Guidebooks tell you that Turkey has a good bus network and that 'buses are faster than trains', but do you really want to spend 12 hours in a bus? When you can travel on an inexpensive air-conditioned train, with a bed in cosy private sleeper, a restaurant car for meals & room to move, through fantastic scenery unspoilt by roadside development? Travellers who take the train rave about their experience.
Turkey's best trains are now modern & air-conditioned. Savvy travellers will use a train for long distances (for example, Ankara to Konya, Izmir or Kars) then a short bus trip to reach places off the rail network, for example the South coast resorts or Cappadocia.
Much of the network was built by the Germans, and the joke goes that they were paid by the mile, hence the twisting nature of Turkish rail lines. But the first section of a high-speed line from Istanbul to Ankara opened in 2009, and the high-speed network is growing...