Anatolia has been inhabited by many peoples throughout history, such as the Hattians, Hurrians, Hittites, Luwians, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Assyrians, Mitanni, Scythians, Cimmerians, Urartians, Carians, Commagene, Cilicians, Arameans, Kaskians, Mushki, Palaic, Corduene, Armenians, Romans, Colchians, Iberians, Georgians, Kurds, Seljuk Turks, and Ottomans.

This wider definition of Anatolia has gained widespread currency outside of Turkey and has, for instance, been adopted by Encyclopedia Britannica and other encyclopedic and general reference publications.

Because of these natural conditions, the Black Sea coast historically has been isolated from Anatolia.

Located on the west coast of Anatolia, the Aegean region has a fertile soil and a typically Mediterranean climate ; with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers.

Anatolia has a varied range of climates.

Anatolia has been proposed to be the origin of the Indo-European language family.

Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Anatolia has become Turkey, its inhabitants being mainly Turks and Kurds ( see demographics of Turkey and history of Turkey ).

Thus the " Aegean Area " has now come to mean the Archipelago with Crete and Cyprus, the Hellenic peninsula with the Ionian islands, and Western Anatolia.

The city has traditionally been a pole of attraction, and was a major center for refugees from various ethnic backgrounds who immigrated to Anatolia from the Balkans during the loss of the Ottoman territories in Europe between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Found in a Hattic royal tomb dated about 2500 BC, at Alaca Höyük in northern Anatolia, the dagger has a smelted iron blade and a bronze handle.

This friction has been due to disputes including the self annexation of the Hatay Province to Turkey in 1939, water disputes resulting from the Southeastern Anatolia Project, and Syria ’ s support for the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party ( PKK ) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia ( ASALA ), but relations have improved greatly since October 1998 ; when PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was expelled by Syrian authorities.

Because of these natural conditions, the Black Sea coast historically has been isolated from Anatolia.

Located on the western side of Anatolia, the Aegean region has a fertile soil and a typically Mediterranean climate ; with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers.

The government has also initiated many planned projects, such as the Southeastern Anatolia Project ( G. A. P project ).

The Eskişehir-Istanbul section of the line is scheduled to be completed by 2012, and includes the Marmaray tunnel which will enter service in 2012 and establish the first direct railway connection between Europe and Anatolia. Second high-speed rail line, which has length of 212 km between Ankara and Konya become operational in 2011.

He has spent 4 years building the city on the site of ancient Byzantium ; having chosen the site for its strategic location ( a seaport with easy access to Anatolia and the Danube ).

* c. 6000 BC: Fully Neolithic agriculture has spread through Anatolia to the Balkans.

The Proto-Greeks probably arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC ,, though a later migration by sea from eastern Anatolia, modern Armenia, has also been suggested.

Gallus, Caesar of the East, has suppressed revolts in Palestine and central Anatolia.

** Timarchus, Seleucid nobleman, possibly from Miletus in Anatolia, appointed governor of Media in western Iran by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes and who has rebelled against his successor, Demetrius I Soter, until he is killed in a battle with Demetrius ' forces

* 187 BC – Antiochus III the Great, Seleucid king of the Hellenistic Syrian Empire from 223 BC, who has rebuilt the empire in the East but failed in his attempt to challenge Roman ascendancy in Greece and Anatolia ( b. c. 241 BC )

Through his military and diplomatic skills, he has created a powerful kingdom in Anatolia ( b. 269 BC )

* Publius Servilius Vatia returns to Rome, he has triumphed against the pirates in Anatolia and is given the agnomen Isauricus.

During the 1st century BC the Armenians in what had been Urartu established the powerful Armenian kingdom under Tigran who reigned throughout much of eastern Anatolia between the Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean.

Certainly the entry of Turkic farmers following their horsemen ended the themes in Anatolia which had furnished the Empire with men and treasure.

Beekes argued that the people later known as the Lydians and Etruscans had originally lived in northwest Anatolia, with a coastline to the Sea of Marmara, whence they were driven by the Phrygians c. 1200 BC, leaving a remnant known in antiquity as the Tyrsenoi.

The fate of the Galatian people is a subject of some uncertainty, but they seem ultimately to have been absorbed into the Greek-speaking populations of west-central Anatolia thereby giving a fresh transmission of light skin, blue eyed, and fair haired ethno-types into the Greek population which by then had highly intermarried with darker ethnotypes and lost their earlier appearances.

The United Opposition, which had campaigned on the slogan of an end to the war in Anatolia, instead intensified it.

With the conquest of Karesi, nearly the whole of northwestern Anatolia was included in the Ottoman Empire, and the four cities of Bursa, Izmit ( Nicomedia ), Iznik ( Nicea ), and Bergama ( Pergamum ) had become strongholds of its power.

Urban II's movement took its first public shape at the Council of Piacenza, where, in March 1095, Urban II received an ambassador from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos asking for help against Muslim ( Seljuk ) Turks who had taken over most of formerly Byzantine Empire Anatolia.

By the late-3rd millennium BC offshoots of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached Anatolia, the Aegean, Western Europe, Central Asia and southern Siberia.

2000 – 1650 BC Akrotiri developed into one of the Aegean's major Bronze Age ports, with recovered objects that had come, not just from Crete, but also from Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt as well as from the Dodecanese and the Greek mainland.

Although the same parties had previously signed the Treaty of Sèvres, it was rejected before it had been ratified, by the Turkish national movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who fought against the terms of the treaty and the occupation of Anatolia.

By the end of the 5th century BC it stood out as a state which had defeated the Athenian Empire and had invaded the Persian provinces in Anatolia, a period which marks the Spartan Hegemony.

The alliance was initially backed by Persia, whose lands in Anatolia had been invaded by Sparta and which feared further Spartan expansion into Asia.

They were made from Obsidian that had been transported from Anatolia

The Seljuk Turks had done the same with central Anatolia.

In 1146 Manuel assembled his army at the military base Lopadion and set out on a punitive expedition against Masud the Sultan of Rûm, who had been repeatedly violating the frontiers of the Empire in western Anatolia and Cilicia.

As a result of the failures of his immediate predecessors, Basil II found himself with a serious problem at the very outset of his effective reign as two members of the wealthy military elite of Anatolia, Bardas Skleros and Bardas Phokas, had sufficient means to undertake open rebellion against central authority.

It had destroyed what were the two former foremost military powers, the Sassanid Empire, which it absorbed completely, and the greater part of the Byzantine Empire, including Syria, Armenia and North Africa, although Leo the Isaurian stemmed the tide when he defeated the Umayyads at the Battle of Akroinon ( 739 ), their final campaign in Anatolia.

The Turks had won wars with Greece and Armenia in the preceding few years, settling the issue of whether the coast of Anatolia was going to be Greek or Turkish.

Several other cities in Anatolia also had kârum, but the largest was Kaneš.

The discrepancy between gold content of electrum from modern Western Anatolia ( 70 – 90 %) and ancient Lydian coinage ( 45 – 55 %) suggests that the Lydians had already solved the refining technology for silver and were adding refined silver to the local native electrum some decades before introducing the pure silver coins cited below.

The Mongols, before the rule of Kublai Khan, had launched military campaigns as far as Eastern Europe, and had conquered Russia, Siberia, Tibet, Korea, North China, Yunnan, Iraq, Anatolia and Iran.