"If we, Turks, had been first on inventions..."

OK, so I may be in the US right now (yes, I know, kinda boring for those of you having fun out there) but I've traveled a little and have been to a few Mickey D's.

I have decided to investigate the Suryani culture and even though they don't call themselves Turkish, they are "technically" Turkish. So, I'll talk a little bit about McDonald's in Turkey.

First off, watch the video below. The link was sent to me by my aunt a while ago and I thought it was clever and never thought that I would use it in a class one day! LOL

I was literally on the floor after I had watched this video. Most of you won't get the meaning, so I'll try to explain. In the beginning with the cave people, they're talking about "sis kebab," which is grilled meat on sticks. In the second part, the astronauts are on the moon dancing "halay." Halay is a type of Turkish folk dance where people link arms and dance in circles. The third part with the robot bit is pretty obvious. But after the "I'm loving it" logo you see the astronauts again. You may not understand what's going on there because they're playing a traditional Turkish game called "uzun essek" - in english "long donkey." I don't want to divert from my point too far so if you're interested, read about long donkey here.

Turks love to eat home cooked meals. But with the younger generation, fast food restaurants have found their ways into the Turkish main stream. Although there aren't many menu or style differences between McDonald's in the US and in Turkey, one thing that still blows my mind is that McDonald's has a delivery service in Turkey! Man... talk about having "obesity" on speed-dial. In truth, however, even though fast-food is so readily available, Turkey still doesn't have high obesity rates. Food content and the quality of food is really important in Turkey. Turkey has a high Muslim population and Muslims are very very very meticulous when it comes to the quality and type of meat they consume so McDonald's has a lot of advertisements assuring the quality and safety of their products.

While the website content is pretty similar between the Turkish and US versions, the presentation is quite different. The US version seemed kind of crammed and busy to me. The Turkish version was much simpler and easy to navigate yet still aesthetically appealing. Turkish version also offered to view the website either in flash or in HTML. I think that is important, because even though we are living in a technology age, not everybody's computers are well equipped or up-to-date.

I tried to find pictures from my last visit to Turkey (there were a few if me in McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks), but I have no idea where they are. Just to give you an idea, watch the video below, it should give you an idea of how McDonald's in Turkey is an almost exact replica of McDonald's in the US.

McDonald’s Ramazan Reklam Filmi

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This is a commercial that was aired during Ramadan in 2009. It featured a new item, the "McTurco." Almost like a gyro, for those who know what a gyro is.

Anyways, I hope by now you have a pretty good sense of what McDonald's looks like in Turkey. I hope you do because I a way too hungry to write more! I'm going to go make myself a gyro =]