Ankara is the capital of Turkey, in the middle of Asia Minor, 850 meters above sea level. The metropolitan area has 5 112 800 residents (2019). According to the UN, the population will increase to 5,868 million by 2030.
Business and transport
Ankara is a management, finance and trade center. The city has a number of industries, especially the food and textile industry, both based on the agricultural production in the surrounding area. Ankara is a transport hub. The International Airport (Esenboğa) is 28 kilometers northeast of the city. There are rail lines west to several cities, including Istanbul and on to Greece and Bulgaria. Eastward there are rail lines to a number of cities and on to Georgia and Iran (via a ferry), while the line to Syria is closed because of the civil war in this country. There are also railway lines to several cities north and south of Ankara. In the capital there is a subway.
Culture and education
The city has a varied architecture that reflects different historical periods, and has many monuments from Roman and Byzantine times, including a Roman bath and temple, a Byzantine citadel and monastery. The modern city, with its wide boulevards and beautiful parks, is dominated by the mausoleum of Kemal Atatürk. The city’s more than 50 museums include the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and the Republic Museum, as well as a large archaeological museum with a well-known Hittite collection and an ethnographic museum. The two largest universities is Gezi University with more than 80,000 students, while Ankara University has 67,000 students (2019).
History
Ankara was the capital of the dreads and later of the tectonic saws and the Roman province of Galatia. The famous inscription Monumentum Ancyranum from the Temple of Augustus and Rome in Ankara depicts Emperor Augustus ‘ reign. Later, Ankara was an important Byzantine border fortress. From 1360 Ankara was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1919, the city became the seat of Mustafa Kemal ‘s government and from 1923 the country’s official capital. The population, which in 1924 was only 35,000, increased to 286,800 in 1950. The town was called Angora in 1930.
