Location

Where Europe meets Asia

Turkey is a peninsula that, uniquely, straddles 2 continents. Located in southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, 97 percent of its area occupies Anatolia, the peninsula of land that lies between the Black Sea on the northern coast of the country, and the Mediterranean to the south, where the continents of Asia and Europe meet. The remaining 3 percent of the country is in Thrace, a region in the southeastern Balkan peninsula, north of the Aegean Sea. Turkey has an area of 780,580 square kilometers (301,382 square miles) with a total coastline of 8,430 kilometers (5,238 miles), and shares its land borders with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

The country is strategically situated since it controls the Turkish Straits, comprised of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, which connect the Black Sea to the Aegean on the west coast. Comparatively, Turkey is slightly larger than the state of Texas. The capital city, Ankara, is located in the northwest center of Anatolia.