cannakale, a bustling resort town on the other side of the straits. That night in Cannakale I watched the film 'Gallipoli' at Anzac House youth hostel, where it plays every night.

At Troy a disappointing scatter of rubble and a ridiculous wooden horse cannot take away from the powerful feeling of simply being there. Plains of wheat stretch to the Aegean and on the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula I could just make out the enormous block of the Turkish war memorial. Other tourists might have destroyed the atmosphere but, as at Anzac Cove, the place was deserted, the wild flowers dominant.

Likewise the holiday village of Guzelyali was waiting for custom. The Ayisigi Lokantasi (Moonlight Restaurant), newly opened a few days earlier, spoilt me, my guide and driver with fresh seafood starters and wonderful fish. We watched the sun set over the sea and the driver, translated by the guide, described how he'd driven for a Dutch medical team and worked with them for 16 hours trying to reach a child crying 'mama' from the rubble at Bursa. They had failed. We spoke of PKK terrorist fears, allayed after the capture of their leader, and of efforts to integrate the south-east, holding that year's Turkish cup final in the region.

Yet despite a big budget advertising campaign, tourism in Turkey has fallen off. Our next stop, the beach resort of Sarimsakli, has an abandoned air, its hotels empty though numerous beachwear shops and cafes stay forlornly open. Nearby Ayvalik, a perfectly preserved Ottoman fishing town, is not dependent on package tourism, and thrives, boosted by seasonal Turkish visitors. The pier is lined with excellent cheap restaurants, the fish visible in the sea beneath. In the cobbled backstreets mustachioed old men in tweed jackets and gaiters drive decorated carts at breakneck speeds. Undisturbed, a goat, two hens and a cat sleep side by side on the pavement.

We drive to Bergama, 45 minutes away, past women working side by side in the fields, and wind up steep streets to the acropolis high above the noisy town. The ruins here date from the Hellenistic era, when the kingdom of Pergamon was at the height of its power. The theatre is as impressive as the drive over the Bosphorus Bridge. Emerging from a stone tunnel you find yourself in the top row of precipitous seats cut directly into the hillside, overlooking 100 kms of countryside.

And then it was on to Izmir and the plane to Heathrow with random details of one small corner of Turkey etched in my mind. Maybe it would take a lifetime to get the full picture, with so many layers of history and myth overlapping, so many time barriers to push through - a feat as impossible as covering Istanbul in a day.

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