I’ve been back in Turkey for about thirty six hours, and I’m remembering all the reasons why I love this place.

There is, for one thing, the sour cherry juice, something that is everywhere in Turkey but rarely seen anywhere else.  You can get it on airplanes, at breakfast in my hotel, in kiosks at the airport and in soft drink machines here and there.  It’s often blended with apple juice and the sweet apple flavor somehow highlights the sour cherry taste.  There’s a restaurant on Second Avenue in New York that serves it; otherwise it’s strictly a Turkish delight.

But that’s not the only thing I love here.  I remember the evening I stood with my parents on a hilltop in Cappadocia; the sun was setting and the soft cries of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer rose from village after village in the valleys below.  There are the mountains of the Black Sea coast, their slopes covered in hazelnut trees lower down; higher up there are lush alpine meadows with giant purple crocus flowers scattered here and there.  Cows in headdresses amble along the narrow mountain roads; there are aromatic breezes sweeping down hillsides covered with wild mint.

It was on my first trip in Turkey about twenty years ago that I began to realize what a special place this is.  I was driving my rented French car along a slick and winding road; an unmarked hairpin turn caught me driving at maybe 25 miles per hour.  The tires lost their grip on the road and the car sailed down the embankment into a muddy field.  The engine cut out and I sat there, hours from Istanbul, not speaking a word of Turkish, stuck in the mud with no idea what to do.

A group of men stood on the road, shouting down to me.  I shrugged at them; I didn’t understand what they were saying.  One of them strode briskly away; a few minutes later he reappeared on a tractor driving towards me across the muddy field.  He stopped the tractor, jumped down into the mud, brought a rope from the tractor and tied it to the bumper of the car.  He got back in the tractor and slowly and carefully pulled the car out of the muck and up the embankment.  Once on the road, I turned the key in the engine; the car started right up.  I got out, walked around the car and there were no signs of damage.

The men were standing around in the rain; I passed around some cigarettes.  It turned out that one of the men had worked in Germany and picked up a few words there.  His pidgin German matched mine; we could communicate.

I thanked the man with the tractor for his help and offered him about $20 in Turkish money for his help.  Much discussion in Turkish; the interpreter told me that the man wouldn’t take my money.

Why not, I asked.

Well, said the German speaker, we are Muslims.

Yes, I said, and?

It’s our religious duty to help travelers — and you can’t offer someone money for the fulfillment of a religious duty.

That made sense to me and I thought for a moment. Summoning up every ounce of German I remembered (never much — a demented teacher taught my high school German class in French) I said that while I didn’t want to offer him money for performing a religious duty, I wondered if it was appropriate to offer him money for the use of his tractor.

Again, there were several rounds of discussion in Turkish.  At the end came the conclusion: it was generous of me to offer money for the use of the tractor, and it would be honorable in my benefactor to accept it.  I proffered the same $20.  Again, there was much discussion in Turkish before the man handed back more than half the value in change.  There was another round of cigarettes (I didn’t smoke, but had brought a few packs along as conversation starters), and with many farewells and expressions of thanks, I went on my way.

I’ve never forgotten that honesty and helpfulness, and I’ve seen it over and over in Turkey on all my subsequent trips.  I’ve been here when U.S.-Turkish were excellent, and I’ve been here when they were terrible.  In good times and bad, the Turks I’ve met with have been consistently welcoming and ready to talk frankly about both the ups and downs in the bilateral relationship.

So far on this trip it’s been more of the same.  People here wish President Obama the best; I’ve heard from people of all the leading Turkish political parties and there’s a strong feeling that the new American president is sincere in his outreach to the Muslim world.

Yet Turkey is going through a painful time and virtually all the certainties of modern Turkish life are up for grabs.  Nobody seems to know how it will all work out, but Turkey is becoming a steadily more complicated place — and the world around it is becoming less predictable and less secure.  Next month the Turkish prime minister will visit Washington; pro-Armenian legislators are pushing a bill to put the United States government on record as declaring Turkey guilty of genocide against the Armenians during World War I.  I worry that not enough Americans will understand just how important or how endangered our relationship with Turkey really is.

I’ll be blogging some more on this topic; for now, however, it’s time to start a new day in Turkey with some sour cherry juice.