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114-818: Mehmet Ali Aybar was born in Istanbul in 1908. He was a great-grandson of the Ottoman soldier Mehmed Ali Pasha , and thus a relative of Turkish poets Nâzım Hikmet and Oktay Rıfat Horozcu , as well as the statesman Ali Fuat Cebesoy . Aybar's father was Tahsin Bey, who was the son of Hüseyin Hüsnü Pasha , first commander of the Action Army . Another ancestor of his is Gelenbevi Ismail Efendi . He studied at Galatasaray High School , and graduated from Istanbul University 's School of Law. He then moved to Paris to continue his legal studies. It

228-671: A Turkish city since 1923, it contains many ancient, Roman, Byzantine, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish monuments. The Neolithic settlement in the Yenikapı quarter on the European side, which dates back to c.  6500 BCE and predates the formation of the Bosporus by approximately a millennium, when the Sea of Marmara was still a lake, was discovered during the construction of the Marmaray railway tunnel. It

342-570: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

456-566: A beacon of the Silk Road and one of the most important cities in history. The city played a key role in the advancement of Christianity during Roman/Byzantine times, hosting four of the first seven ecumenical councils before its transformation to an Islamic stronghold following the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 CE—especially after becoming the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1517. In 1923, after

570-482: A center of Greek culture and Christianity. Numerous churches were built across the city, including Hagia Sophia which was built during the reign of Justinian I and remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years. Constantine also undertook a major renovation and expansion of the Hippodrome of Constantinople ; accommodating tens of thousands of spectators, the hippodrome became central to civic life and, in

684-403: A city with above-freezing average temperatures. Istanbul's precipitation is unevenly distributed, with winter months getting at least twice the level of precipitation of their summerly counterparts. The mode of precipitation also varies by season. Winter precipitation is generally light, persistent and often of mixed precipitation such as rain-snow mixes and graupel ; while summer precipitation

798-437: A cosmopolitan society that persisted through much of the Ottoman period. Revitalizing Istanbul also required a massive program of restorations, of everything from roads to aqueducts . Like many monarchs before and since, Mehmed II transformed Istanbul's urban landscape with wholesale redevelopment of the city center. There was a huge new palace to rival, if not overshadow, the old one , a new covered market (still standing as

912-552: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

1026-556: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

1140-531: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

1254-534: A large role in the city's infrastructure development, with over 500,000 vulnerable buildings demolished and replaced since 2012. According to ministry statements and geologist comments made in 2023, the city's infrastructure was in reasonably good shape, however, due to very high costs, buildings were not: over half a million flats were still vulnerable to collapse, and casualties largely depend on how many collapse. As of 2024 , most buildings in Istanbul were built to

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1368-472: A low seismic standard in the 20th century, and residents think the city is not properly prepared for the earthquake . Istanbul's climate is temperate , and is often described as transitional between the Mediterranean climate typical of the western and southern coasts of Turkey, and the oceanic climate of the northwestern coasts of the country. Much divergence exists in the terminology used to classify

1482-401: A natural toll-gate. Several picturesque islands— Büyükada , Heybeliada , Burgazada , Kınalıada , and five smaller islands—are part of the city. Istanbul's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Large sections of Caddebostan sit on areas of landfill, increasing the total area of the city to 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi). Despite the myth that seven hills make up

1596-642: A primary urban park, but it has several green areas. Gülhane Park and Yıldız Park were originally included within the grounds of two of Istanbul's palaces — Topkapı Palace and Yıldız Palace —but they were repurposed as public parks in the early decades of the Turkish Republic. Another park, Fethi Paşa Korusu , is on a hillside adjacent to the Bosphorus Bridge in Anatolia, opposite Yıldız Palace in Europe. Along

1710-428: A result of Istanbul's exponential growth in the 20th century, a significant portion of the city is composed of gecekondus (literally "built overnight"), referring to illegally constructed squatter buildings. At present, some gecekondu areas are being gradually demolished and replaced by modern mass-housing compounds. Moreover, large scale gentrification and urban renewal projects have been taking place, such as

1824-531: A result of his ideological split with party leadership over the Czechoslovakia issue. In 1975 he founded Socialist Party (later called Socialist Revolution Party ). This party was closed by the military coup in 1980. Aybar was also a member of the International War Crimes Tribunal which was founded by Bertrand Russell . Mehmet Ali Aybar died on 10 July 1995 in İstanbul. He participated in

1938-451: A series of nationwide protests in 2013 covering a wide range of issues. Popular during the summer among Istanbulites is Belgrad Forest , spreading across 5,500 hectares (14,000 acres) at the northern edge of the city. The forest originally supplied water to the city and remnants of reservoirs used during Byzantine and Ottoman times survive. Istanbul is primarily known for its Byzantine and Ottoman architecture. Despite its development as

2052-516: A set of corridors lined with office buildings, residential towers, shopping centers, and university campuses, and over 2,000,000 m (22,000,000 sq ft) of class-A office space in total. Maslak , Levent , and Bomonti are important nodes within the CBD. The Atatürk Airport corridor is another such edge city -style business, residential and shopping corridor with over 900,000 m (9,700,000 sq ft) of class-A office space. During

2166-469: Is a large and rapidly expanding city, its urban heat island has been intensifying the effects of climate change. If trends continue, sea level rise is likely to affect city infrastructure, for example Kadıkoy metro station is threatened with flooding. Xeriscaping of green spaces has been suggested, and Istanbul has a climate-change action plan. The natural vegetation of the province is made up of mixed broadleaf forest and pseudo-maquis , reflecting

2280-445: Is acute in İstanbul with cars, buses and taxis causing frequent urban smog , as it is one of the few European cities without a low-emission zone . As of 2019 the city's mean air quality remains at a level so as to affect the heart and lungs of healthy street bystanders during peak traffic hours, and almost 200 days of pollution were measured by the air pollution sensors at Sultangazi , Mecidiyeköy , Alibeyköy and Kağıthane . It

2394-766: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

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2508-742: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

2622-474: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

2736-647: Is generally abrupt and sporadic. Cloudiness, as with precipitation, varies greatly by season. Winters are quite cloudy, with around 20 percent of days being sunny or partly cloudy. Meanwhile, summers experience 60-70 percent of possible sunshine. Snowfall is sporadic, but accumulates virtually every winter; and when it does, it is highly disruptive to city infrastructure. Sea-effect snowstorms with more than 30 centimetres (1 ft) of snowfall happen almost annually, most recently in 2022 . Climate change has caused an increase in Istanbul's heatwaves, droughts, storms, and flooding in Istanbul. Furthermore, as Istanbul

2850-510: Is one of the 10 worst cities for NO 2 . However a trial of congestion pricing is planned for the historic peninsula. Algal blooms and red tides were reported in the Sea of Marmara and Bosporus (especially in Golden Horn), and regularly happen in urban lakes such as Lake Büyükçekmece and Küçükçekmece . In June 2021, a marine mucilage wave allegedly caused by water pollution spread to Sea of Marmara. The Fatih district, which

2964-510: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

3078-518: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

3192-758: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

3306-630: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

3420-615: Is the oldest known human settlement on the European side of the city. The oldest known human settlement on the Asian side is the Fikirtepe Mound near Kadıköy, with relics dating to the Chalcolithic period c.  5500  – c.  3500 BCE . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

3534-402: Is thought to be impossible. Istanbul Municipality's Directorate of Earthquake and Ground Research is responsible for analysing the methods to reduce the urban seismic risk , whereas the national government-controlled Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency is responsible for earthquake emergency response , and will be helped by NGOs such as İHH . The threat of major earthquakes plays

