Turkey

Turkey is one of those countries where the magnitude of the human story seems tangible enough to touch. It’s certainly one of the great crossroads of the world, a geographic and cultural threshold where Europe and Asia have merged and grappled for thousands of years. It’s a bit hyperbolic to call Turkey the heartland of Eurasia, but there’s no question that a whole continent’s worth of history, culture, and physical geography echo in this sprawling, liminal republic.

A quick sketch of Turkish geography suggests something of its perennial regional importance. It’s nearly 1,000 miles across, stretching from Greece and Bulgaria to eastern and southeastern borders with Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—and linking Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and the Middle East in that mighty span. The headwaters of both the Euphrates and Tigris, lifeblood of Mesopotamia, lie in eastern Turkey; so does the Bosporus Strait, which divides comparatively small European Turkey (Thrace) from Asian Turkey (Anatolia) and connects the Black and Mediterranean seas.

From 16,854-foot Mount Ararat near the Iran line—where, it’s said, Noah’s Ark moored—to the clement Mediterranean coast, Turkey’s sweeping topography has been the stage for a breathtaking share of world history. That real estate has been the stomping ground (and the battlefield) for the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Mongols, and the Ottoman Turks, to name only some of the more prominent occupiers. Thirteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites provide a sampler-pack—by no means comprehensive—of Turkey’s archaeological treasures: the ancient Neolithic settlements and rock art of Catalhöyük, the Hittite capital of Hattusha, the Hellenistic monuments of Nemrut Dag, the ruins of Troy, the Ottoman caravan city of Sanfranbolu.

And few cities in the world claim the stature of resplendently beautiful Istanbul, where landmarks such as the Hippodrome, the Pantocrator Monastery, and the Topkapi Palace careen the visitor across a couple of thousand years’ worth of history along the very seam of Europe and Asia. In Istanbul, Ankara, and elsewhere, you can mull the fruits of your historical sightseeing over wide-ranging, cross-cultural Turkish cuisine, as much a revelation of the country’s heritage as anything else.

The intermix of European and Asian cultures continues to manifest in old and new ways alike in modern-day Turkey, a reminder that the tale of this continental bridge keeps unfurling on a wave of deep history.