Turkey is situated in Anatolia and the Balkans, bordering the Black Sea, between Bulgaria and Georgia, and bordering the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, between Greece and Syria. The geographic coordinates of the country lie at: 39°00′N 35°00′E / 39°N 35°E / 39; 35
The area of Turkey is 783,562 km 2 (302,535 sq mi); land: 770,760 km 2 (297,592 sq mi), water: 9,820 km 2 (3,792 sq mi).
Turkey extends more than 1,600 km (994 mi) from west to east but generally less than 800 km (497 mi) from north to south. Total land area is about 783,562 km 2 (302,535 sq mi), of which 756,816 km 2 (292,208 sq mi) are in Asia and 23,764 km 2 (9,175 sq mi) in Europe (Thrace).
Anatolia (Turkish: Anadolu ) is a large, roughly rectangular peninsula situated bridgelike between Europe and Asia. The Anatolian part of Turkey accounts for 97% of the country's area. It is also known as Asia Minor, Asiatic Turkey or the Anatolian Plateau. The term Anatolia is most frequently used in specific reference to the large, semiarid central plateau, which is rimmed by hills and mountains that in many places limit access to the fertile, densely settled coastal regions.
The European portion of Turkey, known as Thrace (Turkish: Trakya ), encompasses 3% of the total area but is home to more than 10% of the total population. Istanbul, the largest city of Europe and Turkey, has a population of 11,372,613. Thrace is separated from the Asian portion of Turkey by the Bosporus (Turkish: İstanbul Boğazı ), the Sea of Marmara (Turkish: Marmara Denizi ), and the Dardanelles (Turkish: Çanakkale Boğazı ).
External boundaries
Land boundaries: 2,627 km (1,632 mi) border countries: Greece 206 km (128 mi), Bulgaria 240 km (149 mi), Georgia 252 km (157 mi), Armenia 268 km (167 mi), Nakhchivan (Azerbaijan) 9 km (6 mi), Iran 499 km (310 mi), Iraq 331 km (206 mi), Syria 822 km (511 mi).
Coastline: 7,200 km (4,474 mi) Maritime claims: exclusive economic zone: in Black Sea only: to the maritime boundary agreed upon with the former USSR territorial sea: 6 nmi (11.1 km; 6.9 mi) in the Aegean Sea; 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) in Black Sea and in Mediterranean Sea
Surrounded by water on three sides and protected by high mountains along its eastern border, the country generally has well-defined natural borders. Its demarcated land frontiers were settled by treaty early in the twentieth century and have since remained stable.
The boundary with Greece was confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which resolved persistent boundary and territorial claims involving areas in Thrace and provided for a population exchange (see: War of Independence). Under the agreement, most members of the sizable Greek-speaking community of western Turkey were forced to resettle in Greece, while the majority of the Turkish-speaking residents of Thrace who were not forced out during the Balkan wars were removed to Turkey.
The boundary with Bulgaria was confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Since 1991 the more than 500 km (311 mi) boundary with the former Soviet Union, which was defined in the 1921 Treaty of Moscow (1921) and Treaty of Kars, has formed Turkey's borders with the independent countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Despite Armenia's loss of territory as a result of the treaty, Armenia, as a legal successor to the Armenian SSR, declared its loyalty to the Treaty of Kars and all agreements inherited by the former Soviet Armenian government after its independence.
The boundary with Iran was confirmed by the Kasr-i Sirin treaty in 1638.
The boundary with Iraq was confirmed by the Treaty of Angora (Ankara) in 1926. Turkey's two southern neighbors, Iraq and Syria, had been part of the Ottoman Empire up to 1918. According to the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey ceded all its claims to these two countries, which had been organized as League of Nations mandates under the governing responsibility of Britain and France, respectively. Turkey and Britain agreed the boundary in the Treaty of Angora (Ankara).
Turkey's boundary with Syria has not been accepted by Syria. As a result of the Treaty of Lausanne, the former Ottoman Sanjak (province) of Alexandretta (present-day Hatay Province) was ceded to Syria. However, in June 1939 the people of Hatay had formed a new independent State and immediately after, the parliament voted to unite with Turkey. Since achieving independence in 1946, Syria has harbored a lingering resentment over the loss of the province and its principal towns of Antakya and İskenderun (formerly Antioch and Alexandretta). This issue has continued to be an irritant in Syrian-Turkish relations.
Geology
Main article: Geology of TurkeyTurkey's varied landscapes are the product of a wide variety of tectonic processes that have shaped Anatolia over millions of years and continue today as evidenced by frequent earthquakes and occasional volcanic eruptions. Except for a relatively small portion of its territory along the Syrian border that is a continuation of the Arabian Platform, Turkey geologically is part of the great Alpine belt that extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Himalaya Mountains. This belt was formed during the Tertiary Period (about 65 million to 1.6 million B.C.), as the Arabian, African, and Indian continental plates began to collide with the Eurasian plate. This process is still at work today as the African Plate converges with the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian Plate escapes towards the west and southwest along strike-slip faults. These are the North Anatolian Fault Zone, which forms the present day plate boundary of Eurasia near the Black Sea coast, and the East Anatolian Fault Zone, which forms part of the boundary of the North Arabian Plate in the southeast. As a result, Turkey lies on one of the world's seismically most active regions.
However, many of the rocks exposed in Turkey were formed long before this process began. Turkey contains outcrops of Precambrian rocks, (more than 540 million years old; Bozkurt et al., 2000). The earliest geological history of Turkey is poorly understood, partly because of the problem of reconstructing how the region has been tectonically assembled by plate motions. Turkey can be thought of as a collage of different pieces (possibly terranes) of ancient continental and oceanic lithosphere stuck together by younger igneous, volcanic and sedimentary rocks.)
During the Mesozoic era (about 250 to 65 million years ago) a large ocean (Tethys Ocean), floored by oceanic lithosphere existed in-between the supercontinents of Gondwana and Laurasia (which lay to the south and north respectively; Robertson & Dixon, 2006). This large oceanic plate was consumed at subduction zones (see subduction zone). At the subduction trenches the sedimentary rock layers that were deposited within the prehistoric Tethys Ocean buckled, were folded, faulted and tectonically mixed with huge blocks of crystalline basement rocks of the oceanic lithosphere. These blocks form a very complex mixture or mélange of rocks that include mainly serpentinite, basalt, dolerite and chert (e.g. Bergougnan, 1975). The Eurasian margin, now preserved in the Pontides (the Pontic Mountains along the Black Sea coast), is thought to have been geologically similar to the Western Pacific region today (e.g. Rice et al., 2006). Volcanic arcs (see volcanic arc) and backarc basins (see back-arc basin) formed and were emplaced onto Eurasia as ophiolites (see ophiolite) as they collided with microcontinents (literally relatively small plates of continental lithosphere; e.g. Ustaomer and Robertson, 1997). These microcontinents had been pulled away from the Gondwanan continent further south. Turkey is therefore made up from several different prehistorical microcontinents.
During the Cenozoic (Tertiary about 65 to 1.6 million years) folding, faulting and uplifting, accompanied by volcanic activity and intrusion of igneous rocks was related to major continental collision between the larger Arabian and Eurasian plates (e.g. Robertson & Dixon, 1984).
Present-day earthquakes range from barely perceptible tremors to major movements measuring five or higher on the open-ended Richter scale. Turkey's most severe earthquake in the twentieth century occurred in Erzincan on the night of December 28-29, 1939; it devastated most of the city and caused an estimated 160,000 deaths. Earthquakes of moderate intensity often continue with sporadic aftershocks over periods of several days or eve
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