145 Fun Facts About Turkey

What is the capital city of Turkey?

Ankara was chosen in 1923 because Atatürk had run the independence war from it, far from the old imperial court; long before, as Ancyra, it was a tribal capital of the Celtic Galatians.

Which strait separates the European and Asian sides of Istanbul?

The Bosphorus runs through the middle of Istanbul, so many of its people commute between continents every day, by ferry, across its bridges or through tunnels under the strait.

Which region, shared with Greece and Bulgaria, forms Turkey's European part?

Thrace's eastern corner is all that is left of the Ottomans' once-vast European lands; it is only about 3% of Turkey's area, yet it holds the historic heart of Istanbul.

Which Turkish port city was known for most of its history as Smyrna?

Izmir was still Smyrna to the outside world until about 1930, when Turkey pressed for the Turkish name to be used abroad; a huge fire in 1922 had already devastated the old port.

Cappadocia's fairy chimneys were formed by erosion of what type of rock?

Volcanic tuff is ash from ancient eruptions hardened into soft rock; a cap of tougher stone shields each column from the rain, and the tuff is soft enough that people carved homes and churches into it.

Pamukkale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Turkey, is famous for white terraces made of what?

Travertine is limestone laid down by calcium-rich hot springs; the same warm water drew Hellenistic kings, who founded the spa town of Hierapolis right on top of the terraces.

Which sea borders Turkey to the north?

The Black Sea washes Turkey's whole northern coast, and its only way out to the oceans runs through the Turkish straits, so every ship leaving it sails through the middle of Istanbul.

Mount Ararat, the highest peak in Turkey, is traditionally associated with which biblical event?

Noah's Ark coming to rest here is a later tradition: Genesis says only 'the mountains of Ararat', meaning the ancient kingdom of Urartu, and this peak took on the name and the story in the Middle Ages.

The Dardanelles strait connects the Aegean Sea to which body of water?

The Sea of Marmara is reached through the Dardanelles, the ancient Hellespont, a strait narrow enough that Xerxes crossed it on a bridge of boats in 480 BC and Lord Byron swam it in 1810.

Which alphabet did Turkey adopt in 1928 in place of the Arabic script used under the Ottomans?

Latin letters replaced the Arabic script by a law of November 1928; Atatürk toured the country explaining the new alphabet himself, and from 1 January 1929 it was compulsory in all public writing.

Which Ottoman sultan conquered Constantinople in 1453?

Mehmed II was 21 when he took the city; to get past the chain that barred the Golden Horn, he had his ships hauled overland on a greased wooden track and launched behind the defenders.

Who became Turkey's second president after Atatürk died in 1938?

İsmet İnönü, Atatürk's long-serving prime minister, was elected president the day after Atatürk died, and under him Turkey stayed out of the fighting throughout the Second World War.

Who began excavating the mound of Hisarlık, identified as Troy, in 1871?

Heinrich Schliemann, a self-made merchant, dug at Hisarlık from 1871 with Frank Calvert's guidance and in 1873 announced 'Priam's Treasure', a hoard he smuggled out of the Ottoman Empire.

The Gallipoli Campaign, fought for control of the Dardanelles, was part of which war?

World War I's Gallipoli campaign saw Ottoman troops hold the Dardanelles against Allied landings in 1915; a divisional commander there, Mustafa Kemal, came home a national hero and later led Turkey as Atatürk.

Which Ottoman sultan of the 16th-century golden age was known in the West as 'the Magnificent'?

Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566) took Belgrade and Rhodes, crushed Hungary at Mohács in 1526 and besieged Vienna in 1529; his legal reforms earned him the Turkish title Kanuni, 'the Lawgiver'.

Which ancient city beside modern Selçuk was home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders?

Ephesus was a great seaport until its river silted up the harbour and left the city stranded inland; the re-erected two-storey façade of its Library of Celsus stands among the ruins.

Constantinople was the capital of which empire for more than a millennium before the Ottoman conquest of 1453?

Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire, was ruled from Constantinople from 330 to 1453; its people never used that name, which was coined after the fall, and called themselves Romans to the end.

Which religious title did the Ottoman dynasty keep after the sultanate's abolition in 1922?

Caliph: the assembly elected Abdülmecid II, a cousin of the last sultan, to the title in November 1922, then abolished it in March 1924 and sent him into exile the next day.

In a traditional Turkish hammam, what is the göbek taşı at the centre of the hot room?

A heated marble slab: hot air from a hidden furnace warms it from below, a system inherited from Roman baths, and bathers lie on this 'navel stone' to sweat before they are scrubbed.

