History Ankara

Time Ankara

The history of Ankara can be traced back to the Bronze Age Hatti civilization, which was succeeded in the 2nd millennium BC by the Hittites, in the 10th century BC by the Phrygians, and later by the Lydians, Persians, Macedonians, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks, and Ottomans.

The oldest settlements in and around the city center of Ankara belong to the Hatti civilization which thrived during the Bronze Age. Artifacts discovered in the city have revealed that the Hittites called Ankara Ankuwash prior to 1200 BC

The city significantly grew in size and importance under the Phrygians starting from around 1000 BC, experiencing a large expansion following the mass migration from Gordion, the capital of Phrygia, after an earthquake which severely damaged that city in antiquity. In Phrygian tradition, King Midas was venerated as the founder of Ancyra, but Pausanias mentions that the city was actually far older, in line with the present-day knowledge that we have on its history

Phrygian rule was succeeded first by Lydian and later by Persian rule, though the strongly Phrygian character of the peasantry remained, as evidenced by the gravestones of the much later Roman period. Persian sovereignty lasted until the Persians' defeat at the hands of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great.

Ankara was conquered by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, who came from Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at Babylon in 323 BC and the subsequent division of his empire amongst his generals, Ankara and its environs fell into the share of Antigonus.

In 278 BC, the city, along with the rest of central Anatolia, was occupied by the Celtic race of Galatians, who were the first to make Ankara one of their main tribal centres, the headquarters of the Tectosage tribe. Other centres were Pessinos, modern Balhisar, for the Trocmi tribe; and Tavium, to the east of Ankara, for the Tolstibogii tribe. The city was then known as Ancyra

The city was subsequently conquered by Augustus in 25 BC and passed under the control of the Roman Empire. Now the capital city of the Roman province of Galatia, Ancyra continued to be a center of great commercial importance.

Ancyra's importance rested on the fact was that it was the junction point where the roads in northern Anatolia running north-south and east-west intersected. The great imperial road running east passed through Ankara and a succession of emperors and their armies came this way. Unfortunately they were not the only ones to use the Roman highway network, which was equally convenient for invaders. In the second half of the 3rd century, Ancyra was invaded in rapid succession by the Goths

The town was reincorporated into the Roman Empire under the Emperor Aurelian in 272. The tetrarchy, a system of multiple (up to four) emperors introduced by Diocletian (284-305), seems to have engaged in a substantial programme of rebuilding and of road construction from Ankara westwards to Germe and Dorylaeum (now Eskişehir).

Early martyrs, about whom little is known, included Proklos and Hilarios who were natives of the otherwise unknown village of Kallippi, near Ancyra, and suffered repression under the emperor Trajan (98-117). In the 280s AD we hear of Philumenos, a Christian corn merchant from southern Anatolia, being captured and martyred in Ankara, and Eustathius

In the later 4th century Ancyra became something of an imperial holiday resort. After Constantinople became the East Roman capital, emperors in the 4th and 5th centuries would retire from the humid summer weather on the Bosphorus to the drier mountain atmosphere of Ancyra. Theodosius II (408-450) kept his court in Ancyra in the summers. Laws issued in Ancyra testify to the time they spent there

In 1071, the Seljuk Sultan Alparslan opened the gates of Anatolia for the Turks with his victory at the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt). He then annexed Ankara, an important location for military transportation and natural resources, to his territory in 1073. Orhan I, second Bey of the Ottoman Empire, captured the city in 1356. Another Turkic ruler, Timur, defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and captured the city, but in 1403 Ankara was again under Ottoman control.

Following the Ottoman defeat at World War I, the Ottoman capital Istanbul and much of Anatolia were occupied by the Allies, who planned to share these lands between the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Greece, leaving the Turks only a small piece of land in central Asia Minor. In response, the leader of the Turkish nationalist movement, Kemal Atatürk, established the headquarters of his resistance movement in Ankara in 1920 (see Treaty of Sèvres and Turkish War of Independence). After the War of Independence was won, the Turkish nationalists replaced the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923. A few days earlier, Ankara had replaced İstanbul (formerly Constantinople) as the new Turkish capital city, on October 13, 1923.

After Ankara became the capital of the newly founded Republic of Turkey, new development divided the city into an old section, called Ulus, and a new section, called Yenişehir. Ancient buildings reflecting Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history and narrow winding streets mark the old section. The new section, now centered around Kızılay, has the trappings of a more modern city: wide streets, hotels, theaters, shopping malls, and high-rises

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In cardinal Ankara, the most out-standing tourist places are The museum of Anatolia's civilizations, The citadel, Atatürk's mausoleum, the Roman ruins and the Mosque Kocatepe. Atakule, the square Kizilay and Ulus are the principal places to know the daily life of the capital of Turkey.

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Country Turkey
Province Ankara
Elevation 100 m (328 ft)
Population 5,019,167
Postal code 06x xx
Area code 0312
(+90) 216 (Asian side)
Licence plate 06