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Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Turkish Straits to the northwest, and the Black Sea to the north. The eastern and southeastern limits have been expanded either to the entirety of Asiatic Turkey or to an imprecise line from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Alexandretta. Topographically, the Sea of Marmara connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and separates Anatolia from Thrace in Southeast Europe.
During the Neolithic, Anatolia was an early center for the development of farming after it originated in the adjacent Fertile Crescent. Beginning around 9,000 years ago, there was a major migration of Anatolian Neolithic Farmers into Neolithic Europe, with their descendants coming to dominate the continent as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles.
The earliest recorded inhabitants of Anatolia, who were neither Indo-European nor Semitic, were gradually absorbed by the incoming Indo-European Anatolian peoples, who spoke the now-extinct Anatolian languages. The major Anatolian languages included Hittite language, Luwian language, and Lydian language; other local languages, albeit poorly attested, included Phrygian and Mysian language. The Hurro-Urartian languages were spoken throughout Mitanni in the southeast, while Galatian, a Celtic languages, was spoken throughout Galatia in the central peninsula. Among the other peoples who established a significant presence in ancient Anatolia were the Galatians, the Hurrians, the Assyrian people, the Armenians, the Hattians, and the Cimmerians, as well as some of the ancient Greek tribes, including the Ionians, the Dorians, and the Aeolic Greek. In the era of classical antiquity (see Classical Anatolia), the Anatolian languages were largely replaced by the Greek language, which came to further dominate the region during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire.
The Byzantine Empire saw the height and eventual decline of Greek influence throughout the peninsula as the Byzantine–Seljuk wars enabled the incoming Seljuk dynasty to establish a foothold in the region. Thus, the process of Anatolia's Turkification began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century and continued under the Ottoman Empire until the early 20th century, when the Ottoman dynasty collapsed in the aftermath of World War I. Between 1894 and 1924, millions of non-Turkic peoples and Christians, especially Armenians, were suppressed and removed by the Ottoman Turkish authorities from the bulk of the area of modern-day Turkey. Nonetheless, a variety of non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by ethnic minorities in Anatolia today, including Arabic, Kurdish language, Neo-Aramaic, Armenian, the North Caucasian languages, Laz language, Georgian, and Greek.
Following the Armenian genocide, Western Armenia was renamed the Eastern Anatolia region by the newly established Turkish government. In 1941, with the First Geography Congress which divided Turkey into seven geographical regions based on differences in climate and landscape, the eastern provinces of Turkey were placed into the Eastern Anatolia region, A Comparative Analysis Regarding Pictures Included in Secondary School Geography Textbooks Taught in Turkey. , Okan Yasar and Mehmet Seremet, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 2007. which largely corresponds to the historical region of Western Armenia. Vazken Davidian terms the expanded use of "Anatolia" to apply to territory in eastern Turkey that was formerly referred to as Armenia (which had a sizeable Armenian population before the Armenian genocide) an "ahistorical imposition" and notes that a growing body of literature is uncomfortable with referring to the Ottoman East as "Eastern Anatolia".Vazken Khatchig Davidian, "Imagining Ottoman Armenia: Realism and Allegory in Garabed Nichanian's Provincial Wedding in Moush and Late Ottoman Art Criticism", p. 7 & footnote 34, in Études arméniennes contemporaines volume 6, 2015.
The highest mountain in the Eastern Anatolia region (also the highest peak in the Armenian Highlands) is Mount Ararat (5123 m). The Euphrates, Aras, Karasu and connect the Armenian Highlands to the South Caucasus and the Upper Euphrates Valley. Along with the Çoruh, these rivers are the longest in the Eastern Anatolia region.