The whirling dervishes of Turkey follow which tradition within Islam?

Sufism is Islam's mystical path, and the Mevlevi dervishes whirl as a form of prayer; Turkey closed every Sufi lodge in 1925 and in the 1950s let the ceremony return only as a public performance.

The blue glass nazar boncuğu, seen across Turkey, is meant to protect against what?

The evil eye is a curse thought to be cast by an envious glare; around the Aegean, where blue eyes are rare, they were the ones suspected of casting it, which is why the charm is an eye staring back.

What is the longest river lying entirely within Turkey?

The Kızılırmak, or 'Red River', loops through central Turkey to the sea without ever leaving the country; the Euphrates is longer overall, but it flows on into Syria and Iraq.

What layered Turkish dessert is made with phyllo dough, nuts and honey or syrup?

Baklava stacks 30 or 40 paper-thin sheets of filo, each brushed with butter, over chopped nuts; its Turkish form was probably perfected in the sultans' palace kitchens, and trays of it went to the troops every Ramadan.

What do Turks call the starch-and-sugar sweet the English know as 'Turkish delight'?

Lokum won fame abroad after an English traveller took some home in the 1830s as 'Turkish delight'; C. S. Lewis later made it the sweet the White Witch uses to tempt Edmund in Narnia.

Which Turkish drink is made from yoghurt whisked with cold water and salt?

Ayran was hailed as the Turks' 'national drink' in 2013 by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then prime minister, who was speaking at a conference on alcohol policy.

What is the name of Istanbul's historic covered market, one of the largest and oldest in the world?

The Grand Bazaar began as a covered trading hall started in 1455, soon after the Ottoman conquest, with its income pledged to the upkeep of Hagia Sophia; it now spreads over 61 covered streets and some 4,000 shops.

Which southeastern Turkish city is considered the world capital of baklava?

Gaziantep owes its fame to Çelebi Güllü, who brought the recipe home from Damascus in 1871; the city's pistachio baklava became the first Turkish product with EU protected status in 2013.

Turkish coffee is traditionally brewed in what small long-handled pot?

The cezve is heated slowly so the coffee builds its prized foam, traditionally by nestling the pot in a pan of hot sand; a demlik is a teapot and a fincan the small cup the coffee is served in.

What was Istanbul's Hagia Sophia originally built as?

Cathedral: Hagia Sophia went up in under six years after rioters burned the church that stood before it, and for almost a thousand years it was the largest cathedral in Christendom.

What gives Istanbul's Blue Mosque its nickname?

Its interior tiles: thousands of İznik tiles and painted patterns, mostly in blue, line the Sultan Ahmed Mosque; a much-repeated but doubtful legend says its six minarets, as many as Mecca's, obliged the sultan to add a seventh there.

Which Istanbul palace was the Ottoman sultans' main home from the 15th century until the mid-19th?

Topkapı Palace housed the sultans for nearly four centuries, until Abdulmejid I moved the court to the new European-style Dolmabahçe on the waterfront; the old palace became a museum in 1924.

Which site in southeastern Turkey, dating to around 9500 BCE, upended theories on the origins of civilization?

Gobekli Tepe, near Şanlıurfa, holds rings of carved T-shaped limestone pillars, among the world's oldest known megaliths, raised by hunter-gatherers thousands of years before pottery or writing.

Which Turkish football club has the most Super Lig titles?

Galatasaray has won the most Süper Lig titles, reaching 25 with the 2024-25 championship against Fenerbahçe's 19; it is also the only Turkish club to win a European trophy, the 2000 UEFA Cup.

In 2020 Turkey turned Istanbul's Hagia Sophia from a museum back into what?

Mosque: on 10 July 2020 Turkey's top administrative court annulled the 1934 decree that had made Hagia Sophia a museum, and within weeks Friday prayers were being held under its dome again.

What is the official currency of Turkey?

The Turkish lira takes its name from the Latin libra, 'pound'; after years of runaway inflation Turkey struck six zeros off the currency in 2005, so that a million old lira became one new lira.

Which alliance did Turkey join in 1952, after sending troops to the Korean War?

NATO took in Turkey and Greece together in February 1952, its first new members; Turkey, which shared a border with the Soviet Union, had sought the alliance as a guarantee against its neighbour.

What did the builders of Cappadocia's underground city of Derinkuyu use to seal its passages against raiders?

Rolling stone doors, half-ton discs that could be moved only from the inside, closed off each level in turn; behind them Derinkuyu had room for some 20,000 people with their livestock and food.

Which iconic Turkish dish features meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie?

