Thats so good to hear.
I guess I take my statements back then. Still funny how the stereotypes get broken overtime.
Honestly I didn't even know what the Turkish "stereotypes" were till the internet exploded into the reddit/twitter era of it now...and everything just becomes uni-dimensional in its own way for that because people are looking for simple hot takes to have some fun and smack talk online and so on.
To me modern Turkiye comes from Ataturk founding of it (which is VERY unique phenomenon just by itself in the muslim world as it has made Turkiye quite a balanced country overall on many aspects) and I always thought of it as interesting country at all kind of crossroads and doing quite well (with the cards it got dealt) all things considered.
Istanbul and so on too play big part of my impression from early times because that is what you would see in movies and so on that I grew up with.
One US navy veteran friend of mine also told me one fine day..."dont get a Turk pissed, they got brass balls" lol. I think it was convo that started when we heard about the Turk AirForce cargo planes that were grounded when Ukraine war started. He had a good experience in his service years w.r.t Turks I figure...that would have been in the 70s and 80s, the guy is long retired.
Surprisingly in my life there was yet another American (teacher in middle school) that is one of biggest Turcophiles you will find on the planet, he absolutely fell in love with your country and he would go on at length about it in class from time to time lol (he lived for while in Turkey and he is retired there now - I plan at some point to visit him lol).
Then I look at reddit kind of trash talk stuff and theres a whole different side of stuff people get up to that I just dont understand or care much for lol. Maybe I am the oddball here (especially as far as Indians go who enjoy to break everything simply into A vs B which side are you on etc) compared to the internet generation stuff that maybe occupies lot of the limelight these days.
Which is a pity, I think more people should know more about the real and true Turkiye.
Then things do not seem so strange or shocking at all w.r.t say Turkish advancement in aerospace like TB2 illustrated and hurjet, TFX etc will with time as well. It seem perfectly natural consequence to me.
Anyway sorry for straying a bunch off topic, I felt this need to be said that there is a lot of nuance in the end w.r.t impression on Turkiye that you might not get from relying on the online stuff too much.