[Misafir]

Interesting facts about Turkey

1. The famous Trojan Wars took place in Western Turkey, around the site where the Trojan horse rests today.
2. The first church built by man (St. Peter’s Church) is in Antioch (Antakya), Turkey.
3. The oldest known human settlement is in Catalhoyuk, Turkey (7th Millenium B.C.)
4. Ephesus and Halicarnasus (the place for the two of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world) are inTurkey.
5. St. Nicholas, also known as Santa Claus, was born in Demre, on Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast.
6. Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat (Agri Dagi) in Eastern Turkey.
7. The last meal on Noah’s Ark, a pudding of sweet and sour taste (asure), is still served throughout Turkey.
8. Turks introduced coffee to Europe.
9. Turks gave the Dutch their famous tulips.
10. Istanbul is the only city in the world built on two continents.
11. Tradition in Turkey says that a stranger at one’s doorstep is considered "God’s guest" for at least three days.
12. Turkey is noted for having one of the three most famous and distinctive traditional cuisines in the world.
13. The First Ecumenical Council was held in Iznik, Turkey.
14. Writing was first used by people in ancient Anatolia. The first clay tablets in the ruins of Assyrian Karum (Merchant Colony) date back to 1950 B.C.
15. The oldest tin mine was found in Göltepe, 60 miles south of Tarsus.
16. The first Neolithic paintings found on man-made walls are in Catalhöyük, Turkey.
17. Anatolia is the birthplace of historic legends, such as Homer (the poet), King Midas, Herodotus (the father of history), and St. Paul the Apostle.
18. Julius Caesar proclaimed his celebrated words, "Veni, Vidi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered)" in Turkey when he defeated the Pontus, a formidable kingdom in the Black Sea region of Turkey.
19. Female goddesses like Cybele dominated the Central Anatolian pantheon for thousands of years before these supernatural powers were transformed to male gods.
20. The Hittites sold Abraham the cave where he buried his wife Sarah, when the Israelites came to Palestine.
21. The first church dedicated to Virgin Mary is in Ephesus.
22. Cherry was first introduced to Europe from Giresun (Northern Turkey)
23. Turkey has hundreds beaches and marinas which have the "Blue Flag" (an European award for the best clean water) on the Mediterranean and Aegean.
24. The first recorded international treaty in the world was the Treaty of Kadesh between the Hittite and Egyptian Empires, Hattusilis III and Ramses II, in c.1275 BC.
25. The oldest known shipwreck on Earth was found and excavated in Uluburun near Kas, in the Mediterranean region of Turkey.
26. In 640 BC, for the first time in history, coins made of electrum were used by the Lydian king of Croesus in Sardis, in Aegean region of Turkey.
27. King Midas lived in Gordion, capital of Phrigia.
28. Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot near Ankara. The double knotting technique used in Turkish rugs is also called as Gordian Knot.
29. The Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis was said to be watered by a river which separated into four streams as it left the garden; two of them the Tigris (Dicle) and Euphrates (Firat) rise from the mountains of Eastern Turkey.
30. Early Christians escaping from Roman persecutions found shelter in Cappadocia.
31. The Seven Churches of Apocalypse are all situated in the Aegean region of Anatolia; Ephesus, Smyrna ( Izmir), Pergamum, Thyatira (Nazilli), Sardis, Philadelphia (Alasehir) and Laodicea.
32. Sultan Beyazit II dispatched the Ottoman Navy to bring the Jewish people who were expelled from Spain in 1492 and they were brought safely to the Ottoman lands.
33. Istanbul has the historical building of Sirkeci Train Station. This was the last stop of the Simplon-Orient Express - "kings of trains and train of kings" - between Paris and Constantinople (Istanbul )from 1883 to 1977. Agatha Christie was one of the passengers of this famous train.
34. The number of species of flowers in Turkey is approximately 9,000, of which 3,000 are endemic. In Europe for instance there are 11,500 species. This shows the richness of flora and fauna in Anatolia.

[Misafir]

Interesting Facts About Turkey

Mount Agri is the highest peak (5,166 m) in Turkey.

Mount Agri, also known as Mount Ararat, is said to be the place where Noah's Ark came to rest.

Lake Van is Turkey's largest lake.

Gobekli is an ancient temple in southern Turkey dated between 10000 BC and 9000 BC. A number of stone monoliths are engraved with a variety of animals.

Hacilar, a Neolithic farming village in southwestern Turkey, may have been inhabited as early as 8000 BC.