Doner means 'turning' in Turkish, after the upright spit; the sandwich version, shaved meat stuffed into bread, is usually credited to Turkish immigrants in 1970s West Berlin.

The 13th-century poet Rumi spent most of his life in which Turkish city?

Rumi settled in Konya, capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, whose name gave him his own ('the Roman'); he died there in 1273 and his tomb became the Mevlana shrine.

What does the Turkish word 'Ataturk' mean?

Father of the Turks: parliament gave Mustafa Kemal the surname Atatürk in 1934, the year every citizen was required to take a family name, and by law nobody else may ever take it.

Which Turkish author wrote 'My Name Is Red' and 'Snow'?

Orhan Pamuk was charged in 2005 with 'insulting Turkishness' for speaking of the mass killing of Armenians and Kurds; the case was dropped in January 2006, and later that year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which ancient wonder of the world stood at modern-day Bodrum in Turkey?

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the tomb of the Carian ruler Mausolus, gave English the word 'mausoleum'; earthquakes brought it down, and the Knights of St John reused its stones in Bodrum Castle.

Which thin, meat-topped Turkish flatbread is often nicknamed 'Turkish pizza'?

Lahmacun is a thin round of dough spread with spiced minced meat and herbs; unlike pizza it has neither cheese nor tomato sauce, and it is usually rolled up around salad and eaten by hand.

The Lycian Tomb of Amyntas, cut into a cliff above the harbour, overlooks which Turkish town?

The Tomb of Amyntas, carved into the cliff above Fethiye's harbour around 350 BC when Lycia was a Persian satrapy, is the grandest of the town's Lycian rock tombs.

Which sport is contested at Kırkpınar, listed by Guinness as the world's longest-running sports competition?

Oil wrestling: the wrestlers douse themselves in olive oil and wear only kıspet, heavy leather trousers; bouts once had no time limit and could last for days, until a 40-minute cap came in 1975.

The hilltop old city of Mardin in southeastern Turkey looks out over the plains of which ancient region?

Mesopotamia begins at Mardin's feet: the old city climbs the southern slope of a ridge below its citadel, built almost wholly of honey-coloured limestone quarried nearby, and faces the plain towards Syria.

Which Anatolian rock pioneer later became a beloved children's TV host?

Barış Manço, a pioneer of Anatolian rock, hosted the TRT show 7'den 77'ye for years, and his song 'Arkadaşım Eşşek' (My Friend the Donkey) became an unlikely children's anthem.

What is the largest lake in Turkey?

Lake Van has no outlet, so its water has turned salty and rich in soda; that salt keeps most of the lake from freezing even through the bitter winters of Turkey's far east.

Giant stone heads of gods and a king lie scattered around a royal tomb on which Turkish mountain?

Mount Nemrut holds the tomb-sanctuary of Antiochus I of Commagene, who had his own statue seated among the gods in the 1st century BC; the heads have since come off the bodies and lie about the site.

Which Neolithic proto-city in southern Anatolia flourished around 7000 BC?

Çatalhöyük had no streets: its mudbrick houses were packed wall to wall and entered by ladder through openings in the roof, and the dead were buried beneath the floors of the homes.

Colonists from which Italian maritime republic, Venice's great rival, built Istanbul's Galata Tower in 1348?

Genoa's colonists raised it in 1348 as the Tower of Christ, the high point of their walled quarter; in a doubtful tale told by the traveller Evliya Çelebi, Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi later glided from it across the strait on wings.

What is the name of the mausoleum complex of the republic's founder, completed in 1953?

Anıtkabir took nine years to build, so Atatürk's coffin waited in a museum for fifteen years after his death in 1938 before it was carried to the finished tomb on 10 November 1953.

Mehmet Akif Ersoy's poem 'İstiklal Marşı', chosen from 724 entries in 1921, became Turkey's what?

National anthem: Ersoy at first refused to enter the contest because it offered a cash prize, and had to be talked into submitting the 'Independence March', which parliament adopted in March 1921.

Turkey's 23 April holiday, the anniversary of its parliament's first sitting in 1920, is dedicated to which group?

Children: for decades officials from mayors to the president have handed their chairs to schoolchildren for the day, and the holiday has doubled as Children's Day since the 1920s.

Which 1923 peace settlement fixed the borders of the new Turkish republic?

The Treaty of Lausanne replaced the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920, which would have carved up Anatolia and was never ratified; this time Turkey came to the table as a victor, and the talks ran for months before the signing in July 1923.

Which 16th-century Ottoman architect designed more than 300 buildings, including the Selimiye Mosque he called his masterpiece?

