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==External links== |
===Overviews and data=== |
* Taiwan. ''The World Factbook''. Central Intelligence Agency. |
* Taiwan from ''UCB Libraries GovPubs'' |
* Taiwan country profile BBC News |
* Background Note: Taiwan US Department of State |
* Taiwan's 400 years of history New Taiwan, Ilha Formosa |
* Key Development Forecasts for Taiwan from International Futures |
* Chinese Taipei OECD |
* |
===Government agencies=== |
* Office of the Government |
* Office of the President |
* Executive Yuan |
* Judicial Yuan |
* Control Yuan |
* Examination Yuan |
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
* Republic of China (Taiwan) Embassies and Missions Abroad |
* Taiwan, The Heart of Asia , Tourism Bureau, Republic of China (Taiwan) |
'''Ankara''' ( , ; ), historically known as '''Ancyra''' and '''Angora''', is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 4.5 million in its urban center and over 5.6 million in Ankara Province, making it Turkey's second-largest city after Istanbul. |
Serving as the capital of the ancient Celtic state of Galatia (280–64 BC), and later of the Roman province with the same name (25 BC–7th century), the city is very old with various Hattian, Hittite, Lydian, Phrygian, Galatian, Greek, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman archeological sites. The Ottomans made the city the capital first of the Anatolia Eyalet (1393–late 15th century), and then the Angora Vilayet (1867–1922). The historical center of Ankara is a rocky hill rising over the left bank of the Ankara River, a tributary of the Sakarya River. The hill remains crowned by the ruins of Ankara Castle. Although few of its outworks have survived, there are well-preserved examples of Roman and Ottoman architecture throughout the city, the most remarkable being the 20 BC Temple of Augustus and Rome that boasts the Monumentum Ancyranum, the inscription recording the ''Res Gestae Divi Augusti''. |
On 23 April 1920, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was established in Ankara, which became the headquarters of the Turkish National Movement during the Turkish War of Independence. Ankara became the new Turkish capital upon the establishment of the Republic on 29 October 1923, succeeding in this role the former Turkish capital Istanbul following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The government is a prominent employer, but Ankara is also an important commercial and industrial city, located at the center of Turkey's road and railway networks. The city gave its name to the Angora wool shorn from Angora rabbits, the long-haired Angora goat (the source of mohair), and the Angora cat. The area is also known for its pears, honey and muscat grapes. Although situated in one of the driest regions of Turkey and surrounded mostly by steppe vegetation (except for the forested areas on the southern periphery), Ankara can be considered a green city in terms of green areas per inhabitant, at per head. |
== Etymology == |
Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. |
The orthography of the name Ankara has varied over the ages. It has been identified with the Hittite cult center ''Ankuwaš'', although this remains a matter of debate. In classical antiquity and during the medieval period, the city was known as ''Ánkyra'' (, "anchor") in Greek and ''Ancyra'' in Latin; the Galatian Celtic name was probably a similar variant. Following its annexation by the Seljuk Turks in 1073, the city became known in many European languages as ''Angora''; it was also known in Ottoman Turkish as ''Engürü''. The form "Angora" is preserved in the names of breeds of many different kinds of animals, and in the names of several locations in the US (see Angora). |
== History == |
Alaca Höyük bronze standard on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. |
The region's history can be traced back to the Bronze Age Hattic civilization, which was succeeded in the 2nd millennium BC by the Hittites, in the 10th century BC by the Phrygians, and later by the Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, and Turks (the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, the Ottoman Empire and finally republican Turkey). |
===Ancient history=== |
Alaca Höyük bronze standards is a pre-Hittite tomb dating to the third millennium BC. It is considered the symbol of the city still today. |
The oldest settlements in and around the city center of Ankara belonged to the Hattic civilization which existed during the Bronze Age and was gradually absorbed c. 2000 – 1700 BC by the Indo-European Hittites. The city grew significantly in size and importance under the Phrygians starting around 1000 BC, and experienced a large expansion following the mass migration from Gordion, (the capital of Phrygia), after an earthquake which severely damaged that city around that time. In Phrygian tradition, King Midas was venerated as the founder of Ancyra, but Pausanias mentions that the city was actually far older, which accords with present archeological knowledge. |
Phrygian rule was succeeded first by Lydian and later by Persian rule, though the strongly Phrygian character of the peasantry remained, as evidenced by the gravestones of the much later Roman period. Persian sovereignty lasted until the Persians' defeat at the hands of Alexander the Great who conquered the city in 333 BC. Alexander came from Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at Babylon in 323 BC and the subsequent division of his empire among his generals, Ankara, and its environs fell into the share of Antigonus. |
