TURKEY IS A NEW COUNTRY in an old land. The modern Turkish state--beginning with the creation of the Republic of Turkey in the years immediately after World War I--drew on a national consciousness that had developed only in the late nineteenth century. But the history of nomadic Turkish tribes can be traced with certainty to the sixth century A.D., when they wandered the steppes of central Asia. Asia Minor, which the Turks invaded in the eleventh century, has a recorded history that dates back to the Hittites, who flourished there in the second millennium B.C. Archaeological evidence of far older cultures has been found in the region, however.

The term Turkey , although sometimes used to signify the Ottoman Empire, was not assigned to a specific political entity or geographic area until the republic was founded in 1923. The conquering Turks called Asia Minor, the large peninsular territory they had wrested from the Byzantine Empire, by its Greek name, Anatol? (sunrise; figuratively, the East), or Anatolia. The term Anatolia is also used when events described affected both that region and Turkish Thrace ("Turkey-in-Europe") because of the two areas' closely linked political, social, and cultural development.

Anatolia is a bridge connecting the Middle East and Europe, and it shares in the history of both those parts of the world. Despite the diversity of its peoples and their cultures, and the constantly shifting borders of its ethnic map, Anatolia has a history characterized by remarkable continuity. Wave after wave of conquerors and settlers have imposed their language and other unique features of their culture on it, but they also have invariably assimilated the customs of the peoples who preceded them.

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