Mimar Sinan was drafted into the sultan's army as a young man from a Christian family and learned his craft building military bridges and forts; he went on to serve three sultans as chief architect.

Which city in European Turkey, the ancient Adrianople, was the last Ottoman capital before Constantinople?

Edirne, the old Adrianople, is where the giant cannon for the siege of Constantinople was cast; early in 1453 it took teams of oxen to drag it east to the city walls.

Which ancient town on the Tigris was submerged by the Ilısu Dam reservoir in 2020?

Hasankeyf vanished under the Ilısu reservoir in 2020 despite years of objections; the 15th-century Zeynel Bey tomb was hauled to a new park in 2017, and other monuments were moved too.

Sertab Erener's 'Everyway That I Can' won which event for Turkey in 2003?

Eurovision Song Contest: after 28 years of trying, Turkey sent its first entry sung entirely in English and won for the first time, in Riga, by just two points, 167 to Belgium's 165.

Which Turkish director won the Palme d'Or in 2014 for 'Winter Sleep'?

Nuri Bilge Ceylan drew on Chekhov for 'Winter Sleep', which runs well over three hours; accepting the Palme d'Or, he dedicated it to Turkey's young people, including those who had lost their lives.

Aziz Sancar shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for mechanistic studies of what?

DNA repair: as a doctoral student in 1976 Sancar cloned the gene for photolyase, the enzyme that uses blue light to undo ultraviolet damage in bacteria, and later mapped nucleotide excision repair.

Weightlifter Naim Süleymanoğlu, 147 cm tall, was known by what nickname?

Pocket Hercules was born into Bulgaria's Turkish minority and defected in 1986; Turkey paid Bulgaria more than $1 million so that he could compete at once, and he won three straight Olympic golds.

Which English club won the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul after trailing AC Milan 3-0 at half-time?

Liverpool scored three times in six second-half minutes at the Atatürk Olympic Stadium and then won on penalties, a comeback known ever since as the Miracle of Istanbul.

Istanbul's Marmaray rail tunnel was delayed for years when diggers uncovered what?

An ancient harbour: the silted-up port of Theodosius lay under the planned Yenikapı station with the remains of sunken ships, so archaeologists took over and the tunnel opened years late, in 2013.

In 2022 the United Nations agreed to use which spelling of Turkey's name in English?

Türkiye became the UN's spelling in 2022 after a formal letter from the government; a presidential circular of December 2021 had said this form best expressed the nation's culture and values.

Turkey grows more than half of the world's supply of which nut?

Hazelnuts thrive on Turkey's rainy Black Sea coast, which grew about 58% of the world's crop in 2023; much of the harvest goes into chocolate and spreads such as Nutella.

Which Turkish dog breed, named after a district of Sivas, guards flocks against wolves?

Kangal dogs were bred to face down wolves in central Turkey; since 1994 a conservation charity has also placed them with farmers in Namibia, where they keep cheetahs away from the livestock.

Turkish rakı, which turns milky when water is added, is flavoured with what?

Aniseed gives rakı its liquorice taste; its oil, anethole, stays dissolved in alcohol but not in water, so a splash of water turns the drink cloudy white, which is why Turks call it 'lion's milk'.

The ring-shaped Turkish street bread simit is typically crusted with which seeds?

Simit is dipped in a molasses wash and rolled in sesame seeds before baking, which gives the ring its dark, crunchy crust; in Greece the same bread is sold as koulouri.

Karagöz and Hacivat are the lead characters of what traditional Turkish art form?

Shadow play: in one legend the pair were workmen whose banter so distracted a mosque's builders that the ruler had them executed; they were missed so much that they lived on as puppets.

Istanbul's Basilica Cistern was built during the reign of which emperor?

Justinian I had it built to store the city's water; most of its 336 columns were salvaged from older buildings, which is how two of them came to rest on blocks carved with the face of Medusa.

Istanbul's Sultanahmet Square, home to an Egyptian obelisk, was laid out in Roman times as what?

Chariot racetrack: the Hippodrome's rival fan clubs, the Blues and the Greens, set off the deadly Nika riots of 532; the obelisk, carved for the pharaoh Thutmose III, was raised on its central line in 390.

The 1925 Hat Law of the early republic outlawed which item of headgear?

The fez was banned as a relic of the Ottoman past; ironically, a reforming sultan had made it compulsory for officials in 1829 as the modern headgear of its day.

Which elite Ottoman infantry corps did Sultan Mahmud II destroy in the 'Auspicious Incident' of 1826?