Another important expansion took place under the Greeks of Pontos who came there around 300 BC and developed the city as a trading center for the commerce of goods 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 Ἄγκυρα (''Ánkyra'', meaning ''anchor'' in Greek) which, in slightly modified form, provides the modern name of ''Ankara''. |
===Celtic history=== |
The ''Dying Galatian'' was a famous statue commissioned some time between 230 and 220 BC by King Attalos I of Pergamon to honor his victory over the Celtic Galatians in Anatolia. Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BC, at the Capitoline Museums, Rome. |
In 278 BC, the city, along with the rest of central Anatolia, was occupied by a Celtic group, the Galatians, who were the first to make Ankara one of their main tribal centers, the headquarters of the Tectosages tribe. Other centers were Pessinus, today's Ballıhisar, for the Trocmi tribe, and Tavium, to the east of Ankara, for the Tolistobogii tribe. The city was then known as ''Ancyra''. The Celtic element was probably relatively small in numbers; a warrior aristocracy which ruled over Phrygian-speaking peasants. However, the Celtic language continued to be spoken in Galatia for many centuries. At the end of the 4th century, St. Jerome, a native of Dalmatia, observed that the language spoken around Ankara was very similar to that being spoken in the northwest of the Roman world near Trier. |
===Roman history=== |
Celtic kingdom of Galatia, and later of the Roman province with the same name, after its conquest by Augustus in 25 BC. |
Marble head of a Roman woman on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara. |
The city was subsequently passed under the control of the Roman Empire. In 25 BC, Emperor Augustus raised it to the status of a ''polis'' and made it the capital city of the Roman province of Galatia. Ankara is 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 Augusti'', an inscription cut in marble on the walls of this temple. The ruins of Ancyra still furnish today valuable bas-reliefs, inscriptions and other architectural fragments. Two other Galatian tribal centers, Tavium near Yozgat, and Pessinus (Balhisar) to the west, near Sivrihisar, continued to be reasonably important settlements in the Roman period, but it was Ancyra that grew into a grand metropolis. |
The ''Res Gestae Divi Augusti'' is the self-laudatory autobiography completed in 13 AD, just before his death, by the first Roman emperor Augustus. Most of the text is preserved on the walls of the Monumentum Ancyranum. |
The Roman Baths of Ankara were constructed by the Roman emperor Caracalla (212–217) in honor of Asclepios, the God of Medicine, and built around three principal rooms: the ''caldarium'' (hot bath), the ''tepidarium'' (warm bath) and the ''frigidarium'' (cold bath) in a typically laid-out classical complex. |
An estimated 200,000 people lived in Ancyra in good times during the Roman Empire, a far greater number than was to be the case from after the fall of the Roman Empire until the early 20th century. The small Ankara River ran through the center of the Roman town. It has now been covered and diverted, but it formed the northern boundary of the old town during the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Çankaya, the rim of the majestic hill to the south of the present city center, stood well outside the Roman city, but may have been a summer resort. In the 19th century, the remains of at least one Roman villa or large house were still standing 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 of the hill, it may have extended downwards as far as the site presently occupied by Hacettepe University. It was thus a sizeable city by any standards and much larger than the Roman towns of Gaul or Britannia. |
Ancyra's importance rested on the fact that it was the junction point where the roads in northern Anatolia running north–south and east–west intersected, giving it major strategic importance for Rome's eastern frontier. The great imperial road running east passed through Ankara and a succession of emperors and their armies came this way. They were not the only ones to use the Roman highway network, which was equally convenient for invaders. In the second half of the 3rd century, Ancyra was invaded in rapid succession by the Goths coming from the west (who rode far into the heart of Cappadocia, taking slaves and pillaging) and later by the Arabs. For about a decade, the town was one of the western outposts of one of Palmyrean empress Zenobia in the Syrian Desert, who took advantage of a period of weakness and disorder in the Roman Empire to set up a short-lived state of her own. |
The town was reincorporated into the Roman Empire under Emperor Aurelian in 272. The tetrarchy, a system of multiple (up to four) emperors introduced by Diocletian (284–305), seems to have engaged in a substantial program of rebuilding and of road construction from Ankara westwards to Germe and Dorylaeum (now Eskişehir). |
In its heyday, Roman Ankara was a large market and trading center but it also functioned as a major administrative capital, where a high official ruled from the city's Praetorium, a large administrative palace or office. During the 3rd century, life in Ancyra, as in other Anatolian towns, seems to have become somewhat militarized in response to the invasions and instability of the town. |
===Byzantine history=== |
The city is well known during the 4th century as a center of Christian activity (see also below), due to frequent imperial visits, and through the letters of the pagan scholar Libanius. Bishop Marcellus of Ancyra and Basil of Ancyra were active in the theological controversies of their day, and the city was the site of no less than three church synods in 314, 358 and 375, the latter two in favor of Arianism. |
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