Turkish cities, found on the map

Every one on the map

Every place listed below can be asked in this game. Places you find in a passed round drop out of your remaining pool. Grouped into 7 learning regions, matching the rounds on the Turkey guide. Regions with no places in this map’s selection are omitted.

What the map tells you about each one

The paragraph the game shows when you find a place, for all 16 of the ones written by hand. Reading them first is not cheating.

İstanbul

İstanbul has around 15 million people, roughly a fifth of the country. The Bosphorus running through it is about 700 meters across at its narrowest, and three suspension bridges and a rail tunnel under the seabed now cross it. Hagia Sophia, finished in 537, had the largest dome in the world for nearly a thousand years.

Ankara

Ankara sits at about 940 meters and has a dry continental climate: hot summers, snow in winter, and little rain either way. Atatürk’s mausoleum, Anıtkabir, stands on a hill over the city and was finished in 1953. The city grew from about 75,000 people in 1927 to over five million.

İzmir

İzmir has about 3 million people and is the country’s second port after İstanbul. Its waterfront promenade, the Kordon, runs several kilometers along the gulf. Ephesus, which had perhaps 200,000 people under Rome and held the Temple of Artemis, is an hour south of it.

Antalya

Antalya is the center of the country’s tourist industry and one of the most visited cities in the world by international arrivals. The old town sits above a Roman harbor behind Hadrian’s Gate, built for the emperor’s visit in 130, and the Taurus mountains rise straight out of the coastal strip behind it.

Bursa

Bursa was the first Ottoman capital, taken in 1326, and the early sultans are buried there. It sits under Uludağ, a mountain of 2,543 meters that is the country’s main ski resort. The city was the end of the silk road’s western branch and still makes textiles, along with much of the country’s car industry.

Adana

Adana sits on the Çukurova, the alluvial plain that was ancient Cilicia and is the country’s cotton belt. The Roman stone bridge over the Seyhan, built in the second century, carried traffic until 2007. The city is known nationally for a long, hot kebab that carries its name.

Gaziantep

Gaziantep is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the region and is known for pistachios and baklava. Its Zeugma museum holds mosaics rescued in 2000 from a Roman city that was flooded by a dam on the Euphrates; the best known of them is a woman’s face called the Gypsy Girl.

Konya

Konya sits at about 1,000 meters on a plain so flat and dry that most of the country’s wheat comes from around it. Rumi died here in 1273 and his tomb under a turquoise cone is one of the most visited places in the country. Çatalhöyük, a settlement of about 7500 BC, is 50 kilometers southeast.

Trabzon

Trabzon is hemmed between the sea and the Pontic mountains, which rise to over 3,000 meters within 50 kilometers of the shore and catch enough rain to keep the slopes green all year. The Sumela monastery, built into a cliff face at about 1,200 meters, is an hour south of the city.

Van

Van is at about 1,750 meters and the lake beside it never freezes because of the salt in it. The Akdamar church on an island offshore, built between 915 and 921, is carved on the outside with figures from the Old Testament, which is rare for a building of its age and place.

Erzurum

Erzurum sits at 1,900 meters, the highest large city in the country, and is cold enough that its winters regularly reach minus 20 degrees Celsius. It hosted the 2011 Winter Universiade. The congress held there in July 1919 was the first of the two that launched the war of independence.

Diyarbakır

Diyarbakır is walled in black basalt for about 5.8 kilometers, a circuit second in length only to the Great Wall among ancient walls still standing. It is the largest Kurdish-majority city in the country. The Hevsel gardens between the walls and the river have been cultivated for some eight thousand years.

Samsun

Atatürk landed at Samsun on 19 May 1919, which is counted as the start of the war of independence and is still a national holiday. The city sits between the deltas of the country’s two long northern rivers, the Kızılırmak and the Yeşilırmak, on the widest stretch of the Black Sea coastal plain.

Mersin

Mersin has the largest container port on the Mediterranean coast of the country. It was called İçel until 2002, when city and province both took the name of the town. The Cilician Gates, the pass through the Taurus that every army from Alexander onward used to enter Anatolia from the south, are north of it.

Antakya

Antakya was Antioch, founded around 300 BC and at its height one of the largest cities in the Roman empire. It sits on the fault that runs down through the Levant, and the earthquake of February 2023 destroyed much of the old city and killed tens of thousands across the region.

İzmit

İzmit was Nicomedia, capital of the eastern Roman empire under Diocletian from 286 until Constantine moved the seat west. It sits directly on the North Anatolian Fault, and the earthquake of 17 August 1999 is named for it. The gulf it stands on is the industrial heart of the country.

How this one works

The other maps of Turkey

Sweden has the same map in Swedish cities. Denmark has the same map in Danish cities. India has the same map in Indian cities. Mexico has the same map in Mexican cities. United States has the same map in American cities. China has the same map in Chinese cities. France has the same map in French cities. Japan has the same map in Japanese cities. Germany has the same map in German cities. Spain has the same map in Spanish cities. Brazil has the same map in Brazilian cities. United Kingdom has the same map in British cities. Italy has the same map in Italian cities. South Korea has the same map in Korean cities. All three together on the Turkey atlas page, the country itself on the Turkey guide, and the other two hundred on the world map.