The Janissaries, first raised from boys taken from Christian families in the Balkans, had become a law unto themselves; when they mutinied in 1826, Mahmud II turned his cannon on their barracks.

Which Seljuk victory of 1071 opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement?

The Battle of Manzikert left Emperor Romanos IV a prisoner of the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan, who freed him only in return for territory; the defeat left the road into Anatolia open.

Which Central Asian conqueror captured the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I in battle in 1402?

Tamerlane, or Timur, crushed Bayezid 'the Thunderbolt' in 1402; the sultan died a prisoner, and his sons fought over the throne for eleven years before the Ottoman state was put back together.

Paul the Apostle was born in which city, now in Mersin Province?

Tarsus, Paul's birthplace, was the Roman capital of Cilicia and the scene of Mark Antony's first meeting with Cleopatra in 41 BC.

Which saint's relics were carried off from Myra, in Turkey, to Bari in Italy in 1087?

Nicholas, Myra's 4th-century bishop, is said to have secretly left gold for three poor sisters' dowries, which made him a patron of gift-giving; the Dutch 'Sinterklaas' is the likely origin of the name Santa Claus.

Sardis, seat of the fabulously rich King Croesus, was the capital of which kingdom?

Lydia grew rich on the gold-bearing silt of the River Pactolus, which ran through Sardis, and is credited with striking the world's first coins; Croesus lost it all to Cyrus of Persia in the 540s BC.

Gordion, home of King Midas and the legendary knot, was the capital of which ancient kingdom?

Phrygia's capital kept an ox-cart tied with a knot so intricate that whoever undid it was promised the rule of Asia; in the best-known telling, Alexander the Great simply sliced through it with his sword in 333 BC.

The cliffside Sumela Monastery stands in the Pontic Mountains near which city?

Trabzon's Sumela Monastery emptied when its Greek Orthodox monks left in the 1923 population exchange; the exiles later built a new Sumela in northern Greece and carried some of the old treasures there.

Ani, a ruined medieval city on Turkey's eastern border, was once the capital of which kingdom?

Armenia's Bagratuni kings ruled from Ani between 961 and 1045, when it was famed as the 'City of 1,001 Churches'; its ruins now stand just inside Turkey, looking across a river ravine into Armenia itself.

Antakya, the ancient Antioch, is the capital of which southernmost Turkish province?

Hatay spent ten months as a republic of its own after being split from French-ruled Syria in 1938, then joined Turkey in 1939; Syria went on disputing the loss long afterwards.

The 1999 earthquake that killed over 17,000 people in Turkey is named after which city?

İzmit's quake struck at 3 am on 17 August; Greek rescuers were quick to help, Turkey returned the favour when Athens was hit weeks later, and the two rivals' thaw became known as 'earthquake diplomacy'.

Tarkan's late-1990s hit 'Şımarık' is known to English-speaking listeners by what title?

'Şımarık', meaning 'spoilt', became 'Kiss Kiss' in English after its kissing-sound hook conquered Europe in 1999; Holly Valance's cover was a UK number one in 2002.

Istanbul's oldest intercontinental bridge was renamed in 2016 for those killed resisting what?

A coup attempt: rebel soldiers seized the bridge on the night of 15 July 2016, and it was renamed the 15 July Martyrs Bridge for those killed resisting them; it had opened in 1973, just after the republic's 50th birthday.

Hit Turkish series Magnificent Century follows which slave girl, known in the West as Roxelana, who married a sultan?

Hürrem Sultan was seized by slave raiders in Ruthenia and sold in Constantinople; the sultan then broke with dynastic custom by freeing her and making her his legal wife.

Şanlıurfa is nicknamed 'City of Prophets' from the legend that it was whose hometown?

Legend makes Urfa the birthplace of Abraham, whom Nimrod hurled into a fire that God turned to water; the sacred carp of Balıklıgöl, Abraham's Pool, swim in the old city.

The Atatürk Dam, completed in 1990, stands on which river?

The Euphrates was held back entirely for a month in early 1990 so that the Atatürk Dam's reservoir could begin to fill, to loud protests from Syria and Iraq downstream; its water now irrigates the Harran plain.

Which 1936 agreement governs warship passage through the Turkish Straits?

The Montreux Convention gave Turkey back control of the straits and limits the number and tonnage of outside navies' warships; Turkey invoked it in 2022 after formally terming Russia's invasion of Ukraine a war.

Which ancient city in western Turkey held a library said to rival Alexandria's?

Pergamon's library was reckoned second only to Alexandria's, and the city gave parchment its name via Latin pergamena; Pliny's tale that its scribes invented parchment to beat a papyrus embargo is legend.

