My name is Giulia and I’m a 25-year-old volunteer from Italy. I came to Turkey at the end of April 2026 with zero expectations, but I’m leaving with much more than I arrived with. Everything became an experience, even if only a few rose to the level of memorable. Two months is a really short time to get to know a place and its culture, but being aware of not having enough time is exactly what pushes you to experience things you otherwise wouldn’t.
Izmir is said to be the most progressive city in Turkey: the richest in the western region, the most supportive of the opposition, the city where you see things you wouldn’t normally see elsewhere in the country — open nightlife, visible secularism, a freer public culture. Izmir looks a lot like Europe, and yet it still carries its Turkish heritage. It’s a city where you see women wearing shorts and women wearing the niqab on the same street, where modern offices and skyscrapers sit a few neighborhoods away from poorer areas with ancient Ottoman and colorful houses.
This contrast runs through the volunteer work itself. One day, English classes happen in a magnificent high school with statues, art clubs, and a view of the sea. Another day, they happen on top of a mountain, in a school for the women of the neighborhood.
This diversity of class, ethnicity, language, culture, food, becomes even sharper once you leave Izmir and the western coast and head into inner Anatolia and the East. They feel like different worlds. But that’s what makes Turkey what it is: a country still carrying the weight and richness of an empire’s heritage. Two months wasn’t enough to understand it. It was enough to know I want to come back and try.