Storks casts shadows as they search for food on the dried-up Lake May in southwest Turkey on October 30, 2021. (Photo by Seyit Konyal/Solent News)

British glamour model and social media personality Demi Rose wowed in a barely there bikini in Turkey in the second decade of August 2023. (Photo by Instagram)

Meropidae are seen on a rock in Van in Turkey on March 03, 2018. (Photo by Ali Ihsan Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

A woman is having a massage at the Lukacs Bath in Budapest, Hungary June 28, 2016. Hungary's capital owes its popularity as a tourist destination partly to its numerous hot springs and bathing culture which have drawn visitors to the area since Roman times. Bath houses range from large, ornate 19th-century buildings like the Gellert and the Szechenyi to tiny Ottoman Turkish-era hamams, some of them more than 500 years old. (Photo by Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)

Buzludzha is a historical peak in the Central Stara Planina, Bulgaria and is 1441 metres high. In 1868 it was the place of the final battle between Bulgarian rebels led by Hadji Dimitar and Stefan Karadzha and the Ottoman Empire. The Buzludzha Monument on the peak was built by the Bulgarian communist regime to commemorate the events in 1891 when the socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement with the founding of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, a fore-runner of the Bulgarian Communist Party. The Monument was opened in 1981. No longer maintained by the Bulgarian government, it has fallen into disuse. Buzludzha is reached by a 12 km side road from the Shipka Pass.

Flames and smoke rising after a fire that broke out in Izmir province of Aegean Turkey on August 19, 2019. Fire brigade crew continue their works. Forest fires have consumed some 500 hectares (over 1,200 acres) of land in Izmir, Turkeys Aegean coast. On Sunday, the fires broke out in four different regions – including two in the southwestern Mugla province and others in Izmir province, according to Agriculture and Forest Ministry. (Photo by Emin Menguarslan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Honorable Mention: “The Storm”. During I was taking photo with my nephew, the storm came and I caught this beautiful moment. Photo location: Kocaeli, Turkey. (Photo and caption by Aytül Akbaş/National Geographic Photo Contest)

People work to rescue a dog from under rubble, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake, in Iskenderun, Turkey February 8, 2023, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. (Photo by Gurcan Ozturk via Reuters)