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3648-565: The 1928 Summer Olympics as track and field athlete for Turkey. He was eliminated in the first round of the 100 metres event . He was also a member of the Turkish team which was eliminated in the first round of the 4×100 metre relay competition. Istanbul Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey , straddling the Bosporus Strait , the boundary between Europe and Asia. It is considered

3762-764: The Allies occupied Constantinople on 13 November 1918. The Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the Allies on 11 April 1920 and the Ottoman delegation led by Damat Ferid Pasha was forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920. Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on 1 November 1922, and

3876-486: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

3990-462: The Grand Bazaar ), porticoes, pavilions, walkways, as well as more than a dozen new mosques. Mehmed II turned the ramshackle old town into something that looked like an imperial capital. Social hierarchy was ignored by the rampant plague, which killed the rich and the poor alike in the 16th century. Money could not protect the rich from all the discomforts and harsher sides of Istanbul. Although

4104-510: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

4218-525: The Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Hagia Sophia was converted to a Catholic church in 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored, albeit weakened, in 1261. Constantinople's churches, defenses, and basic services were in disrepair, and its population had dwindled to a hundred thousand from half a million during the 8th century. After the reconquest of 1261, however, some of

4332-465: The Medieval Greek phrase eis tḕn Pólin ( εἰς τὴν Πόλιν , pronounced [is tim ˈbolin] ), literally 'to the city' and is how Constantinople was referred to by the local Greeks. This reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was also reflected by its nickname Dersaadet ( Ottoman Turkish : درساعدت ) meaning

4446-406: The Turkish War of Independence , Ankara replaced the city as the capital of the newly formed Republic of Turkey. Istanbul was the 2010 European Capital of Culture . The city has surpassed London and Dubai to become the most visited city in the world, with more than 20 million foreign visitors in 2023. The historic centre of Istanbul is a UNESCO World Heritage Site , and the city hosts

4560-538: The metropolitan area of Istanbul as result of urban sprawl . Istanbul is in north-western Turkey and straddles the Bosporus Strait , which provides the only passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the Sea of Marmara . Historically, the city has been ideally situated for trade and defense: The confluence of the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn provide both ideal defense against enemy attack and

4674-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

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4788-503: The 'Gate to Prosperity' in Ottoman Turkish. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from "Constantinople", with the first and third syllables dropped. Some Ottoman sources of the 17th century, such as Evliya Çelebi , describe it as the common Turkish name of the time; between the late 17th and late 18th centuries, it was also in official use. The first use of the word Islambol ( Ottoman Turkish : اسلامبول ) on coinage

4902-463: The 1930s, when Turkish authorities began to press for the use of Istanbul in foreign languages. Ḳosṭanṭīnīye ( Ottoman Turkish : قسطنطينيه ) and İstanbul were the names used alternatively by the Ottomans during their rule. The name İstanbul ( Ottoman Turkish : استانبول ; pronounced [isˈtanbuɫ] , colloquially [ɯsˈtambuɫ] ) is commonly held to derive from

5016-458: The 1950s the number of dolphin observations has become increasingly rare. Mediterranean monk seals were present in Bosporus, and Princes' Islands and Tuzla shores were seal breeding areas during summer, but they have not been observed in Istanbul since the 1960s and thought to be extinct in the region. Water pollution, overfishing and destruction of coastal habitats caused by urbanization are main threats to Istanbul's marine ecology. Apart from

5130-407: The 1960s as part of the process of Turkification . Further mass expulsions of Greeks took place in 1964–1965. As a result of these policies, the Greek population of Istanbul decreased from 110,000 in 1919 to 2,500 today. From the late 1940s and early 1950s, Istanbul underwent great structural change, as new public squares, boulevards, and avenues were constructed throughout the city, sometimes at

5244-569: The 19th century, leaving only the Galata Tower , to make way for the northward expansion of the city. Galata ( Karaköy ) is today a quarter within the Beyoğlu district, which forms Istanbul's commercial and entertainment center and includes İstiklal Avenue and Taksim Square . Dolmabahçe Palace , the seat of government during the late Ottoman period, is in the Beşiktaş district on the European shore of

5358-465: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

5472-568: The 5th and 6th centuries, the center of episodes of unrest, including the Nika riots . Constantinople's location also ensured its existence would stand the test of time; for many centuries, its walls and seafront protected Europe against invaders from the east and the advance of Islam. During most of the Middle Ages , the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on

5586-487: The Ankara government, commanded by Şükrü Naili Pasha (3rd Corps), entered the city with a ceremony on 6 October 1923, which has been marked as the "Liberation Day of Istanbul" ( İstanbul'un Kurtuluşu ), and has been commemorated annually since. On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became

5700-662: The Bosporus, to the north of Beyoğlu. The former village of Ortaköy is within Beşiktaş and gives its name to the Ortaköy Mosque on the Bosporus, near the Bosporus Bridge . Lining both the European and Asian shores of the Bosporus are the historic yalıs , luxurious chalet mansions built by Ottoman aristocrats and elites as summer homes. Inland, north of Taksim Square is the Istanbul Central Business District ,

5814-762: The Bosporus. The settlers built an acropolis adjacent to the Golden Horn on the site of the early Thracian settlements, fueling the nascent city's economy. The city experienced a brief period of Persian rule at the turn of the 5th century BCE, but the Greeks recaptured it during the Greco-Persian Wars . Byzantium then continued as part of the Athenian League and its successor, the Second Athenian League , before gaining independence in 355 BCE. Long allied with

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5928-406: The European continent and at times the largest in the world. Constantinople is generally considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization ". Constantinople began to decline continuously after the end of the reign of Basil II in 1025. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the city was sacked and pillaged by the crusaders. They established

6042-623: The European railway network in the 1880s. Modern facilities, such as a water supply network, electricity, telephones, and trams, were gradually introduced to Constantinople over the following decades, although later than to other European cities. The modernization efforts were not enough to forestall the decline of the Ottoman Empire . With the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the Ottoman Parliament , closed since 14 February 1878,

6156-584: The European side, and close to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge , is Emirgan Park , which was known as the Kyparades ('Cypress Forest') during the Byzantine period. In the Ottoman period, it was first granted to Nişancı Feridun Ahmed Bey in the 16th century, before being granted by Sultan Murad IV to the Safavid emir Gûne Han in the 17th century, hence the name Emirgan . The 47-hectare (120-acre) park

6270-513: The European side, near the point of the peninsula ( Sarayburnu ), there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the Thracian toponym Lygos , mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium. The history of the city proper begins around 660 BCE, when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of

6384-568: The Great effectively became the emperor of the whole of the Roman Empire in September 324. Two months later, he laid out the plans for a new, Christian city to replace Byzantium. As the eastern capital of the empire, the city was named Nova Roma ; most called it Constantinople, a name that persisted into the 20th century. On 11 May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire, which

6498-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

6612-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

6726-442: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

6840-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

6954-446: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

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7068-406: The Ottoman period, Üsküdar (then Scutari) and Kadıköy were outside the scope of the urban area, serving as tranquil outposts with seaside yalıs and gardens. But in the second half of the 20th century, the Asian side experienced major urban growth; the late development of this part of the city led to better infrastructure and tidier urban planning when compared with most other residential areas in

7182-488: The Republic's first President . A 1942 wealth tax assessed mainly on non-Muslims led to the transfer or liquidation of many businesses owned by religious minorities. The state-sanctioned 1955 Istanbul pogrom , in which hundreds of Greek men, women and children were attacked and raped and dozens murdered, led to the emigration of most of the remaining Greeks in Istanbul. Government persecution of Greeks and religious minorities, especially Christians , intensified through

