What is the capital of Turkey?

Ankara became the capital because of where the Turkish national movement made its stand. After the First World War, with Istanbul occupied by Allied forces and the sultan's government effectively under their control, Mustafa Kemal organised resistance from the Anatolian interior and convened the Grand National Assembly at Ankara in 1920. When the war of independence was won and the republic declared in 1923, the capital stayed where the new state had been built rather than returning to the imperial city. The choice was ideological as much as practical: it broke with the Ottoman past, put the government in the Turkish-speaking heartland rather than on a contested strait, and placed it safely inland. Ankara was then remade as a planned modern capital with ministries, boulevards and new institutions, though it had ancient roots of its own as the Roman and Byzantine town of Ancyra.

Istanbul is the only large city straddling two continents, with districts on both the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus.