same thing happened to me .. i was in turkey for a bit more than 3 months and when i came back all our turkish friends assumed that I should be fluent by then.. worst of all my husband acted like he knew what it was like because they had all come overseas to learn english.. but i think its harder to go to turkey than to come to speak english because at least they have english channels on tv over there and are somewhat exposed to the western way. i used to do these great lessons online with online turkish learning centre.. but their website seems to be down now.. if it comes back up i’ll send you the link.. also if i buy pimsleur turkish lessons i can send you a copy over the net :) hope this helps.. and hey i know how frustrating it is to be there and not understand!!

Well, I live in Antalya, and I have the same issues as you—the problem is we live in tourist areas, and everyone speaks English, so we don’t really have to try to speak Turkish. I have a friend who lived in east Turkey with her boyfriend’s family for seven months, and she came back pretty much fluent because no one there knows any English.

Like you, I’m doing the teach yourself thing, just because I find most teachers useless and expensive. I guess we just have to press on and force the Turks to speak Turkish to us, no matter how embarrassing it is for us. Scary.