Sketch 2 A country centred on the edge Clarifies the (generally misunderstood) role of the Turkish Straights region

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1 Turkey: A Geographical Description By Deniz Eröcal A draft essay for comments deniz.erocal@free.fr Sketch 2 A country centred on the edge Clarifies the (generally misunderstood) role of the Turkish Straights region For best viewing, print in landscape format on both sides of the paper. The following pages should be facing one-another, with the Sketch on the Left, as follows.

2 Sketch 2: Centred on an edge Turkey s political and economic centre located on the northwest corner of the country Capitals at some point controlling most of the Turkish rectangle: Izt (Izmit), Ist (Istanbul), Edn (Edirne), Ank (Ankara) Other capitals in the Straights area that controlled the north-western third of the Turkish rectangle: Izk (Iznik), Brs (Bursa) Source: Drawn by the author 2

3 The Turkish Straights form the next obvious geographical feature most observers would recognise on a map of Turkey. These consist of two straights (The Bosporus and The Dardanelles) and in between, the Sea of Marmara from the Greek word for marble, which was produced in an island in it. (Hereafter, these three will be collectively referred to as The Straights.) A lot of people think that the chief contribution of this maritime channel to human heritage is to conveniently separate Europe from Asia. Those who live near their shores especially those who resided on one side of it and went to school on the other every day, for all their youth have difficulty seeing any major separation formed by them, except perhaps on a foggy day when Istanbul's urban maritime transport system is in mayhem. Asia and Europe differ a great deal indeed, but not because of this narrow maritime channel. The principal effect of the Straits is in their role in connecting the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The legend of Argonauts sailing from the Aegean to what is now Georgia in search of the Golden Fleece voices the most ancient known affirmation of this perspective. It was this linking function that, by the 5th century before the start of the Christian calendar (BC), propelled the ancient town of Vizantion 1 located at the southern entrance of the Thracian Bosporus 2 to the rank of an important regional town controlling the trade routes between the Aegean and the Black Sea. That Byzantium (in its Latinised spelling) was sacked and nearly disappeared by the end of the Roman civil wars of the 3rd century of the Christian calendar (AD). The first major blow to the Byzantium of classical antiquity had come in AD 196 when the city backed the wrong horse and got sacked during the imperial rivalry and civil war that brought Septimius Severus to the Roman throne. It also suffered serious damage during the civil wars of the period of Military Anarchy (AD ). [Maps 2.1 & 2.2] The ascent of the Constantine I ( the Great ) to the Roman throne as sole Emperor in AD 324 had been preceded by a battle with the contending co-emperor Licinius, including a siege of Byzantium and a final skirmish in Chrysopolis ( Golden City ) today s Üsküdar district of Istanbul situated across the water. It is probable that the events of AD 324 helped bring the importance of the ensemble formed by Byzantium, Chrysopolis, and Chalcedon (today s Kadiköy district of Istanbul), as a strategic location controlling both the sea and land communications, to Constantine s attention. The city that was resurrected from the ashes by him, and inaugurated as imperial capital on 11 May 330 (Julian Calendar), went on to become a metropolis, shaping the destinies of Roman/Byzantine as well as the Ottoman and modern Turkish states. The advent of the new capital consecrated the rise of the whole Straights region as a political and economic centre. In effect, large, country-size territories have been ruled from a political centre near the Turkish Straights more or less in unbroken fashion since the end of the 3rd century AD. In this period an effective political capital has been located successively in Izmit (as Nicomedia, AD 286 to 306), Istanbul (officially as Nova Roma, first colloquially, then formally as Konstantinopolis 3, and ), Edirne ( ), Ankara 4 (1920 to present). At times, Iznik (as Nikaia 5, for Seljuk Turks, for the Roman Emperors in exile) and Bursa ( ) also controlled large parts on NW Anatolia. [Map 2.3] Far from representing a land s end type of demarcation line, the Bosporus-Marmara Sea-Dardanelles axis, together with a territorial band of a few hundred kilometres on either side of it, has constituted a seat of political power radiating form a dense network of economically and culturally interlinked cities, at least since the 4th century AD. The notion that the Turkish Straights form a frontier separating Continents is pure nonsense. If one places one shore of it in a large assemblage of humanity (if that is what a Continent is supposed to mean), than one would have to place the other shore in the same one as well. That is of course the exact opposite of what every standard geographical atlas would make one believe. Our simple geographical model of Turkey is now a little closer to reality, with a political centre located on an edge. The Straights connect the seas more than they separate landmasses. Indeed, the concentration of political and economic power around the Straights, continuous since the 4th century AD, also strengthens the link between the lands masses in their vicinity. Thus the interlinked Straights zone has been the power centre of the Roman/Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and today constitutes the extremity of Turkey that rules the rest of the country. 3

AD) C) Genovese and Venetian trading routes (13th 14th c.

