I was a guest-lecturer at Ege in Bornova/Izmir 20 years ago for a year, teaching Latin, Archaeological theory, and Roman art.. My subsequent career took me in a different direction, which didn't involve Turkey, so I haven't kept up my contacts with Turkish colleagues in the way I should have, and my impressions of Turkish archaeology are outdated, but for what they're worth, here's the main points that come to mind when I think of Turkish archaeologists.

1. Enormous respect. My colleagues were conducting and publishing competent, interesting research despite

- lack of a research library - it's quite a feat to publish anything under those circumstances!

- very modest research funding

- linguistic challenges (I tried to learn Turkish, which was vastly more challenging for me than Latin, Greek, Italian, French and German had been (I grew up bilingual Dutch/English). I mention these languages not to show-off, but to show that I know what I'm saying when I stress that Turkish was far more difficult to grasp for me... I assume Turkish speakers have as much difficulty learning French, German, English, etc.

- Strong educational background

- Driven

- Mainly solidly positivistic

- the students as a rule tended to struggle with "critical thinking" (the following three scholars disagree on topic x. Which scholar do you find the most persuasive? etc. etc.). Of course, my current students do so too.

2. excellent work, but under difficult circumstances; a lot of illegal activity on sites, and very little support to combat it.

3. creative in finding ways to get the most out of the limited resources and networks of contacts.

Hope this helps!

Steven

You might take a look on this paper: http://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/free-archaeology-turkey/

Best,

Christophe