7296-452: The Romans, Byzantium officially became a part of the Roman Empire in 73 CE. Byzantium's decision to side with the Roman usurper Pescennius Niger against Emperor Septimius Severus cost it dearly; by the time it surrendered at the end of 195 CE, two years of siege had left the city devastated. Five years later, Severus began to rebuild Byzantium, and the city regained—and, by some accounts, surpassed—its previous prosperity. Constantine

7410-411: The Sultan lived at a safe remove from the masses, and the wealthy and poor tended to live side by side, for the most part Istanbul was not zoned as modern cities are. Opulent houses shared the same streets and districts with tiny hovels. Those rich enough to have secluded country properties had a chance of escaping the periodic epidemics of sickness that blighted Istanbul. The Ottoman dynasty claimed

7524-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

7638-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

7752-468: The beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels. The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE, On

7866-420: The city , there are, in fact, more than 50 hills within the city limits. Istanbul's tallest hill, Aydos, is 537 meters (1,762 ft) high. The North Anatolian Fault , under the Sea of Marmara , is locked just south of the city. This fault caused the earthquakes in 1766 and 1894 , and a quake of at least magnitude 7.0 is very likely in the 21st century, though an earthquake with a magnitude above 7.5

7980-439: The city's climate , however. The city's summers are warm to hot and moderately dry, with an average daytime temperature of about 28 °C (82 °F), and less than 7 days of precipitation per month. Despite the generally acceptable temperature range, mid-summer in Istanbul is considered moderately uncomfortable, due to high dew points and relative humidity. Winters, meanwhile, are cool, quite rainy, and relatively snow-rich for

8094-532: The city's monuments were restored, and some, like the two Deesis mosaics in Hagia Sophia and Kariye, were created. Various economic and military policies instituted by Andronikos II Palaiologos , such as the reduction of military forces, weakened the empire and left it vulnerable to attack. In the mid-14th-century, the Ottoman Turks began a strategy of gradually taking smaller towns and cities, cutting off Constantinople's supply routes and strangling it slowly. On 29 May 1453, after an eight-week siege during which

8208-565: The city's name was officially changed to Istanbul, the Turkish rendering of εἰς τὴν Πόλιν eis tḕn Pólin 'to the City', the appellation Greek speakers used since the 11th century to colloquially refer to the city. The city served as an imperial capital for almost 1600 years: during the Byzantine (330–1204), Latin (1204–1261), late Byzantine (1261–1453), and Ottoman (1453–1922) empires. The city grew in size and influence, eventually becoming

8322-432: The city's transitional, Mediterranean-influenced humid temperate climate. Chestnut , oak , elm , linden , ash and locust comprise the most prominent temperate forest genera, while laurel , terebinth , Cercis siliquastrum , broom , red firethorn , and oak species such as Quercus cerris and Quercus coccifera are the most important species of Mediterranean and Submediterranean distribution. Apart from

8436-554: The city. Much of the Asian side of the Bosporus functions as a suburb of the economic and commercial centers in European Istanbul, accounting for a third of the city's population but only a quarter of its employment. However, Kozyatağı – Ataşehir , Altunizade , Kavacık and Ümraniye , all together having around 1.4 million sqm of class-A office space, are now important " edge cities ", i.e. corridors and nodes of business and shopping centers and of tall residential buildings. As

8550-636: The counter-revolution attempt known as the 31 March incident . A series of wars in the early 20th century, such as the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), plagued the ailing empire's capital and resulted in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état , which brought the regime of the Three Pashas . The Ottoman Empire joined World War I (1914–1918) on the side of the Central Powers and

8664-658: The country's economic, cultural and historic capital. The city has a population of over 15 million residents, comprising 19% of the population of Turkey, and is the most populous city in Europe and the world's sixteenth-largest city . The city was founded as Byzantium in the 7th century BCE by Greek settlers from Megara . In 330 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great made it his imperial capital, renaming it first as New Rome ( Ancient Greek : Νέα Ῥώμη Nea Rhomē ; Latin : Nova Roma ) and then finally as Constantinople ( Constantinopolis ) after himself. In 1930,

