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Turkish is a very difficult language to learn, much more difficult than Spanish for an English speaker. It's well worth the effort though.
I'm an American, a native English speaker, and while I'm working very hard at it, my Turkish proficiency is improving quite slowly. I've been at it for four months now, am surrounded by Turkish speakers, and still can't hold down a simple conversation with a waiter or shopkeeper who speaks no English.
By comparison, I visited Spain and within two weeks was able to go to a strange restaurant, understand the menu even if it had dishes I'd never seen before, order my meal and make small talk with the staff.
Except for modern words like televizyon or futbol, Turkish and English share no words or roots and the language structures are completely different.
I'm hoping to be able to hold up my end of a simple conversation within a year and things may improve more quickly after that, as I'll have a reasonable understanding of noun and verb endings, which to me is the hardest part.
I too want to encourage you to work at acquiring Turkish. I'm sure your family members and Turkish-speaking friends will help you as much as they can. Get a Turkish-English dictionary and start reading anything you can get your hands on. This site is an excellent place to begin learning but there are other sites, not to mention course books. Use them all. The Lonely Planet phrase book has been a great help to me also.
Good luck!
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