The steep, rainy hillsides around the city of Rize are the heart of Turkey's production of which crop?

Tea was pushed as a home-grown substitute for coffee, which became a costly import once the Ottoman Empire and its coffee lands in Yemen were lost; the wet hills around Rize proved the place to grow it.

The founder of the Turkish Republic was born in 1881 in which city, then under Ottoman rule?

Thessaloniki was the Ottoman port of Selânik when Atatürk was born there; in 1935 the city council gave the house to Turkey, and it is now a museum within the Turkish consulate grounds.

At what time on 10 November does Turkey pause for a minute to remember its founder?

9:05 am on 10 November 1938 was the moment of Atatürk's death at Dolmabahçe Palace; each year at that minute sirens sound, traffic stops and the country stands in silence.

The word 'tulip' is thought to come from a Turkish word for which item?

Turban, tülbent in Turkish, gave the flower its European name, perhaps because the bloom looked like one or, in another telling, because a translator muddled it with the headgear it was worn on; Turks call it lale.

The turkey is thought to owe its English name to which bird, once shipped to Europe through Turkey?

Guineafowl from Africa reached Europe by way of Turkey and were known as turkey-cocks. The name then stuck to the larger American bird, to which they are only distantly related.

Which comic-book superhero shares his name with a city, a province and a river in southeastern Turkey?

Batman was a village of about 3,000 people until the 1950s. It was renamed after the Batman River in 1957, as oil discoveries turned it into a city.

Which blue-green gemstone and colour takes its name from an Old French word meaning 'Turkish'?

Turquoise is not found in Turkey at all. The stone reached Europe through Ottoman lands from mines farther east, so the French called it 'Turkish stone'.

Which animals are pitted against each other at about thirty winter festivals held each year in Aegean Turkey?

Camels are the contestants: two males shove and lean on each other until one falls or runs away. The bouts take place in the mating season, with a female led past to stir them up.

Villagers of Kuşköy in northern Turkey send messages across deep valleys in a language made entirely of what?

Whistles stand in for spoken Turkish and travel much farther across a valley than a shout. UNESCO added the bird language to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2017.

Which English word comes from the Turkish name for an open garden pavilion favoured by Ottoman sultans?

Kiosk passed into English through the French 'kiosque', from the Turkish 'köşk', which the Turks had borrowed from a Persian word for a palace. Street newsstands took the name in the 1860s.

Which Latin boast did Julius Caesar make after routing King Pharnaces II at Zela, in what is now northern Turkey?

Veni, vidi, vici means 'I came, I saw, I conquered'. Caesar was stressing how quickly he had crushed the king of Pontus near the hill town now called Zile.

Tavuk göğsü, a sweet Turkish milk pudding once served to Ottoman sultans, is made with which finely shredded meat?

Chicken breast is shredded and cooked with milk, sugar and rice flour. The Turkish name simply means 'chicken breast', and the pudding is still a well-known dessert.

What did a 1934 reform require every citizen of Turkey to choose and register within two years?

A surname became compulsory under the Surname Law, and it had to sound Turkish: endings such as -ian, -ov and -pulos were banned. A companion law scrapped titles like bey and pasha.

İmam bayıldı, an Ottoman dish of aubergine stuffed with onion, garlic and tomato, has a name meaning what?

The imam fainted, the story goes, either with pleasure at the taste or with shock at how much olive oil had gone into it. The dish is eaten across the former Ottoman lands.

Anatolia, the peninsula that forms most of Turkey, has long been known in English by which other name?

Asia Minor is the older Western name for the peninsula, while 'Anatolia' comes from a Greek word meaning 'the east'. It makes up the majority of the country's land area.

Dondurma, the stretchy Turkish ice cream, is thickened with salep, a flour ground from the tubers of which flowers?

Orchids of the genus Orchis supply the starchy tubers, which make the ice cream firm, stretchy and slow to melt. Heavy demand for salep has wiped out orchids locally in parts of Turkey.

Which composer imitated Ottoman military bands in the 'Turkish March' that ends his Piano Sonata No. 11?

Mozart marked the movement 'Alla turca', and it is often played on its own as one of his best-known piano pieces. Beethoven's separate 'Turkish March' was written for the play The Ruins of Athens.

During which war did Florence Nightingale nurse British soldiers at the barracks hospital in Scutari, Turkey?

The Crimean War hospital at Scutari, modern Üsküdar, was notorious for its horrific conditions when she arrived in November 1854. Her night rounds there made her 'the Lady with the Lamp'.

