Turkey
A transcontinental bridge between Europe and Asia
Turkey straddles two continents at the meeting of Europe and Asia, its largest city Istanbul split by the Bosphorus strait that joins the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Heir to the Ottoman Empire and shaped by the ancient civilizations of Anatolia, it commands a position of enormous strategic weight, controlling the only sea passage between the Black Sea and the wider world. A populous, fast-developing nation, it spans Mediterranean coasts, vast highland plateaus, and snow-capped mountains.
Most of the country is the broad Anatolian plateau, framed by the Pontic Mountains along the Black Sea and the Taurus Mountains in the south, rising in the far east to Mount Ararat, its highest peak. The land sits astride major fault lines and suffers devastating earthquakes. The climate varies from Mediterranean coasts to harsh continental interior. Manufacturing, textiles, automobiles, agriculture, construction, and tourism drive a large and diversified economy.
Anatolia cradled Hittite, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine civilizations before the Ottomans built an empire spanning three continents from Constantinople. After the empire's collapse, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the secular Turkish republic in 1923, recasting the nation along Western lines. A NATO member balancing East and West, Turkey has grown more assertive regionally amid debates over democracy and political direction. Ankara is the capital, though Istanbul remains the cultural and economic center.