Catalhoyuk was an urban centre dated around 7000 BC. The site was first excavated in the early 1960s.

The city of Troy was first excavated in 1871. The siege of Troy by the Greek armies, led by Agamemnon of Mycenae and Menelaus of Sparta, inspired Homer's Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, and The Odyssey, the story of the legendary travels of Odysseus after the Trojan War.

Turkey (Asia Minor or Anatolia) was settled by Greeks from Attica (Ionians) and is the home of the Classical Greek Ionic column.

The Temple of Artemis (Diana), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built at Ephesus which was part of the Greek Empire.

The Ancient Greek Temple of Apollo was built in Didyma near Miletus.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, built around 353 BC, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Zeugma 2000, an archaeological project, investigated the Roman frontier city of Zeugma on the Euphrates river.

St Paul (Saul) was born in Tarsus, east of Mersin.

Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, was an important capital city for many hundreds of years. Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire expanded in the early sixteenth century under Sultan Selim I (1512-1520) but the greatest expansion of the Empire took place during the rule of Sultan Suleyman (1520-1566).

The Ottoman Empire ended in 1922 and the Republic of Turkey was founded. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the President of the Republic.

Turkey has a history of earthquakes. In 1999 earthquakes left over seventeen thousand people dead and many thousands homeless.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, opened in 2006, ends at a marine terminal at Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. The pipeline brings oil from the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkey's port.

[Gabriella]

Did you know? Interesting and little-known facts about Turkey

Modern Turkey

Turkey is the only secular Muslim country among all the Muslim countries in the world.
In 1923 the democratic Republic of Turkey was established under the leadership of Kemal Atatürk.

Turkey is a young country in more ways than one: over two-thirds of the Turkish population is under age thirty.
Turkey is physically one of the highest countries in the world, the average height is 6,000 feet.
Turkey is one of the few agriculturally self-sufficient countries in the world.
More than two-thirds of Turkey's borders are coastline, these stretch for fully 6,000 km (3,730 miles) along the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.
Turkey is one of the riches countries in species of flowers due to its varied landscape and climate. There are approximately 9,000 species of which 3,000 are native. In Europe there are only 11,500 species.

Turkish History

The Turkish people trace their ethnic origins to a group of Ural-Altaic tribes who were located in the 2nd c. BC in what is today Mongolia.
Esperanto is based on the structure of the Turkish language.
The majority of Turks were converted to Islam in the 9th c. AD.

The Ottoman Navy brought the Jewish people who were expelled from Spain to safety in the Ottoman lands in 1492.

Tulips are not native to Holland. They were actually introduced from Anatolia in the 16th c.

Christian History in Turkey

St. Paul was born in Tarsus (located in southern Turkey). His missionary journeys signalled the arrival of Christianity in Asia Minor from 47 AD.
Christianity first bloomed in Anatolia with the first church of Christianity dedicated to St. Peter in Antioch.
Early Christians fleeing from Roman persecution found refuge in Cappadocia's underground cities.
Anatolia became the heartland of the eastern realm of the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
The Greek Orthodox church is still located in Istanbul.

The Garden of Eden was said to be watered by a river which separated into four streams as it left the garden. Two of them, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are found in the mountains of eastern Turkey.

Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in Turkey, is believed to be the place where Noah's Ark landed.

The Seven Churches of the Apocalypse were all located in Anatolia - Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.

St. Nicholas - today's Santa Claus, was born in Patara (next to Kalkan) and lived as the bishop of Myra in Demre (also near Kalkan).
Followers of Jesus were first called "Christians" in today's Antakya.
All Ecumenical Councils were held in western Anatolia.
Over one hundred Christian churches of many different sects are found in the city of Istanbul.

Ancient History in Turkey

"Anatolia" means "east" in Greek. In the Turkish language it means "the land full of mothers".

The oldest known shipwreck was excavated near Kaş (a coastal town next to Kalkan).

King Midas, son of Gordius, the last and the most famous of the Phrygian kings, ruled over the whole of Asia Minor in the 6th century BC.

Many city names originated in Anatolia such as Philadelphia, Paris, Antioch, Troy and the continental name "Europe".

Alexander the Great embarked on a campaign against the Persians in 334 BC crossing the Dardanelles, occupying Gordium (this is where the fabled cutting of the Gordian knot took place) and defeating Darius the Third.
Two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World stood in Anatolia - the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

The words "Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered)" were said by Julius Caesar when he went to Anatolia in 47 BC.

The Lycian federal system of government with proportional representation was used as a model by the authors of the United States constitution.