According to legend, who sliced through the Gordian Knot with a sword at Gordium, in what is now central Turkey?

Alexander the Great cut the knot in 333 BC rather than untie it, the story goes. An oracle had promised that whoever undid it would rule all of Asia.

Which luxury train service, created in 1883, ran the length of Europe from Paris to a terminus in Turkey?

The Orient Express was run by a Belgian sleeping-car company and kept going in one form or another until 2009. Agatha Christie made it the scene of a famous murder mystery.

Turkey is the only country to recognise a breakaway state declared in 1983 in the north of which Mediterranean island?

Cyprus has been split since 1974, when Turkish troops took the northern third after a coup backed by Greece's military junta. Other countries treat the north as occupied territory.

The ancient wonder at Ephesus in western Turkey was a vast marble temple dedicated to which Greek goddess?

Artemis's temple was burned down in 356 BC, tradition says by a man named Herostratus who wanted fame at any cost. It was rebuilt and destroyed more than once.

Which two symbols appear in white on the red national flag of Turkey, a design inherited from the Ottoman Empire?

Star and crescent became the Ottoman flag in 1844, and the republic kept them. A 1936 law fixed the exact proportions and the shade of red.

Turkey's women's national team in which sport, European champions in 2023, is nicknamed the 'Sultans of the Net'?

Volleyball gave the team its nickname at the 2003 European Championship on home soil, where it took silver. Twenty years later it beat Serbia in the final for its first title.

Which Greek writer, known as the 'Father of History', was born a Persian subject on what is now Turkey's Aegean coast?

Herodotus was given the title by the Roman orator Cicero. In later life he became a citizen of Thurii, a Greek city in southern Italy.

Which birds have their main Turkish breeding colony on islands in Lake Tuz, the vast salt lake of central Turkey?

Flamingos nest on a group of islands in the lake, which dries out in summer to leave a thick crust of salt. Its mines supply much of the salt eaten in Turkey.

Sabiha Gökçen, who gives her name to an airport in Turkey, is recognised as the world's first woman to be what?

Fighter pilot at 23, Sabiha Gökçen had been adopted as an orphan by the founder of the republic, who had her enrolled as a flight school's first female trainee.

The Ottoman Empire takes its name from which founder, a frontier chieftain born at Söğüt in northwestern Anatolia?

Osman I is so thinly recorded that almost nothing about his early years is certain, beyond the raids he launched from Söğüt on neighbouring imperial territory. His father was Ertuğrul.

An Ottoman army's two-month siege of which European capital was broken in 1683 by a vast cavalry charge?

Vienna was saved on 12 September 1683 by a relief army under Poland's king, John III Sobieski. The battle is noted for the largest known cavalry charge in history.

Which Turkish port, the largest city on the Aegean coast, was known to the ancient Greeks as Smyrna?

İzmir is simply the Turkish rendering of the Greek name Smyrna. The older name stayed in use in English until around 1930, when the government pushed for the Turkish form abroad.

After drinking Turkish coffee, some people turn the cup over onto the saucer to tell fortunes by reading what?

The grounds are left in the cup because the coffee is served unfiltered, and the patterns they make as it cools are read. The custom is said to have begun in Ottoman palaces in the 1500s.

Which silky fibre, produced only in Turkey until the mid-19th century, is shorn twice a year from the Angora goat?

Mohair comes from the goat, while 'Angora wool' confusingly comes from the Angora rabbit. Unlike cashmere, the fleece needs no dehairing, because the goat has a single coat.

Australians and New Zealanders gather at Gallipoli in Turkey each 25 April for dawn services marking which day?

Anzac Day marks the 1915 landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli, their troops' first campaign of that war. Services begin at dawn, the hour of the landing.

Turkey's Tünel funicular, opened in 1875, is the world's second-oldest underground urban railway after which city's?

London opened its Underground twelve years earlier, in 1863. The Tünel is only about 573 metres long and carries passengers up a single steep hill.

Pamukkale, a hillside of white mineral terraces in southwestern Turkey, has a name that translates as what?

Cotton castle is the literal meaning of the Turkish name. The ancient Greek city of Hierapolis was built right on top of the white formation, and the two share a World Heritage listing.

Leonardo da Vinci drew a single-span bridge in 1502, never built, to cross which inlet for an Ottoman sultan?

The Golden Horn, the great natural harbour of Turkey's largest city, would have been crossed by a 240-metre span. In 2001 a small footbridge based on the drawing was built in Norway instead.

The Greek name of Hagia Sophia, the great domed landmark completed in AD 537, translates into English as what?

