If the main character is the daughter of a professor of Turkish Literature (as I think I've read somewhere in this wank, I just don't remember where), she has the best of excuses to not be so mind-boggingly ignorant as to mix up Turks and Arabs. Which would be like mixing up Irish people with Italians or Mexicans because they're all Catholic, so they must be the same, don't they?

OTOH, an ignorant POV character having a culture shock with competent show-don't-tell storytelling would be fine, too. It's just unchallenged and unnoticed mistakes that get me... or they would, if I even knew the author. I'm too old for Goosebumps and YA lit, and I'm not American, so we don't even get all the novels published in the USA -_-;

FWIW, the only novels I've read set in Turkey are Robert Graves' Count Belisarius (historical) and Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree and The Snake Stone (historical murder mysteries). I really should get some Orhan Pamuk, but I tend to like either genre fiction or non-fiction, so I'm not terribly motivated.