Ten Facts about turkey

1. A frozen turkey should be kept frozen until you are ready to defrost it, then submerged in a pail, pot, or sink full of cold water.
2. If the turkey is unstuffed, you can give it a flavor boost by seasoning the cavity with salt and pepper, and adding two peeled and quartered onions, two carrots, and two celery stalks, as well as a couple of bay leaves and sprigs of parsley and thyme.
3. When the turkey has been moved to its resting place, put the roasting pan over two burners of the stove, turn the heat to medium, and use a heatproof flat whisk or slotted angled spatula to loosen whatever yummy bits are in the pan.
4. In the 1990s, Turkey's economy suffered from a series of coalition governments with weak economic policies, leading to high-inflation boom-and-bust cycles that culminated in a severe banking and economic crisis in 2001 and a deep economic downturn (GNP fell 9.5% in 2001) and increase in unemployment.
5. Turkey entered NATO in 1952 and serves as the organization's vital eastern anchor, controlling the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and sharing a border with Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
6. Turkey and EU officials have begun the process of screening Turkey's laws and policies in order to begin negotiating the individual chapters required for ultimate EU accession.
7. Asian Turkey and European Turkey are separated by three connected waterways of great strategic importance: the Sea of Marmara and the straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles (also called the Turkish Straits).
8. Turkey borders the Aegean Sea and Greece on the west; Bulgaria on the northwest; the Black Sea on the north; Georgia, Armenia, and the autonomous Azerbaijani republic of Naxçivan on the northeast; Iran on the east; and Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea on the south.
9. The landscapes of Turkey are varied, from fertile plains in the northwest and southeast to broad river valleys in the west to high barren plateaus and towering mountains in the east.
10. Turkey borders eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Iran and the Nakhichevan exclave of Azerbaijan to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast.