History of Turkey

The history of Turkey, understood as the history of the region now forming the territory of the Republic of Turkey, includes the history of both Anatolia (the Asian part of Turkey) and Eastern Thrace (the European part of Turkey).

For times predating the Ottoman period, a distinction must be made between the history of the Turkic peoples, and the history of the territories now forming the Republic of Turkey, essentially the histories of ancient Anatolia and Thrace.

The name Turkey is derived from Middle Latin Turchia, i.e. the "land of the Turks", historically referring to an entirely different territory of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which fell under the control of Turkic peoples in the early medieval period.

From the time when parts of what is now Turkey was conquered by Turks, the history of Turkey spans the medieval history of the Seljuk Empire, the medieval to modern history of the Ottoman Empire, and the history of the Republic of Turkey since the 1920s.

The ancient history of Anatolia (Asia Minor) can be roughly subdivided into prehistory, Ancient Near East (Bronze Age and Early Iron Age), Classical Anatolia, Hellenistic Anatolia, with Byzantine Anatolia spanning the early medieval period to the age of the Crusades and the eventual Turkish (Seljuk/Ottoman) conquest of Anatolia by the 15th century.

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