I know that seems like a strange thing to say, and I'm sure someone else could come up with a million things that are wrong with turkish toilets. Like, there's no where to sit, not to mention the fact that most of the places where I've used a turkish toilet have been less-than-hygenic and actually downright disgusting.
Nevertheless, I remember them being a sign of modernity and comfort when I was in the Peace Corps. After being in the village for 4-6 weeks, it was pretty exciting to get to the hostel where the bathroom was tiled floor-to-ceiling, the hot water heater made for a wonderful showering experience, the toilets flushed, and you could wash your hands under a running faucet.
What I didn't remember, until I spent this last week in the village here in Nigeria, was what I really HATE about turkish toilets. (I should say something briefly about my living situation in the village here because it's quite different from that in Niger. Here I stay in the medical staff quarters--a building which is divided in half for each gender, each side having 2 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, and 1 tiled bathroom. A solar panel powers a water pump, so we always have running water when it's sunny. At night, the doctor turns on the generator for 2-3 hours so we can turn on the lights and ceiling fans in our rooms.)
I remembered what I hate about turkish toilets the moment I walked into the bathroom--the mosquitoes went flying ev-ery-where! Why, in the most modern of bathrooms, are those little killers everywhere?? Because of the water in the toilet drain. It brought back a tiny, forgotten detail of my Peace Corps service--that little bowl we used to cover the toilet hole to *prevent* mosquito breeding. I'm not convinced it actually worked, but it made us volunteers feel better. Here, there's no bowl in the toilet hole (it seems to have been a distinctly Peace Corps innovation). I am convinced that this lack of a bowl has resulted in more mosquitoes biting me in the ass.
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