Turkey

Turkey’s ancient history is complex due to its position between many significant civilisations. From prehistoric times Turkey was an important site due to its position between Asia and Europe yet it remained prehistoric itself until Turkey’s Bronze Age was initiated by association with the Akkadian Empire (centred in modern Iraq) around 2400 BC. Around 1600 BC Anatolia developed its own empire in the Hittites which came into conflict with the Egyptians and Assyrians. The dissolution of the Hittite empire, largely due to the domination of the Assyrian empire over Anatolia, saw an increase in the colonisation of the western coast of Turkey by the Greeks which had begun since the Greek Bronze Age. However these Greek kingdoms were later conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire before the conquest of Alexander the Great established a Hellenistic culture throughout Turkey. At the fall of the Roman Empire, Constantine established Constantinople as the capital giving rise to the Byzantine Empire which would make Turkey one of the predominant centers of power in Europe for approximately the next thousand years.