Anatolia, Asia Minor or Anatolian Peninsula It is a peninsula geographically located in Southeastern Europe and Southwest Asia. Its name comes from the Greek anatolé, which means "east" or "lift". Anatolia corresponds to the name by which the present Asian peninsula of Turkey was made known in ancient times.
It limits to the northwest with Bulgaria and Greece, specifically by the Straits of Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. To the north it limits with the Black Sea and to the south with the Mediterranean Sea, Iraq and Syria. To the northeast it is with Georgia and Armenia, to the east with Iran and to the west with the Aegean Sea. Its current capital is Ankara.
In a historical sense, this region has always been characterized as an area of high importance in the military sphere, especially due to the fact that the mountains it possesses were the perfect space to establish strategic fortifications..
Likewise, the territory of Anatolia was occupied by a large number of populations, among which the Arabs, Greeks, Turks, Jews and Assyrians, among many others, stand out..
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The Anatolian peninsula, the ancient way of silk and species and the main point of union between Europe and Asia, served as a framework for the fall and rise of peoples, civilizations and empires that were intermingled from the Neolithic to the present day.
This gave rise to numerous historical passages that narrated from the greatest epics and conquests of territories, through violent massacres and exterminations of ethnic groups in the desire to extend power, to the development of vast and rich cultures whose achievements transcended many centuries after your demise.
Before the Bronze Age and even after the Neolithic Age, Anatolia was a comparatively desolate region. The Akkadian Empire, with Sargon in the XXIV century BC. C., has the oldest historical records of Anatolia.
The Hittites created an empire that reached its peak in the 14th century BC. It was the Bronze Age and encompassed a vast territory of the peninsula in northwestern Syria and in upper Mesopotamia.
The arrival of the Greeks continued until the end of the Bronze Age (1200 BC). They were the only Greek-speaking groups on the beach in western Anatolia, which was also home to the Mycenaean societies that strengthened the ancient western coastal cities, Miletus and Colophon..
According to Herodotus, the migration of the Aeolians from Boeotia and Thessaly favored the union of 12 large cities that belonged to the islands of Ionia (Colophon, Miletus, Samos, Chios, Priene, Myus, Ephesus and other metropolises). Then it was reduced to 11 because they lost the city of Smyrna.
During the years 546 and 334, 6th and 5th centuries BC, the Persian Empire ruled Anatolia. Even so, the customs and beliefs of the Greeks remained in the popular imagination..
This allowed many cities located on or very close to the coast to enrich themselves and progress significantly. Some of their rulers tried to rebel, but they never became a threat.
After the death of Philip of Macedonia, his son Alexander the Great assumed the reins of his father's empire and organized a huge army capable of neutralizing any action by his enemies. The mighty Middle Eastern country was subdued in the Battle of the Granicus.
Alexander the Great took all the cities that made up the peninsula, avoiding a dangerous naval battle. The Persians led by Darius III sought Alexander the Great through the flat lands of Issos to annihilate him.
The Macedonian strategist detected a favorable field where his hunters marched, he faced them in battle and struck down the army of Darius III, destroying his reputation, to the point that he had to escape to the Euphrates and abandon his family. Anatolia was finally freed from Persian rule.
Years later an alliance emerged between Philip V of Macedonia and the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, who led the defeat of Rome against Africa, Spain and Italy during the Second Punic War..
Strategically, Rome collaborated with Hannibal's security to prevent Macedonian expansion into western Anatolia.
Rhodes and Attalus I of Pergamum persuaded Rome to face Macedonia, and Philip V's army was defeated at the hand of General Titus at the Battle of Cinoscephalos in 197 BC. C.
Greece was proclaimed free and independent and Rome made it clear that this was one of her most genuine wishes. It reaffirmed its dominance after the promise of "free hands", allowing a government to rule locally and providing military security..
The Byzantine Empire was founded in western Constantinople (272-337). It was a time of abundance, wealth and just rulers, but it was later abandoned and, as it weakened, another group from the Mongols took over the region: the Turks..
Their Seljuk and Ilkhanate armies reduced the scope of Byzantine authority and trade by intemperance of the most important places of purchase and sale, and in 1453 AD. Sultan Mehmet II took possession of Constantinople, ending one of the most splendid periods of Western culture: the Byzantine Empire.
