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Anatolian Plateau
The high heartland of Asia Minor
The Anatolian Plateau is the elevated interior of Turkey, a semi-arid tableland that forms the heartland of Asia Minor between the Pontic Mountains to the north and the Taurus to the south. Rising from around 600 metres in the west to well over 1,000 metres toward the east, it is a land of rolling steppe, salt lakes, and ancient volcanic landscapes, ringed by mountains that wall it off from the sea and leave its centre dry, cold in winter and hot in summer.
The plateau is being squeezed and uplifted as the Arabian and African plates push into Eurasia, a tectonic vice that drives the earthquakes for which Turkey is notorious and that has fed widespread volcanism. Its bordering ranges block moisture from the surrounding seas, creating a continental interior of grassland and, at its heart, the great salt lake of Tuz Golu. In Cappadocia, thick layers of volcanic tuff have been eroded into the fairy chimneys and soft valleys for which the region is famous, later hollowed by people into cave dwellings and entire underground cities.
Few regions have hosted so long a parade of civilisations. The plateau holds Catalhoyuk, one of the world's earliest known towns, and was the core of the Hittite empire, later passing through Phrygian, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman hands. Ankara, modern Turkey's capital, sits on its northwestern edge. The dry uplands remain a region of wheat and grazing, dotted with the layered ruins of the many peoples who have made the heartland of Anatolia their own.