Türkiye

Türkiye sits across two continents. Most of it lies in Anatolia, in West Asia, and a smaller part, East Thrace, reaches into southeastern Europe. Seas wrap it on three sides: the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean to the west and the Mediterranean to the south. The country covers about 783,562 square kilometres and has more than 86 million people; Ankara is the capital and Istanbul the largest city. In 2024 it welcomed 60.6 million foreign visitors, the fourth-highest number in the world.

Istanbul spreads over both banks of the Bosporus, the strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, and its historic areas have been on the World Heritage List since 1985. Here stands Hagia Sophia, finished in 537 under a dome roughly 31 metres across; the Blue Mosque with its six minarets and thousands of İznik tiles; Topkapı Palace, begun in 1459; and the Grand Bazaar, 61 covered streets holding more than 4,000 shops.

In central Anatolia, Cappadocia is a land of fairy chimneys, pillars that wind and water carved out of thick layers of volcanic ash, with hot-air balloons drifting over them at sunrise. Below ground lie cities cut into the rock; Derinkuyu goes down about 85 metres. Further west, the white travertine terraces of Pamukkale run for 2,700 metres beneath the ruins of Hierapolis, and near the Aegean coast rise the façade of the Library of Celsus and the theatre of Ephesus, which once held 24,000 spectators.

On the south coast, Antalya lies between the Taurus Mountains and the sea, with its walled old town of Kaleiçi and a small harbour; the Roman theatre of Aspendos, built in 155, is close by. The Lycian Way, a waymarked walking trail of about 760 kilometres, sets off along this shore. In the north, Trabzon faces the Black Sea; in its mountains, Sumela Monastery clings to a cliff at around 1,200 metres, and Uzungöl lake sits deep in a valley. Ankara offers an ancient hilltop citadel and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.

Spring and autumn are the easiest seasons, mild in the cities and the interior alike. Summer is hot and dry on the south coast, which makes it beach time, while winter brings snow to the interior and rain to the coasts. The currency is the Turkish lira and the time zone UTC+3. Food is a world of its own: breakfast spreads of cheese, olives and bread, Turkish coffee, listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage in 2013, and tea poured everywhere. The country has 22 World Heritage properties, and the journey visits the best known of them, one region at a time.[1,5,3,6,7,11,10,14,16,17,24,25,27,26,19,20,22,39,32,33,34,29,31,2,36,4]Source1. Turkey · Wikipedia5. Istanbul · Wikipedia3. Türkiye — World Heritage properties · UNESCO World Heritage Centre6. Hagia Sophia · Wikipedia7. Blue Mosque, Istanbul · Wikipedia11. Topkapı Palace · Wikipedia10. Grand Bazaar, Istanbul · Wikipedia14. Cappadocia · Wikipedia16. Göreme · Wikipedia17. Derinkuyu underground city · Wikipedia24. Pamukkale · Wikipedia25. Hierapolis · Wikipedia27. Library of Celsus · Wikipedia26. Ephesus · Wikipedia19. Antalya · Wikipedia20. Kaleiçi · Wikipedia22. Aspendos · Wikipedia39. Lycian Way · Wikipedia32. Trabzon · Wikipedia33. Sumela Monastery · Wikipedia34. Uzungöl · Wikipedia29. Ankara · Wikipedia31. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations · Wikipedia2. Climate of Turkey · Wikipedia36. Turkish cuisine · Wikipedia4. List of Intangible Cultural Heritage elements in Turkey · Wikipedia