culture

In 334 BCE, a twenty-two-year-old king led an army across the narrow strait between Europe and Asia and began one of the most extraordinary military adventures in history.

The Trojan War is the most famous conflict that never quite happened, at least not the way the poets tell it.

In 1453, an Ottoman army did something that had not been done for a thousand years: it captured Constantinople, the greatest city in the Christian world.

Few chapters of Ottoman history are as charming, and as confusing, as the Tulip Era. It lasted barely a dozen years, it produced no great conquests, and its name sounds like a gardening manual.

You may not know the Lydian Kingdom by name, but you use its invention every day.

If you know the legend of King Midas and the riddle of the Gordian knot, you already know something of the Phrygians.

High in the mountains of eastern Turkey, above the blue expanse of Lake Van, stand the walls of a kingdom that most travelers have never heard of.

If you travel eastern Turkey, you will see churches, monasteries, and carved stones that seem to belong to another world.

Mention the Silk Road and images come to mind: camel trains, desert oases, and merchants bargaining over silk and spices. But the real Silk Road was more remarkable than the legend.

Every visitor to Turkey meets Mustafa Kemal Ataturk within hours of arrival. His portrait hangs in hotels, his name marks the main streets, and his mausoleum is a national shrine.

If you are planning a trip to Turkey, you will quickly notice that the country explains itself through one story above all others: the story of the Turkish Republic.

Ancient Greek Ionia is one of the most important regions you have never studied in detail, and its story is astonishing.