The use of Anatolian designations has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to the Aeolians, Ionians and Dorians colonies situated along the eastern coasts of the Aegean Sea, but also encompassing eastern regions in general. Such use of Anatolian designations was employed during the reign of Roman Emperor Diocletian (), who created the Diocese of the East, known in Greek as the Eastern Diocese, but completely unrelated to the regions of Asia Minor. In their widest territorial scope, Anatolian designations were employed during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine I (306–337), who created the Praetorian prefecture of the East, known in Greek as the Eastern Prefecture, encompassing all eastern regions of the Late Roman Empire and spanning from Thrace to Egypt.
Only after the loss of other eastern regions during the 7th century and the reduction of Byzantine Empire eastern domains to Asia Minor, that region became the only remaining part of the Byzantine East, and thus commonly referred to (in Greek) as the Eastern part of the Empire. At the same time, the Anatolic Theme (Ἀνατολικὸν θέμα / "the Eastern theme") was created, as a province ( theme) covering the western and central parts of Turkey's present-day Central Anatolia Region, centered around Iconium, but ruled from the city of Amorium."On the First Thema, called Anatolikón. This theme is called Anatolikón or Theme of the Anatolics, not because it is above and in the direction of the east where the sun rises, but because it lies to the East of Byzantium and Europe." Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, De Thematibus, ed. A. Pertusi. Vatican: Vatican Library, 1952, pp. 59 ff.John Haldon, Byzantium, a History, 2002, p. 32.
The Latinized form "italic=no", with its -ia ending, is probably a Medieval Latin innovation. The modern Turkish form Anadolu derives directly from the Greek name Aνατολή ( Anatolḗ). The Russian male name Anatoly, the French Anatole and plain Anatol, all stemming from saints Anatolius of Laodicea (d. 283) and Anatolius of Constantinople (d. 458; the first Patriarch of Constantinople), share the same linguistic origin.
The first recorded name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula, though not particularly popular at the time, was Ἀσία ( Asía),Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, Ἀσία. , A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus. perhaps from an Akkadian expression for the "sunrise" or possibly echoing the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. The Romans used it as the name of their province, comprising the west of the peninsula plus the nearby Aegean Islands. As the name "Asia" broadened its scope to apply to the vaster region east of the Mediterranean, some Greeks in Late Antiquity came to use the name Asia Minor (Μικρὰ Ἀσία, Mikrà Asía), meaning "Lesser Asia" to refer to present-day Anatolia, whereas the administration of the Empire preferred the description Ἀνατολή ( Anatolḗ; ).
The endonym Ῥωμανία ( Rōmanía "the land of the Romans, i.e. the Eastern Roman Empire") was understood as another name for the province by the invading Seljuq Turks, who founded a Sultanate of Rûm in 1077. Thus (land of the) Rûm became another name for Anatolia. By the 12th century Europeans had started referring to Anatolia as Turchia.
During the era of the Ottoman Empire, many mapmakers referred to the mountainous plateau in eastern Anatolia as Armenia. Other contemporary sources called the same area Kurdistan. Geographers have used East Anatolian plateau, Armenian plateau and the Iranian plateau to refer to the region; the former two largely overlap. While a standard definition of Anatolia refers to the entire Asian side of Turkey, according to archaeologist Lori Khatchadourian, this difference in terminology "primarily results from the shifting political fortunes and cultural trajectories of the region since the nineteenth century".
Turkey's First Geography Congress in 1941 created two geographical regions of Turkey to the east of the Gulf of Iskenderun-Black Sea line, the Eastern Anatolia region and the Southeastern Anatolia region,Ali Yiğit, "Geçmişten Günümüze Türkiye'yi Bölgelere Ayıran Çalışmalar ve Yapılması Gerekenler", Ankara Üniversitesi Türkiye Coğrafyası Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi, IV. Ulural Coğrafya Sempozyumu, "Avrupa Birliği Sürecindeki Türkiye'de Bölgesel Farklılıklar", pp. 34–35. . the former largely corresponding to the Western Armenia, the latter to the northern part of the Mesopotamian plain. According to Richard Hovannisian, this changing of toponyms was "necessary to obscure all evidence" of the Armenians presence as part of the policy of Armenian genocide denial embarked upon by the newly established Turkish government and what Hovannisian calls its "foreign collaborators".
