Acting as a bridge between Europe and Asia, living in Turkey offers an opportunity to expand a person’s knowledge of a culture and increase their life experiences. Recruiting personnel security personnel from outside of Turkey would have a large pool of talent to draw from. With the recent drawdown of the US military and the desirable location, qualified personnel would not be hard to find(Crawford, n.d.). City centers such as Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul provide most of the amenities that people require. Also, the cost of living in Turkey is less that living in many of Turkey’s neighboring European countries (Moving to Turkey, n.d.). The EURO and the US dollar also go a long way in Turkey, bringing the cost of living down and making travel with in the country affordable(“5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Travelling to Turkey,” …show more content…
The first thing that a company could do for personnel coming from the United States or Europe is to conduct cultural and religious awareness training. Even though Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world, it is very possible that many Americans have had little to no interaction with Muslim Americans. According to Pew Research, in 2015, there were approximately 3.3 million Muslims live in America which only comprises one percent of the total population (Besheer, 2016). This potential lack of interaction can be the breeding ground for bias or prejudice, conscious and unconscious. Cultural Awareness Training has been shown to change the perceptions of one cultural group to another. A study conducted of health care professionals in Australia showed improved perceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people after they conducted a six week cultural awareness program (Chapman, Martin, & Smith, 2014). A program for a private security firm that is expanding to Turkey could create or hire someone to execute a cultural awareness course that encompassed all the main religions in Turkey. This class could be pared with a basic language training that would assist employees in the beginning months of their time in Turkey. This would give employees a good