Your Opinions for Best Turkey Road Trip

My only trip outside Istanbul was to Bursa, a couple of months ago. Bursa is an attractive city that's much less hectic than Istanbul. The covered market is smaller and less enclosed, so you're not breathing much second-hand smoke. The sights I think might especially interest others include:

• Muradiye Complex with many beautiful tombs (Wikipedia has photos). I thought some of these were more beautiful than the big-name mosques in Istanbul, but of course they are tiny in comparison.
• Ulu Camii, the Grand Mosque--though you may be mosqued out after Istanbul
• Yesil Camii (ditto)
• Silk Bazaar, a died-and-gone-to-heaven shopping opportunity for folks who love scarves, though other goods are on offer, including some items of wool or cashmere rather than silk. I'm not an aficionado of scarves, but I had the impression the prices were really good.
• Ataturk Museum, located in a beautifully restored traditional Ottoman house.

There are other worthwhile sights. I must warn you that, although the tourist office nominally spoke English, I had a great deal of difficulty understanding the English-speaker. I'd expect to have to get info from the internet or from hotel staff.

This is a bit off from what your post is asking about, but I thought I would put it out there as a possibility in case you found it interesting at all. Gate 1 has a pretty low cost tour of Turkey.
https://www.gate1travel.com/europe/turkey/2024/escorted/turkey-tours-13dafftr24.aspx

Sent you a PM with a link to a kinda sorta similar road trip that my spouse and I took in 2020, it may have some useful info for you. Cheers.

This might be too far out of your way, but I saw some interesting places around Antalya last spring. The trip report is here: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/ancient-cities-of-western-turkey

Termessos and Sagalassos were particular faves.

You will get more ideas of if you read everything you can find on the internet right now; travel and general news....

I haven't done a road trip (did a RS tour) but it would probably help to give more details about your interests (food, culture, historic sites, Roman ruins, beach, etc.) and how you will be traveling (private car, public transport) so you get responses that are helpful. Absent that, I'd say Ephesus, Aphrodisias, Cappadocia region (specifically the Goreme open air museum and a balloon ride).

@acraven

Silk Bazaar, a died-and-gone-to-heaven shopping opportunity for folks
who love scarves, though other goods are on offer, including some
items of wool or cashmere rather than silk. I'm not an aficionado of
scarves, but I had the impression the prices were really good.

I am a huge scarf aficionado, and I have always thought it would be interesting to visit Bursa, even though most of the mulberry trees are gone and most of the silk now comes from China. Your comment just bumped up Bursa on my priority list.

Ataturk Museum, located in a beautifully restored traditional Ottoman
house.

So many cities have Ataturk museums. Antalya has what they call the "Ataturk House," even though Ataturk only spent a couple of nights there. Everything is perfectly preserved, just as it was in 1930 or so.

My hotel highly recommended the Bursa Ataturk Museum specifically because of the building it's in. I think he actually did spend quite a bit of time there, and they have some furnishings he really used. (That doesn't really matter to me, but it would to some folks.)

Edited to add: As an example of the pricing at the silk bazaar, I bought a lightweight, narrow scarf with a cat motif (looks like Laurel Burch, but I don't see a copyright symbol) for TL 150 (about $6). It's about 53" by 11.5" and carries a Bursa Ipek tag, though I don't see it on the company's website. (Prices on the website seem high compared to what I saw in Bursa, but I no nothing about silk.)

I doubt that I'll ever use the scarf, but it seemed an appropriate souvenir from Turkiye. I only saw one shop with silk priced that low, but many had larger and/or heavier scarves starting at TL 250 ($9-$10) along with more-expensive options. There were raw-silk scarves with intricate, paisley-like patterns; they were a lot more expensive. It was a popular place; nearly all the customers seemed to be Turkish, which gave me some confidence about the quality. A lot of the items in the windows bore price tags.

@acraven - Just read my post again, and I hope I didn't sound dismissive about the Ataturk Museum. What I should have said is that it fascinates me how a lot of Turkish cities make such a strong connection to Ataturk. He remains such a towering presence in the country, particularly in the western half of Turkey.

And .... oh the scarves in Bursa ... or, really, the scarves anywhere in Turkey. I am like an alcoholic in a liquor store when I see the scarves in Turkey. Yes, I am going to have to make it to Bursa one of these days.

If you have any interest in the poet Rumi and the Sufi faith, you may be interested in a visit to Konya to see the Mevlana museum/mosque and see the Whirling Dervishes at the cultural center! We only spent one night (at the fabulous traditional konak style building -- the Konya Dervis Otel) in walking distance to the Museum/Mosque and cultural center. Run by a couple of wonderful brothers, who also have some carpets to peruse, and a pleasant Turkish breakfast. It is sort of out of the way to go to Konya. We were on a longer road trip than you, and routed our way from the Mediterranean Coast to Cappadocia through Konya as I was interested in Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes. Link to hotel: https://www.dervishotel.com/

The travertine terraces in Pamukkale were neat! We stayed in a small hotel at the base of the the terraces to the ruins of Hieraopolis. We started our walk about an hour from sunset so the lighting was stunning. The next morning we watched the hot air balloons from our roof top breakfast area. Here's the link to the hotel: http://www.hotelsahin.com/

When we got to Cappadocia, the hot air balloons were grounded due to rain. We wished we done a balloon ride in Pamukkale! If you do go to Cappadocia, we were glad we stayed in the quieter village of Uchisar instead of the touristy village of Goreme. The Stone Owl Hotel had recently opened and was in a good location for walking around the village, shopping and restaurants. We hiked down to Goreme and took one of the small buses back to Uchisar. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g297988-d26588853-Reviews-Stone_Owl_Otel_Restaurant-Uchisar_Cappadocia.html