8778-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

8892-555: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

9006-419: The expense of historical buildings. The overall population of Istanbul began to rapidly increase in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into

9120-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

9234-412: The headquarters of numerous Turkish companies, accounting for more than thirty percent of the country's economy . The first known name of the city is Byzantium ( Ancient Greek : Βυζάντιον , Byzántion ), the name given to it at its foundation by Megarian colonists around 657 BCE. Megarian colonists claimed a direct line back to the founders of the city, Byzas, the son of the god Poseidon and

9348-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

9462-510: The last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI , was declared persona non grata . Leaving aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on 17 November 1922, he went into exile and died in Sanremo , Italy, on 16 May 1926. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923, and the occupation of Constantinople ended with the departure of the last forces of the Allies from the city on 4 October 1923. Turkish forces of

9576-613: The last Roman emperor, Constantine XI , was killed, Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured Constantinople . Sultan Mehmed declared Constantinople the new capital of the Ottoman Empire . Hours after the fall of the city, the sultan rode to the Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the shahada , converting the grand cathedral into an imperial mosque due to the city's refusal to surrender peacefully. Mehmed declared himself as

9690-463: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

9804-621: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

9918-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

10032-530: The natural flora, Platanus orentalis , horse chestnut , cypress and stone pine make up the introduced species that got acclimatized to Istanbul. In a study that examined urban flora in Kartal , a total of 576 plant taxa were recorded; of those 477 were natural and 99 were exotic and cultivated. The most prominent native taxa were in the Asteraceae family (50 species), while the most diverse exotic plant family

10146-617: The new Kayser-i Rûm , the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of the Caesar of Rome, and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire. Following the capture of Constantinople, Mehmed II immediately set out to revitalize the city. Cognizant that revitalization would fail without the repopulation of the city, Mehmed II welcomed everyone–foreigners, criminals, and runaways– showing extraordinary openness and willingness to incorporate outsiders that came to define Ottoman political culture. He also invited people from all over Europe to his capital, creating

10260-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

10374-550: The nymph Ceroëssa. Modern excavations have raised the possibility that the name Byzantium might reflect the sites of native Thracian settlements that preceded the fully-fledged town. Constantinople comes from the Latin name Constantinus , after Constantine the Great , the Roman emperor who refounded the city in 324 CE. Constantinople remained the most common name for the city in the West until

10488-466: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

10602-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

10716-537: The one in Tarlabaşı ; some of these projects, like the one in Sulukule , have faced criticism. The Turkish government also has ambitious plans for an expansion of the city west and northwards on the European side in conjunction with the new Istanbul Airport , opened in 2019; the new parts of the city will include four different settlements with specified urban functions, housing 1.5 million people. Istanbul does not have

10830-475: The party seriously. Aybar's credibility drew academics to the party As the leader of the party, he and his associates were responsible for the direction and success of the party. One of the primary tenets of the party was to resist Turkey's subservience to American influence. Aybar personally opposed the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia and this caused disputes in the party. In 1971 he resigned from TİP as

10944-507: The status of caliphate in 1517, with Constantinople remaining the capital of this last caliphate for four centuries. Suleiman the Magnificent 's reign from 1520 to 1566 was a period of especially great artistic and architectural achievement; chief architect Mimar Sinan designed several iconic buildings in the city, while Ottoman arts of ceramics , stained glass , calligraphy , and miniature flourished. The population of Constantinople

11058-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

11172-404: The waters of Istanbul has dwindled in the recent decades. From around 60 different fish species recorded in the 1970s only 20 of them still survive in the Bosporus. Common bottlenose dolphin (Turkish: afalina ), short-beaked common dolphin (Turkish: tırtak ) and harbor porpoise (Turkish: mutur ) make up the marine mammals presently found in the Bosporus and surrounding waters, though since

