To acquire a general knowledge of the history of the territories located within the national boundaries of present day Turkey, one would have to study to some extent the history of at least a dozen of the world's greatest civilizations, and in doing so go back several thousand years. To learn something about the background of Ankara, the Turkish capital, for instance, one would have to start from the third millennium before the Christian era, and work up to modem times by studying the Hittites, Phrygians, Cimmerians, Lydians, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Mongols, Ottoman Turks, and the Turks of today, without forgetting somewhere along the way the Persians, and the Arabs, and several other nations. The list for Istanbul (the ancient Constantinople) and many other Turkish cities would not be shorter.

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