Turkey set its capital away from the straits

Turkey is often told as a bridge between Europe and Asia. The state itself refused that convenience: its capital is called Ankara and lies in Anatolia, not on the strait.

Istanbul lies on both sides of the Bosphorus. One shore is Europe, the other Asia, with the Sea of Marmara between, the Dardanelles in front and the Black Sea behind. That position is the famous one. It is not the capital. In 1923 the new republic made Ankara its seat, a city on the interior plateau, far from the palaces on the Golden Horn. The constitution holds to that: the language is Turkish, the capital is Ankara. The bridge remained a city. The state moved inland.

Anatolia is the body

85,878,556 people live on 783,562 square kilometres. Most of that area is Anatolia, the Asian mass of plateau, coastal ranges and interior basins. The European share, Eastern Thrace, is the smaller piece in front of Istanbul. Draw Turkey as a European country and you draw the exception. Draw it only as an Asian country and you erase the strait, without which the name of the city on the Bosphorus makes no sense. Ankara lies deliberately on the side of the mass.

The capital lies in interior Anatolia, not on any of the three seas. The Black Sea to the north, the Aegean to the west and the Mediterranean to the south are the edges. Ankara is set back from them, in a landscape of steppe and mountain frame. The republic wanted a seat that would not continue Ottoman Istanbul. The decision has stayed visible in the geography. Istanbul trades, receives and remembers. Ankara decides.

Istanbul is the strait. Ankara is the decision not to reduce the state to the strait.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Many edges, one strait

Land neighbours are Greece and Bulgaria on the European side, then Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The border with Azerbaijan is the short line at Nakhchivan, not a front onto the Azerbaijani heartland. Armenia lies between. The list is not a ring of similar borders. Greece stands on the Aegean, Syria and Iraq to the southeast, Iran to the east. Turkey thus touches regions that have little in common with one another, and holds them together across Anatolia.

The strait remains the place where the map explains itself. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles connect the Black Sea with the Aegean. Anyone who wants to leave Odessa or Batumi for the open ocean passes this Turkish water. Istanbul sits on that passage and is therefore larger in conversation than Ankara. The state knew that and still placed the capital on the plateau. The passage is a position. The capital is a choice.

One official language for many that are spoken

Turkish is the language of the constitution. Kurdish is spoken beside it, above all in the southeast, and so are further languages, without the constitution raising them to official status. The state made unity of language into a form of the state, on a territory that is not linguistically uniform. That belongs to the same decision as Ankara: one centre, one name, one official language, although the edges look different and sound different.

Since 2022 the United Nations have written the country name as Türkiye. In German the ordinary name remains Türkei, in English Turkey, in French Turquie. The lira is the currency, issued by the central bank in Ankara, not in Istanbul. That too shows the order that 1923 intended. The famous city stays on the water. The state, its bank and its name sit inland and insist on being more than the passage between Europe and Asia.

Look for Turkey on the strait and you find Istanbul and miss Ankara. The state placed its seat where Anatolia begins to be the continent, and not only a shore.