Neolithic Anatolia has been proposed as the Urheimat of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favor a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Anatolian languages, the earliest attested branch of Indo-European, have been spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BCE.
The Hittites adopted the Mesopotamian cuneiform script. In the Late Bronze Age, Hittite New Kingdom () was founded, becoming an empire in the 14th century BCE after the conquest of Kizzuwatna in the south-east and the defeat of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. The empire reached its height in the 13th century BCE, controlling much of Asia Minor, northwestern Syria, and northwest upper Mesopotamia. However, the Hittite advance toward the Black Sea coast was halted by the semi-nomadic pastoralist and tribal Kaskians, a non-Indo-European people who had earlier displaced the Palaic language Indo-Europeans.Carruba, O. Das Palaische. Texte, Grammatik, Lexikon. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970. StBoT 10 Much of the history of the Hittite Empire concerned war with the rival empires of Egypt, Assyria and the Mitanni.Georges Roux – Ancient Iraq
The eventually withdrew from the region after failing to gain the upper hand over the Hittites and becoming wary of the power of Assyria, which had destroyed the Mitanni Empire. The Assyrians and Hittites were then left to battle over control of eastern and southern Anatolia and colonial territories in Syria. The Assyrians had better success than the Egyptians, annexing much Hittite (and Hurrian) territory in these regions.Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq. Penguin Books, 1966.
From the 10th to late 7th centuries BCE, much of Anatolia (particularly the southeastern regions) fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, including all of the Syro-Hittite states, Tabal, Commagene, the Cimmerians and Scythians, and swathes of Cappadocia.
The Neo-Assyrian empire collapsed due to a bitter series of civil wars followed by a combined attack by Medes, Persian people, Scythians and their own relations. The last Assyrian city to fall was Harran in southeast Anatolia. This city was the birthplace of the last king of Babylon, the Assyrian Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar. Much of the region then fell to the short-lived Iran-based Medes, with the Babylonians and Scythians briefly appropriating some territory.
The north-western coast of Anatolia was inhabited by Greeks of the Achaean/Mycenaean Greece culture from the 20th century BCE, related to the Greeks of southeastern Europe and the Aegean Islands.Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times Beginning with the Bronze Age collapse at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, the west coast of Anatolia was settled by Ionian Greeks, usurping the area of the related but earlier Mycenaean Greeks. Over several centuries, numerous Ancient Greek were established on the coasts of Anatolia. Greeks started Western philosophy on the western coast of Anatolia (Pre-Socratic philosophy).
Anatolia is known as the birthplace of minted (as opposed to unminted coinage, which first appears in Mesopotamia at a much earlier date) as a medium of exchange, some time in the 7th century BCE in Lydia. The use of minted coins continued to flourish during the Greek and Roman Empire eras. Asia Minor Coins – an index of Greek and Roman coins from Asia Minor (ancient Anatolia)
During the 6th century BCE, all of Anatolia was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire, the Persians having usurped the Medes as the dominant dynasty of Persia. In 499 BCE, the city-states on the west coast of Anatolia rebelled against Persian rule. The Ionian Revolt, as it became known, though quelled, initiated the Greco-Persian Wars, which ended in a Greek victory in 449 BCE, and the Ionian cities regained their independence. By the Peace of Antalcidas (387 BCE), which ended the Corinthian War, Persia regained control over Ionia.
In 334 BCE, the Macedonian Greek king Alexander the Great conquered the Anatolian peninsula from the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Alexander's conquest opened up the interior of Asia Minor to Greek settlement and influence.
on Mount Nemrut (1st century BCE)]] Following the death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent breakup of the Macedonian Empire, Anatolia was ruled by a series of Hellenistic kingdoms, such as the Attalid dynasty and the Seleucids, the latter controlling most of Anatolia. A period of peaceful Hellenization followed, such that the local Anatolian languages had been supplanted by Greek by the 1st century BCE. In 133 BCE the last Attalid king bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman Republic; western and central Anatolia came under Roman control, but Hellenistic culture remained predominant.
Mithridates VI Eupator, ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia, waged war against the Roman Republic in the year 88 BCE in order to halt the advance of Roman hegemony in the Aegean Sea region. Mithridates VI sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars) to break Roman dominion over Asia and the Hellenic world." Mithradates VI Eupator", Encyclopædia Britannica He has been called the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus. His ally and son-in-law, Tigranes the Great of Armenia (), briefly conquered significant portions of Anatolia, including Cilicia, Cappadocia, Sophene and perhaps Galatia.
Byzantine Anatolia was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated places in the Later Roman Empire. Anatolia's wealth grew during the 4th and 5th centuries thanks, in part, to the Pilgrim's Road that ran through the peninsula. Literary evidence about the rural landscape stems from the Hagiography of the 6th-century Nicholas of Sion and 7th-century Theodore of Sykeon. Large and prosperous urban centers of Byzantine Anatolia included Assos, Ephesus, Miletus, Nicaea, Pergamum, Priene, Sardis, and Aphrodisias.
From the mid-5th century onwards, urbanism was affected negatively and began to decline, while the rural areas reached unprecedented levels of prosperity in the region. Historians and scholars continue to debate the cause of the urban decline in Byzantine Anatolia between the 6th and 7th centuries, variously attributing it to the Plague of Justinian (541), the Byzantine–Sasanian War (602–628), and the Arab invasion of the Levant (634–638).
By the end of the 14th century, most of Anatolia was controlled by various Anatolian beyliks. Smyrna fell in 1330, and the last Byzantine stronghold in Anatolia, Philadelphia, fell in 1390. The Turkmen people Beyliks were under the control of the Mongols, at least nominally, through declining Seljuk Sultans.Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, Gary Leiser-The origins of the Ottoman Empire, p. 33Peter Partner God of battles: holy wars of Christianity and Islam, p. 122 The Beyliks did not mint coins in the names of their own leaders while they remained under the suzerainty of the Mongol Ilkhanids. Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire, p. 13 The Osmanli ruler Osman I was the first Turkish ruler who minted coins in his own name in 1320s; they bear the legend "Minted by Osman son of Ertugrul".Artuk – Osmanli Beyliginin Kurucusu, 27f Since the minting of coins was a prerogative accorded in Islamic practice only to a Sovereignty, it can be considered that the Osmanli, or Ottoman Turks, had become formally independent from the Mongol Khans.Pamuk – A Monetary History, pp. 30–31
Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until the early 20th century (see the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire). During World War I, the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide (especially in Pontus), and the Assyrian genocide almost entirely removed the ancient indigenous communities of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrian people populations in Anatolia and surrounding regions. Following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, most remaining ethnic Anatolian Greeks were forced out during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Of the remainder, most have left Turkey since then, leaving fewer than 5,000 Greeks in Anatolia today. According to Morris and Ze'evi, 4 million Christians were ethnically cleansed from Asia minor by the Turks from 1894 to 1924.
There are two mountain ranges in southern Anatolia: the Taurus mountains and the Zagros mountains.
Anatolia has a varied range of climates. The central plateau is characterized by a continental climate, with hot summers and cold snowy winters. The south and west coasts enjoy a typical Mediterranean climate, with mild rainy winters, and warm dry summers. The Black Sea and Marmara coasts have a temperate oceanic climate, with warm, foggy summers and much rainfall throughout the year.
The mountains and coastal plain of northern Anatolia experience a humid and mild climate. There are temperate broadleaf, mixed and coniferous forests. The central and eastern plateau, with its drier continental climate, has deciduous forests and forest steppes. Western and southern Anatolia, which have a Mediterranean climate, contain Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregions.
History
Prehistoric Anatolia
Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic. Neolithic settlements include Çatalhöyük, Çayönü, Nevali Cori, Aşıklı Höyük, Boncuklu Höyük, Hacilar, Göbekli Tepe, Norşuntepe, Köşk Höyük, and Yumuktepe. Çatalhöyük (7,000 BCE) is considered the most advanced of these. (2025). 9780759106215, Rowman Altamira. ISBN 9780759106215 Recent advances in archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with the migration of early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange. Anatolian Neolithic farmers derived most of their ancestry from local Anatolian hunter-gatherers, suggesting that agriculture was adopted in site by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by demic diffusion into the region. Anatolian-derived Neolithic Farmers would subsequently spread across Europe, as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles, as well as to the Maghreb. Most modern Europeans derive a significant part of their ancestry from these Neolithic Anatolian farmers. Levantines also have significant Neolithic Anatolian farmer ancestry from post-Bronze Age migrations. About 6,500 years ago and thereafter, Anatolians became more genetically homogeneous due to eastern inflow. Earlier forms of Anatolian and non–Indo-European languages such as Hattic and Hurrian were likely spoken by migrants and locals participating in this great mixture. Steppe ancestry is also absent in Anatolians until the Bronze Age.
Ancient Anatolia
The earliest historical data related to Anatolia appear during the Bronze Age and continue throughout the Iron Age. The most ancient period in the history of Anatolia spans from the emergence of ancient Hattians, up to the conquest of Anatolia by the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE.
Hattians and Hurrians
The earliest historically attested populations of Anatolia were the Hattians in central Anatolia, and Hurrians further to the east. The Hattians were an indigenous people, whose main center was the city of Hattush. Affiliation of Hattian language remains unclear, while Hurrian language belongs to a distinctive family of Hurro-Urartian languages. All of those languages are extinct; relationships with indigenous languages of the Caucasus have been proposed, but are not generally accepted. The region became famous for exporting raw materials. Organized trade between Anatolia and Mesopotamia started to emerge during the period of the Akkadian Empire, and was continued and intensified during the period of the Old Assyrian Empire, between the 21st and the 18th centuries BCE. Assyrian traders were bringing tin and textiles in exchange for copper, silver or gold. Cuneiform records, dated , found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, use an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines.
Hittite Anatolia (18th–12th centuries BCE)
Unlike the Akkadians and Assyrians, whose Anatolian trading posts were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia, the Hittites were centered at Hattusa (modern Boğazkale) in north-central Anatolia by the 17th century BCE. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language, or nesili (the language of Nesa) in Hittite. The Hittites originated from local ancient cultures that grew in Anatolia, in addition to the arrival of Indo-European languages. Attested for the first time in the Assyrian tablets of Nesa around 2,000 BCE, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BCE, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland, however, the Hittites (along with the other Indo-European ancient Anatolians) were themselves relatively recent immigrants to Anatolia from the north. However, they did not necessarily displace the population genetically; they assimilated into the former peoples' culture, preserving the Hittite language.
Post-Hittite Anatolia (12th–6th centuries BCE)
After 1180 BCE, during the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Hittite Empire disintegrated into several independent Syro-Hittite states, subsequent to losing much territory to the Middle Assyrian Empire and being finally overrun by the Phrygians, another Indo-European people who are believed to have migrated from the Balkans. The Phrygian expansion into southeast Anatolia was eventually halted by the Assyrians, who controlled that region.
Another Indo-European people, the Luwians, rose to prominence in central and western Anatolia BCE. Luwian language belonged to the same linguistic branch as Hittite language.Melchert 2003 The general consensus amongst scholars is that Luwian was spoken across a large area of western Anatolia, including (possibly) Wilusa (Troy), the Seha River Land (to be identified with the Gediz River and/or Kaikos valley), and the kingdom of Mira-Kuwaliya with its core territory of the Maeander valley.Watkins 1994; id. 1995:144–51; Starke 1997; Melchert 2003; for the geography Hawkins 1998 From the 9th century BCE, Luwian regions coalesced into a number of states such as Lydia, Caria, and Lycia, all of which had Greece influence.
Arameans encroached over the borders of south-central Anatolia in the century or so after the fall of the Hittite empire, and some of the Syro-Hittite states in this region became an amalgam of Hittites and Arameans. These became known as Syro-Hittite states.
From the late 8th century BCE, a new wave of Indo-European-speaking raiders entered northern and northeast Anatolia: the Cimmerians and Scythians. The Cimmerians overran Phrygia and the Scythians threatened to do the same to Urartu and Lydia, before both were finally checked by the Assyrians.
Classical Anatolia
In Classical antiquity, Anatolia was described by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus and later historians as divided into regions that were diverse in culture, language, and religious practices. The northern regions included Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus; to the west were Mysia, Lydia, and Caria; and Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia belonged to the southern shore. There were also several inland regions: Phrygia, Cappadocia, Pisidia, and Galatia. Languages spoken included the late surviving Anatolic languages, Isaurian, and Pisidian, Greek in western and coastal regions, Phrygian spoken until the 7th century CE, (2025). 9780199245062, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199245062 local variants of Thracian in the northwest, the Galatian variant of Gaulish in Galatia until the 6th century CE,Freeman, Philip, The Galatian Language, Edwin Mellen, 2001, pp. 11–12.Clackson, James. "Language maintenance and language shift in the Mediterranean world during the Roman Empire." Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds (2012): 36–57. p. 46: The second testimonium for the late survival of Galatian appears in the Life of Saint Euthymius, who died in ad 487.Norton, Tom. [5] | A question of identity: who were the Galatians?. University of Wales. p. 62: The final reference to Galatian comes two hundred years later in the sixth century when Cyril of Scythopolis attests that Galatian was still being spoken eight hundred years after the Galatians arrived in Asia Minor. Cyril tells of the temporary possession of a monk from Galatia by Satan and rendered speechless, but when he recovered he spoke only in his native Galatian when questioned: 'If he were pressed, he spoke only in Galatian'.180 After this, the rest is silence, and further archaeological or literary discoveries are awaited to see if Galatian survived any later. In this regard, the example of Crimean Gothic is instructive. It was presumed to have died out in the fifth century CE, but the discovery of a small corpus of the language dating from the sixteenth century altered this perception. Cappadocian in the homonymous region,J. Eric Cooper, Michael J. Decker, Life and Society in Byzantine Cappadocia , p. 14 Armenian in the east, and Kartvelian languages in the northeast.
(1989). 9789004091726, Brill. ISBN 9789004091726
(2025). 9781315696416, Routledge. ISBN 9781315696416 Further annexations by Rome, in particular of the Kingdom of Pontus by Pompey, brought all of Anatolia under Roman control, except for the southeastern frontier with the Parthian Empire, which remained unstable for centuries, causing a series of military conflicts that culminated in the Roman–Parthian Wars (54 BCE – 217 CE).
Early Christian period
After the first division of the Roman Empire, Anatolia became part of the Byzantine Empire, otherwise known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium. (2025). 9780190610487, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190610487 In the 1st century CE, Anatolia became one of the first places where Christianity spread, so that by the 4th century CE, western and central Anatolia were overwhelmingly Christian and Greek-speaking.
Medieval period
In the 10 years following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia migrated over large areas of Anatolia, with particular concentrations around the northwestern rim. The Turkish language and the Islamic religion were gradually introduced as a result of the Seljuk conquest, and this period marks the start of Anatolia's slow transition from predominantly Christian and Greek-speaking, to predominantly Muslim and Turkish-speaking (although ethnic groups such as Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians remained numerous and retained Christianity and their native languages). In the following century, the Byzantines managed to reassert their control in western and northern Anatolia. Control of Anatolia was then split between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, with the Byzantine holdings gradually being reduced.