Holy Wisdom has nothing to do with a saint called Sophia: sophia is simply the Greek word for wisdom. When it was finished, the building enclosed the world's largest interior space.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu brought home from Ottoman Turkey an early way of protecting people against which disease?

Smallpox had left her own face scarred, and in 1717 she saw the Ottoman practice she called 'engrafting': pus from a mild case scratched into the skin. She had both her children treated.

Which Turkish football club, nicknamed the Yellow Canaries, has played home matches in the Kadıköy district since 1908?

Fenerbahçe were founded in Kadıköy in 1907 by three local men. Their other nickname, the Yellow-Navy Blues, comes straight from the club colours.

Gas flames burning for millennia at Yanartaş on Turkey's Lycian coast are linked to which fire-breathing monster?

The Chimera of Greek myth, part lion, part goat and part serpent, was said to live in Lycia. Ancient sailors steered by the flames, and hikers now brew tea on them.

Malatya province in eastern Turkey is the world's leading source of which dried fruit?

Apricots from Malatya account for roughly nine-tenths of Turkey's dried apricots, and Turkey is the world's top producer. The city proudly calls itself the 'Land of Apricots'.

Which American yogurt brand, founded in upstate New York in 2005, was started by Turkish-born Hamdi Ulukaya?

Chobani grew out of Hamdi Ulukaya's childhood in Turkey, raising sheep and goats and making cheese with his family. He emigrated to the United States in 1994.

Which 1978 film about an American jailed in Turkey for smuggling hashish won Oliver Stone a screenwriting Oscar?

Midnight Express was shot entirely in Malta, not Turkey, and was adapted from Billy Hayes's memoir. It won a second Oscar for Giorgio Moroder's score.

Turks call which Islamic festival Şeker Bayramı, the 'Sugar Feast', when children collect sweets from door to door?

Eid al-Fitr ends the fasting month, so its other Turkish name is Ramazan Bayramı. Children wish the neighbours a happy bayram and are rewarded with candy, chocolate or a little money.

The wooden horse built for the 2004 film Troy, starring Brad Pitt, now stands on the waterfront of which Turkish city?

Çanakkale is the nearest major city to the ruins of ancient Troy and the main base for visiting them, so the film prop found a fitting home on its seafront promenade.

The Nicene Creed takes its name from a council of bishops held in AD 325 in which present-day Turkish town?

İznik was ancient Nicaea, where a Roman emperor gathered at least 200 bishops. Besides drafting the creed, the council ordered that Easter be observed on one agreed date.

Which Ottoman admiral compiled a 1513 world map on gazelle skin that drew on a lost chart by Columbus?

Piri Reis presented the map to the sultan in 1517. Only about a third of it survives, and its rediscovery at Topkapı Palace in 1929 drew international attention.

Turkey has the world's largest known deposits of which element, used in heat-resistant glass and laundry bleach?

Boron is mined mostly as borax, and the biggest deposits lie in central and western Turkey around Eskişehir, Kütahya and Balıkesir. About half of world output goes into fibreglass.

Which witty folk hero of comic tales, said to be buried at Akşehir in Turkey, has a festival there each July?

Nasreddin, known as the Hodja, belongs to many nations: seven countries, from Turkey to Kyrgyzstan, jointly won his comic tales a place on UNESCO's heritage list in 2022.

Which three letters of the English alphabet were kept off official signs and documents in Turkey from 1928 until 2013?

Q, W and X are missing from the 29-letter Turkish alphabet and appear only in unassimilated foreign words. Turkish spells those sounds with K, V and KS instead.

Which novelist, born in Strasbourg and writing in both Turkish and English, wrote The Forty Rules of Love?

Elif Shafak brought out her first novel in English in 2004, after several in Turkish. Her other books include 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World and The Island of Missing Trees.

Ahmet Ertegun, the son of a Turkish ambassador to the United States, co-founded which record label in New York in 1947?

Atlantic Records put out 22 flops before its first major hit in 1949. Ertegun, who arrived in America as a boy in 1935, later chaired the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which English poet swam the Hellespont strait from Europe to Asia in 1810, a feat recreated every year in Turkey?

Lord Byron made the crossing on 3 May 1810 with a Royal Marines lieutenant named Ekenhead. It is often seen as the birth of open-water swimming as a sport.

Which Greek philosopher, famed for living in a large ceramic jar, was born at Sinope on Turkey's northern coast?

Diogenes of Sinope, a founder of Cynicism, also wandered about in daylight with a lit lantern, saying he was looking for a wise man. His birthplace is the modern port of Sinop.