4 Map 2.1: The Black Sea Mediterranean connection: Historical examples A) Argonauts, Greeks and Romans (circa 15th c. BC 4th c. AD) B) Viking (orange) and Varangian (purple and red) trading routes (8th 11th c. AD) C) Genovese and Venetian trading routes (13th 14th c. AD) D: Black Sea as Ottoman lake (15th 18th c. AD) Coastline under direct (blue) and indirect (turquoise) Ottoman rule Note: See also modern-day shipping traffic density on Sources: Maps A and D drawn by the author; background information and Maps B and C from sources listed in the Material Used section 4

5 Map 2.2: The Black Sea Mediterranean connection: Summary of 1500 BC to AD 2000 Maritime spheres of The Aegean (M1) and The Black Sea (M2) shown in blue Territorial spheres of Anatolia (T1) and central Balkans (T2) shown in red Maritime and land links provided by The Straights shown in purple Table on the Left summarizes periods when different spheres were united under the same political power (black line) or connected via significant trade links (dashed blue line) Source: Drawn by the author on a base map downloaded from Ancient World Mapping Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) in July

6 Map 2.3: Straights region and capitals Capitals region (inside the purple oval): Izt (Izmit), Ist (Istanbul), Edn (Edirne), Ank (Ankara). Other capitals in the Straights area: Izk (Iznik), Brs (Bursa). Source: Drawn by the author on a base map downloaded from The Ancient World Mapping Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, under creative commons license CC-BY-NC 3.0 6

7 NOTES 1 The legendary beginning of Vizontion/Byzantium is situated in the 7th century BC the year 667 BC is usually cited as the foundation date. However, the town begins to occupy a position of relative importance only in the 5th century BC during the Greek-Persian and intra-greek struggles for dominance of the Aegean. 2 The adjective Thracian was used in antiquity in relation to what we now call The Bosporus, to distinguish this straight from the The Cimmerian Bosporus, which we now call the Kerch Straight separating Crimea from the Kuban Peninsula in North Caucasus and linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov (Azak Denizi in Turkish). The term Kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus was also used to designate a state that ruled territories in the NE quadrant of the Black Sea from the 5th through the 2nd c. BC, was part of the realms controlled by the kings of Pontus in the first c. BC, subsequently became a Roman vassal and remained so through the 4th c. AD. This affinity in names in itself underlines the Pontic (i.e., Black Sea-related) aspect of Istanbul. Bosporus is sometimes spelled Bophorus and the two spellings appear to be interchangeable. 3 Since its re-foundation as Nova Roma, the city that we now call Istanbul has had a multitude of other names and nicknames to a host of peoples, including Miklagard and Micklegarth to Germanic peoples, Konstantiniye to Arabs and later to Turks, Tzarigrad (Caesar s city) to Slavs, Kesarorda (literally Cesar s army in Turkish) to Bulgars (in an age when Bulgars were more Turkic than Slavonic), etc. etc. As recently as the 19th c., a quasi-official nickname for the city such as Dersaadet ( Gate of Felicity ) could be inscribed as place of birth in an Ottoman identity card. Contrary to what many believe consciously or unconsciously, (a) Turks have not changed the name of the city in any formal manner to Istanbul, (b) there is nothing particularly Turkish about Istanbul, which is a deformation of Greek eis tin polin (literally, in the City, or towards the City ), (c) variants of it (such as Stinpolin) were already in usage before the Turkish conquest, and, last but not least (d) the claim that Istanbul comes from Islambol ( Islam is plentiful [in it]) is pure urban legend. See also Demetrius John Georgacas, The Names of Constantinople, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 78 (1947), pp and Konstantinopolis is chosen as the preferred spelling in this essay, as opposed to the form Constantinople more familiar to contemporary westerners, precisely to encourage careful reflection on the multiple identities of this city even when it comes to its name. 4 Ankara, though usually presumed to be in central Anatolia, by virtue of its location on the Ankara Stream (Ankara Çayi), which is a confluent of the Sakarya (Sangarios) River, is in the Black Sea watershed area and is therefore part of the wider Mediterranean basin. The fact the olive tree can naturally grow in parts of the Ankara Province also supports this view. For our purposes the city of Ankara is considered as at the extreme eastern limit of the Straights zone. 5 Usually transcribed as Nicaea in the English classical tradition, and as Nicée in the French one. 7

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