Republic of Turkey
Asia Occidental
Byzantine · Bazaar · Bridges
Istanbul is the only city in the world that spans two continents — Europe and Asia divided by the Bosphorus Strait.
Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Istanbul, İzmir, Bursa — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Ankara was chosen as Turkey's capital by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923 specifically because it lay in the Anatolian heartland rather than the cosmopolitan Ottoman Istanbul — a deliberate statement that the new republic would be built from the interior out, and the Anıtkabir mausoleum, where Atatürk is interred, receives over 10 million visitors annually.
El idioma oficial es turco, que refleja el patrimonio cultural del país y lo conecta con una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Turquía se contacta mediante el código +90. Çay — black tea brewed in a double-stacked kettle and served in tulip-shaped glasses — is consumed at a rate of 3.5 kilograms per person per year, making Turkey the world's highest per-capita tea consumer, and the tea house, the çay evi, functions as the primary venue for male social life across the country's smaller cities and villages.
Turquía comparte sus fronteras con Georgia, Irán, Armenia, Grecia, Irak, Siria, Azerbaiyán, Bulgaria. El tráfico rodado circula por la derecha, en consonancia con la convención de
La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC+03:00, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.
Döner Kebab's rotating spit was developed in 19th-century Bursa, where chef Hacı İskender Efendi is credited with inventing the horizontal stacking method around 1860 — the Turkish original, served over bread with tomato sauce and browned butter, bears little resemblance to the Berlin döner that German-Turkish migrants transformed into Europe's most consumed street food.
Turkish oil wrestling, Yağlı Güreş, practised since the 14th century at the Kırkpınar tournament in Edirne — the world's oldest continuously running sporting competition — involves wrestlers covering themselves in olive oil and competing without a time limit, an event that has continued uninterrupted since 1362.
Cappadocia's fairy chimneys — volcanic tuff columns sculpted by differential erosion over millions of years — were hollowed into cave churches, monasteries and underground cities by Byzantine-era communities, some descending eleven storeys beneath the surface, and the landscape at dawn, covered in hot-air balloons, has become one of the world's most replicated travel images.