[JoeFromSidney]

I wonder to what extent this is true in Turkey. I spent two semesters as a visiting professor in the engineering school of Marmara University in Istanbul. Granted, it's an "elite" university, drawing its student body from the top one or two percent of the graduates of Turkish high schools. Even so, my students there were fully on a par with the students I taught in the US. Over ten years later, I still keep in touch with some of my graduate assistants. They hold responsible jobs wit major corporations, some Turkish, some European.

Similarly, my fellow faculty members all received their doctorates in Europe or the US, at top-notch universities. They didn't get them at diploma mills.

I really have no idea about the marriage practices of the Turkish intellectual elite. It would be interesting to find out.

[DuncanWaring]

From the article, the rate of first-cousin marriage in Turkey is 25-30%, much less than the other countries cited.

And that 25-30% is likely concentrated among the less-educated portion of the population; those you met were probably not particularly interbred.