Turkey Map

Turkey (officially the Republic of Türkiye; since 2022 the United Nations has used the name "Türkiye" at the government's request) spans two continents. About 97% of its territory is Anatolia, the peninsula also known as Asia Minor. The other 3% is East Thrace in south-eastern Europe, which also holds most of Istanbul. The Turkish Straits divide the two: the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles link the Black Sea with the Aegean and Mediterranean, and passage through them is governed by the Montreux Convention of 1936. Turkey covers 783,562 square kilometers and has about 87.7 million people (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate). The national address-based register (TÜİK) counted 86.1 million at the end of 2025.

Mountains, plateau and lakes

Anatolia is a high plateau framed by mountains. The Pontic Mountains run along the Black Sea, and the Taurus Mountains curve above the Mediterranean. Between them, the Central Anatolian plateau lies mostly at about 1,000 meters and holds the shallow salt lake Tuz Gölü. In Cappadocia, ash from volcanoes such as Erciyes and Hasan Dağı hardened into soft tuff, which wind and water carved into "fairy chimneys" and people hollowed into cave churches and underground cities. The land rises eastwards into rugged highlands. There Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı), at 5,137 meters the country's highest point, stands near the Iranian and Armenian borders. Lake Van, a soda lake of about 3,700 km², is the largest lake in Turkey.

The Tigris and the Euphrates both rise in eastern Turkey before flowing into Syria and Iraq. Dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project, notably the Atatürk Dam, make Turkey's water policy a regional issue (see rivers of Asia). The longest river entirely within Turkey is the Kızılırmak (about 1,355 km), which flows into the Black Sea. The country lies on active faults, the North and East Anatolian faults. On 6 February 2023, earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 struck the south-east and killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey.

Seven regions, three climates

Turkey has 81 provinces (il). Geographers group them into seven regions: Marmara, Aegean, Mediterranean, Black Sea, Central Anatolia, Eastern Anatolia and Southeastern Anatolia. The climate changes sharply between them:

• Aegean and Mediterranean coasts: hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, the climate of olive groves and beach resorts
• Black Sea coast: rain in every season, which supports tea plantations around Rize and the hazelnut orchards of Ordu and Giresun that make Turkey the world's leading hazelnut producer
• Interior and east: continental, with hot summers and cold, snowy winters; Erzurum and Kars are among the coldest cities in the country

Spring (April-June) and autumn (September-October) are the best times for Istanbul, Cappadocia and the ancient sites. July and August are beach season on the coast but very hot in the south-east.

Major cities

In Turkey a metropolitan municipality covers its whole province. The figures below are TÜİK provincial totals for the end of 2025.

• Istanbul (15.75 million): built on both banks of the Bosphorus, this was Byzantium, then Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman and Ottoman empires. It is the largest city in the world to span two continents, and its two halves are linked by bridges and by the Marmaray rail tunnel (2013).
• Ankara (5.91 million): the capital since 1923, on the Central Anatolian plateau, and site of Atatürk's mausoleum, Anıtkabir
• İzmir (4.50 million): the main Aegean port, ancient Smyrna, and the base for visiting Ephesus and Pergamon
• Bursa: below Uludağ mountain; it became the first major Ottoman capital after its capture in 1326 and is now a centre of the car industry
• Antalya: the hub of the Mediterranean "Turkish Riviera", with one of the country's busiest airports
• Gaziantep: a south-eastern city close to the Syrian border, famous for pistachios and baklava
• Trabzon: the historic Black Sea port, near the cliff-side Sumela Monastery

From empire to republic

Anatolia holds some of the earliest settlements known. Göbekli Tepe dates to about 9500 BC and Çatalhöyük to about 7400 BC, and the region was later home to the Hittites, Troy, Lydia and Greek Ionia. Turkey has 22 UNESCO World Heritage Sites; the most recent, Sardis and the Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe, was added in 2025.

The Ottoman Empire collapsed after the First World War. Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) rejected the Treaty of Sèvres and fought the War of Independence of 1919-22. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) then fixed most of today's borders. The Republic was proclaimed on 29 October 1923 with Ankara as its capital, and reforms such as the Latin-based Turkish alphabet of 1928 followed. Hatay joined Turkey in 1939. Turkey joined NATO in 1952, has had a customs union with the EU since 1996 and has been an EU candidate since 1999, although accession talks have stalled. It has been a presidential republic since 2018.

Since 1974, Turkish troops have been stationed in northern Cyprus. Turkey is the only country that recognises the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and it does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state.