Geography

General Information

Turkey is a rectangular, transcontinental country that joins the tip of Europe, the area known as Thrace, to Asia Minor, also known as Anatolia. It is divided into seven regions: Marmara, Aegean, Black Sea, Central Anatolia, Eastern Anatolia, South-eastern Anatolia, and the Mediterranean. Each distinct geographically, they also differ in terms of landscape, climate, crops, cuisine, and culture.

Turkey is also a peninsula, surrounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, with the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits and the Sea of Marmara separating Europe and Asia. The Black Sea coastline is rocky in nature, while the Aegean and Mediterranean coastlines are mostly fertile farmland. The inner portion of the country, or Anatolia, becomes increasingly more rugged and mountainous as you go further west. The Pontus Mountain Range or North Anatolian Mountains to the north, and the Taurus Mountain Range to the south bracket the Anatolian Plateau, which has long been the breadbasket of the country.

Geology

Turkey sits on top of the collision zone of the Eurasia-Africa-Arabia tectonic plates, smack on the Anatolian Plate. These plates are continually moving; the Eurasian Plate squeezes Turkey from the north and pushes it westward, while the African and Arabian plates push up from the south. The Eurasian and the Anatolian plates share a boundary, called the North Anatolian Fault—devastating earthquakes have occurred along this fault line, the most recent being the 1999 Izmit earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 that lasted for 45 seconds and claimed over 17,000 lives. The Mediterranean Basin has other fault lines acting on it, such as the Hellenic Arc, the Cyprus Arc, and the East Anatolian Fault Line. While this makes it an earthquake-prone area, there are constant small tremors in the region that prevents energy build-up and prohibit major quakes from occurring. Earthquakes in Turkey are monitored by the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute of Bogazici University, and the most recent information is always accessible at http://www.koeri.boun.edu.tr/scripts/lasteq.asp.

Highest Mountain, Largest Lake

The fabled Mt. Ararat, famed as the final resting place of Noah’s Ark is also found within Turkey’s borders. It is 5,166 metres high and the highest mountain in the country. Turkey’s largest lake, Lake Van is located in the highlands to the south east of the great mountain.

Rivers

There are quite a few significant water sources in Turkey, such as its longest rivers the Kizilirmak (1,355 km), Sakarya (824 km), and Yesilirmak (519 km) that begin inland and flow northward to the Black Sea. The 1,900-km Tigris (Dicle in Turkish) and 2,800-km Euphrates (Firat in Turkish) originate in the mountains to the east and flow southward into Syria and Iraq, and unite to form the Shatt al-Arab before meeting the sea at the Persian Gulf. The Meander (Buyuk Menderes in Turkish, 548 km) and the Gediz (400 km) rivers flow from Anatolia westward to the Aegean, nourishing fertile plains along the way. The Meric (or the Evros in Greek and the Maritsa in Bulgarian; 490 km total, 211 km in Turkey) forms the border between Turkey and Greece, and flows into the Aegean. And the 560-km Seyhan originates in the mountains in the east, feeds the Cukurova Plain together with its sister river the 509-km Ceyhan, and flows into the Mediterranean, just east of Mersin.

Climate

The Aegean and Mediterranean coastline enjoys hot and dry summers, and cool and rainy winters. The Black Sea coastal area gets the heaviest rainfall in Turkey, while Central Anatolia, blocked from the seas surrounding Turkey on three sides by the great Taurus and Pontus mountain ranges, has a continental climate and gets very cold in the winter, and very hot in the summer. Eastern and South-eastern Anatolia are also extremely hot during the summers, and very cold in the winters with significant amounts of snow.