11286-555: The wild land mammals Istanbul hosts a sizeable stray animal population. The presence of feral cats in Istanbul ( Turkish : sokak kedisi ) is noted to be very prevalent, with estimates ranging from a hundred thousand to over a million stray cats. The feral cats in the city have gained widespread media and public attention and are considered to be symbols of the city. Rose-ringed parakeet colonies are present in urban areas, similar to other European cities as feral parrots , and considered as invasive species . Air pollution in Turkey

11400-443: Was Rosaceae (16 species). Turkish Straits and Sea of Marmara play a vital role for migrating fish and other marine animals between Mediterranean, Marmara and Black Sea. Bosporus hosts pelagic , demersal and semipelagic fish species and more than 130 different taxa have been documented in the strait. Bluefish , bonito , sea bass , horse mackerel and anchovies compose the economically important species. Fish diversity in

11514-455: Was 570,000 by the end of the 18th century. A period of rebellion at the start of the 19th century led to the rise of the progressive Sultan Mahmud II and eventually to the Tanzimat period, which produced political reforms and allowed new technology to be introduced to the city. Bridges across the Golden Horn were constructed during this period, and Constantinople was connected to the rest of

11628-568: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

11742-549: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

11856-498: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

11970-449: Was briefly imprisoned. In 1950, Aybar was pardoned and began practicing law in Istanbul. He continued his activist writings and began participating in protests against the government, leading to his second arrest. After his release from prison in 1962, he became the first leader of the Workers' Party of Turkey . It was only after he ascended to party leadership that intellectuals began to take

12084-519: Was in 1730 during the reign of Sultan Mahmud I . In modern Turkish , the name is written as İstanbul , with a dotted İ, as the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between a dotted and dotless I . In English, the stress is on the first or last syllable, but in Turkish it is on the second syllable. A person from the city is an İstanbullu (plural İstanbullular ); Istanbulite is used in English. Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at

12198-504: Was in Paris that he was exposed to Marxist literature. Upon returning to Istanbul he became assistant professor of international law at the same Law School he graduated from. His academic career was hampered by his communist leanings, and he was eventually expelled from the University in 1946. His writings for the Istanbul magazine Hür (Free) engendered anger on the part of the government and he

12312-493: Was later owned by Khedive Isma'il Pasha of Ottoman Egypt in the 19th century. Emirgan Park is known for its diversity of plants and an annual tulip festival is held there since 2005. The AKP government's decision to replace Taksim Gezi Park with a replica of the Ottoman era Taksim Military Barracks (which was transformed into the Taksim Stadium in 1921, before being demolished in 1940 for building Gezi Park) sparked

12426-403: Was later permanently divided between the two sons of Theodosius I upon his death on 17 January 395, when the city became the capital of the empire; during the following millennium of Roman history the state is commonly referred to as the "Byzantine Empire". The establishment of Constantinople was one of Constantine's most lasting accomplishments, shifting Roman power eastward as the city became

12540-452: Was named after Mehmed II ( Turkish : Fatih Sultan Mehmed ), corresponds to what was the whole of Constantinople until the Ottoman conquest; today it is the capital district and called the historic peninsula of Istanbul on the southern shore of the Golden Horn , across the medieval Genoese citadel of Galata on the northern shore. The Genoese fortifications in Galata were largely demolished in

12654-477: Was reopened 30 years later on 23 July 1908, which marked the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era . The civil strife and political uncertainties in the Ottoman Empire during the months after the revolution encouraged Austria-Hungary to annex Bosnia and Bulgaria to declare its independence in a jointly coordinated move on 5 October 1908. Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed in 1909, following

12768-455: Was ultimately defeated. The deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915 was among the major events which marked the start of the Armenian genocide during WWI. Due to Ottoman and Turkish policies of Turkification and ethnic cleansing , the city's Christian population declined from 450,000 to 240,000 between 1914 and 1927. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918 and

12882-566: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

12996-653: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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