İzmir

İzmir is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara. It is on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, and is the capital of İzmir Province. In 2024, the city of İzmir had a population of 2,938,292 (in eleven urban districts), while İzmir Province had a total population of 4,493,242. Its built-up (or metro) area was home to 3,264,154 inhabitants. It extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across the Gediz River Delta; to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams; and to slightly more rugged terrain in the south.

İzmir has more than 3,000 years of recorded urban history, and up to 8,500 years of history as a human settlement since the Neolithic period. In classical antiquity, the city was known as Smyrna – a name which remained in use in English and various other languages until around 1930, when government efforts led the original Greek name to be gradually phased out internationally in favor of its Turkish counterpart İzmir.

Lying on an advantageous location at the head of a gulf running down in a deep indentation, midway along the western Anatolian coast, İzmir has been one of the principal mercantile cities of the Mediterranean Sea for much of its history. Until the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, İzmir had a very large Greek population. It hosted the Mediterranean Games in 1971 and the World University Games (Universiade) in 2005.