In Anatolia, during the Ottoman Empire other beliefs were maintained after 1453. Strategically, this allowed him to expand his territories, which now included the northern tip of Africa and Europe, beyond Thrace.
Russia and other revolted regions prevented the Ottomans from taking advantage of their privileged position, and the Ottomans eventually resigned to incompetent leadership. Although they had a powerful army, the Janissaries were divided.
Taxes and mortgages made commerce unprofitable and the laws created for the development of the economy were ineffective.
This caused the empire to be involved in the First World War on the side of the Allies, Austria and Germany. The Ottoman Empire was defeated and divided, limiting itself only to Anatolia.
As mentioned above, the particular geographical location of the Anatolian peninsula -between Asia and Europe- as well as its relief, historically made it a military scene of transcendental wars: from the legendary Trojan War to the Greek-Turkish war in 1919.
In the economic sphere, Anatolia was considered the cradle of the currency that was given as a means of commercial exchange during the Greek and Roman times around the seventeenth century BC..
Although for a long time Anatolia was characterized as a multiethnic culture (at least until the beginning of the 20th century), successive Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides almost completely eliminated these populations. The rest of the Greek ethnic groups were expelled after the Greek-Turkish war, between 1919 and 1922.
Currently the inhabitants of Anatolia are essentially Turks and Kurds, product of the founding of the Republic of Turkey that occurred in 1923.
The Islamic religion is predominant, as well as the Turkish language, as a consequence of the so-called Seljuk conquest. During this period, Anatolia underwent the transition from the Greek language and the Christian religion, to the Muslim majority that today governs its culture..
It has a total area of 779,452 km² and, in general, the terrain of Anatolia is of great complexity. It is composed of a large central massif that suggests a huge plateau, full of raised areas in the form of mountains and valleys..
The terrain is rough, reaching up to the long coastal strips that are located next to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea..
There are not many plains, except for coastal ones like Çukurova and gentle slopes like those of the Kizil River deltas. There are valleys in the Gediz and Büyük Menderes rivers, as well as some inland high plains, mainly around Lake Tuz Gölü and Konya Ovası.
It has sufficient agricultural resources despite having few favorable land for irrigation and crops. However, important deposits of coal, lignite, iron and chromium stand out, and some oil deposits found in the southeast of the country.
The border areas are of significant seismic activity, which makes Anatolia present frequent earthquakes.
The coastal areas of Anatolia bordering the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean Sea have a generally temperate climate.
This region is characterized by having summers that are hot and quite dry, unlike its winters, which tend to be humid and very cold..
Despite the fact that four different seasons can be experienced in this area, in reality the autumn and spring seasons are shorter and with less marked characteristics than summer and winter, so they are not the most prevalent..
Regarding rainfall, spring is usually the time of year in which the greatest amount of rain falls; however, these are quite mild, so they do not represent a very high value annually.
In Anatolia there are no large river courses due to the cracked relief, but there are large and important endorheic basins (which do not have drains).
One of its main rivers is the Kizilirmak or Halis River, which is the longest in the region at 1,150 kilometers in length. It is widely used for the generation of hydroelectric energy.
This river is followed by two other important ones: the Sakarya (824 km) and the Yeşilırmak river or ancient Iris (418 km). Both traverse large regions of Anatolia before emptying into the Black Sea.
It is important to note that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are born in Anatolia, which flow into the Persian Gulf. In addition, in the European part there is the final stretch of the Maritsa river.
Turkey has many lakes of both fresh and salt water, and closed depressions. Among the main lakes are the Van, being the largest with an area of 3755 square kilometers and a depth of 451 meters. Its salty waters are rich in calcium carbonate.
Lake Tuz is the second largest with 1500 km² of surface, although it is shallow. It is located in a central Anatolian tectonic depression.
This lake is salt water and endorheic type. It has the potential to generate the main industrial activity of salt for its region, since in the summer it evaporates leaving a thick layer of salt.
Other freshwater lakes include the 650-square-kilometer Beyşehir in southwestern Anatolia. It is widely used for irrigation despite the fact that the water level varies in the winter and summer seasons..
Other freshwater lakes of tectonic origin and endorheic type are the Eğirdir (482 km2) and the Akşehir (350 km2).
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