Social and political instability in Turkey has been the subject of international news stories regularly since the Gezi Park protests in summer 2013. People who have never had the opportunity to travel to Turkey themselves are likely to have an impression of the country and its people as violent or dangerous. General stereotypes about the Middle East and Islam that have been circulating for a long time only serve to reinforce such impressions. As a college teacher of Turkish studies courses, I consider it part of my job to challenge those impressions and provide my students with opportunities to experience other aspects of Turkish culture and society. However, the university I work for has not approved undergraduate travel to Turkey since 2015. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the difficulty of visiting the region. In response, along with a colleague in international affairs, I created a Virtual Education Abroad in Istanbul program. The program leverages immersive opportunities such as virtual reality visits to important sites in Istanbul, online conversations and collaborations with students at a university in Turkey, and workshops and demonstrations with Turkish scholars and artists in cooking, music, dance, language, and more. Using readings, videos, and diverse online sources, students make additional forays into Turkish history, geography, and other areas of interest. A central component of demystifying the Middle East in the classroom is intercultural competence, which involves encouraging students to see themselves as cultural beings (Ferri 2016). Certain elements in education abroad, such as time spent interacting with locals and cross-cultural collaboration, have been shown to maximize that kind of learning (Root and Ngampornchai 2012). At the same time, scholars have identified the potential of online learning to increase access to a diverse student body (Fermín González 2019). Bringing this scholarship together, my colleague and I propose that virtual education can offer the benefits of education abroad to in-class situations, especially if it utilizes the principles and methods of collaborative online international learning (COIL). In this presentation, we will share our Virtual Education Abroad in Istanbul course and show how high impact COIL practices, such as the use of ePortfolios, can lead to gains in intercultural competence. We will share lessons learned, as well as remaining questions such as how to simulate an in-person experience virtually, and whether that should be the objective.