Ankara' History

Welcome to our blog. In this blog we are going to present Ankara's history. Ankara, which has been the capital of many civilizations in history, is the center of the cultural civilizations.

Hatti, Hittite and Phrygian periods

  Ankara belonged to the Hatti civilization during the Bronze Age.

Hittite King Suppiluliuma

      

 

The city grew in size and importance under the Phyrigians starting from around 1000 BC.

In Phrygian tradition, King Midas was respected as the founder of Ancyra, but Pausanias mentions that the city was actually an old city.

Midas came to the city which was not very much populated. 

King Midas

                                         

It can be said that Ankara did not exist before Atatürk moved the capital of Turkey to the city, since its population was very low in comparison to what it would be in following years...

Hellenistic period 

Alexander the Great

Ankara was conquered by Alexander the Great in 333 BC, who came from Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at Babylon in 323 BC, his empire was shared between his generals. 

Alexander the Great expanded the boundaries of the empire  under the Greeks of Pontos who came there and developed the city as a trading center for the trade of items between the Black Sea ports and Crimea to the north; Assyria, Cyprus, and Lebanon to the south; and Georgia, Armenia and Persia to the east.

 By that time the city also took its name Áγκυρα-Ànkyra (meaning Anchor in Greek),but now people call it Ankara.

Roman period

 The city was conquered by Augustus in 25 BC and was under the control of the Roman Empire.

 Ankara is also famous for the Monumentum Ancyranum (Temple of Augustus and Rome) which contains the official record of the Acts of Augustus, known as the Res Gestae Divi August, which is a temple. The ruins of Ancyra still exist...

         Res Gestae Divi Augusti

         

  An approximately 200,000 people lived in Ancyra during the Roman Empire. 

A small river, the Ankara River, flowed through the centre of the Roman town.In the 19th century, at least one Roman villa or large house were still here not far from where the Çankaya Presidential Residence stands today. To the west, the Roman city extended until the area of the Gençlik Park and Railway Station, while on the southern side, it may have extended down  but now Hacettepe University is there. It was  a large city  and more larger than the Roman towns of Gaul or Britain.

 Seljuk and Ottoman periods

In 1071, the Seljuk Sultan Alparslan opened the gates of Anatolia for the Turks with his victory at the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt). Orhan I, second Bey of the Ottoman Empire, conquered the city in 1356. Another Turkic ruler, Timur, defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and conquered the city, but in 1403 Ankara was again under Ottoman control.Following the Ottoman defeat during World War I, the Ottoman capital was Constantinople. The Turkish nationalist movement, under Kemal Atatürk established its center in Ankara in 1920. After the War of Independence was won, the Turkish nationalists removed the Ottoman Empire on October 29, 1923. A few days earlier, on October 13, 1923, Ankara had replaced Constantinople as its capital, and it became the capital city of the new Republic of Turkey.

Alparslan

Orhan 1

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Ankara and the Republic of Turkey

After Ankara became the capital of the Republic of Turkey, it was seperated into an old section, called Ulus, and a new section, called Yenişehir.Ankara. 

Old Assembly Building

Bank Street