In 1255, the Mongols swept through eastern and central Anatolia, and would remain until 1335. The Ilkhanate garrison was stationed near Ankara.H. M. Balyuzi Muḥammad and the course of Islám, p. 342John Freely Storm on Horseback: The Seljuk Warriors of Turkey, p. 83 After the decline of the Ilkhanate from 1335 to 1353, the Mongol Empire's legacy in the region was the Uyghur people Eretna Dynasty that was overthrown by Kadi Burhan al-Din in 1381.Clifford Edmund Bosworth-The new Islamic dynasties: a chronological and genealogical manual, p. 234
Ottoman Empire
Among the Turkish people leaders, the Ottoman dynasty emerged as great power under Osman I and his son Orhan. The Anatolian beyliks were successively absorbed into the rising Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. It is not well understood how the Osmanlı, or Ottoman Empire, came to dominate their neighbors, as the history of medieval Anatolia is still little known. The Ottomans completed the conquest of the peninsula in 1517 with the taking of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) from the Knights of Saint John.
Modern times
With the acceleration of the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century, and as a result of the expansionist policies of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, many Muslim nations and groups in that region, mainly Circassians, Tatars, Azeris, Lezgian people, Chechens and several Turkic peoples groups left their homelands and settled in Anatolia. As the Ottoman Empire further shrank in the Balkan regions and then fragmented during the Balkan Wars, much of the non-Christian populations of its former possessions, mainly Balkan Muslims (Bosniaks, Albanians, Turkish people, Pomaks and Greek Muslims such as the Vallahades from Greek Macedonia), were resettled in various parts of Anatolia, mostly in formerly Christian villages throughout Anatolia.
A continuous reverse migration occurred since the early 19th century, when Greeks from Anatolia, Constantinople and Pontus area migrated toward the newly independent Kingdom of Greece, and also towards the United States, the southern part of the Russian Empire, Latin America, and the rest of Europe.
Following the Russo-Persian Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) and the incorporation of Eastern Armenia into the Russian Empire, another migration involved the large Armenian population of Anatolia, which recorded significant migration rates from Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) toward the Russian Empire, especially toward its newly established Armenian provinces.
Geology
Anatolia's terrain is structurally complex. A central massif composed of uplifted blocks and downfolded troughs, covered by recent deposits and giving the appearance of a plateau with rough terrain, is wedged between two folded mountain ranges that converge in the east. True lowland is confined to a few narrow coastal strips along the Aegean, Mediterranean, and the Black Sea coasts. Flat or gently sloping land is rare and largely confined to the deltas of the Kızıl River, the coastal plains of Çukurova and the valley floors of the Gediz River and the Büyük Menderes River as well as some interior high plains in Anatolia, mainly around Lake Tuz (Salt Lake) and the Konya Basin ( Konya Ovasi).
(2025). 9781118945018, John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118945018
Climate
Ecoregions
There is a diverse number of plant and animal communities.
Demographics
The largest provinces in Anatolia (aside from the Asian side of Istanbul) are Ankara, İzmir, Bursa, Antalya, Konya, Adana, Kocaeli Province, Mersin, Manisa, Kayseri, Samsun, Balıkesir, Aydın, Maraş, Sakarya Province, Muğla, Denizli, Eskişehir, Trabzon, Ordu, Afyonkarahisar, Sivas, Tokat, Zonguldak, Kütahya, Çanakkale, Osmaniye and Çorum. All have populations of more than 500,000.
See also
Explanatory notes
Citations
Sources
(2025). 9780231145541, Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231145541
(2025). 9780195376142, Oxford University Press Inc.. ISBN 9780195376142
Further reading
External links
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