It's basically the hub that connects Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia together. If someone builds an empire in any of those areas and tries to expand to another one, they're going to want to control the territory that connects them. Even if they don't want Turkey for its own sake, it's a stepping stone.
In other words, if you want to not get invaded, it really helps to be off in a corner that's not on anybody's way from anything to anything. Turkey is the opposite.
It's valuable real estate but not so easy to conquer. Probably because of the mountains. When the Arab's were on a role, they couldn't get too far into Turkey, same with Tamerlane, as well as many other invaders throughout history.
Fun fact. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, has Malatya and Arabkir districts.
edit: typo
Historically, being "conquered/trampled" didn't mean genetic displacement or even mixing. Especially if an established and stable population already existed there. It just meant the masses had a new master. The mongols conquered china but china is still chinese. The arabs conquered iran but iran's still iranian. The brits conquered india but india is still indian.
> especially considering the last time the Persian or Armenian empires controlled the city I'm from (Malatya) was thousands of years ago.
But turks don't speak persian or armenian. They speak turkish. They don't use armenian script but used arabic alphabet previously and now the latin alphabet. Turks aren't christian or zoroastrian or buddhist, but are muslim.
A predominantly genetic iranian/armenian population that speaks turkish, is muslim and uses the latin alphabet. That's pretty diverse.
Visit more archaeological sites in your country. If it’s the USA, maybe cliff dwellings would interest?
https://www.nps.gov/meve/learn/historyculture/cliff_dwelling...
I grew up near a castle not much younger than Mesa Verde and a church that was mostly built in the 1400s and they were just regular buildings around town. I had a friend who lived in a 600 year old building with meter-thick stone walls. A cafe had glass floor under which you could see preserved medieval city streets, with coins etc left as found.
USA has gorgeous old nature with amazing stories to tell (I've found dinosaur footprints on a hike! I've watched clouds gather below me in the Grand Canyon! I've seen some of the largest trees in the world!), but human history just ain't one of its strong suites.
Fun fact: those cities buried in hills on the plain are called "tells".
They're called "tells" because, thousands and thousands of years ago when Mesopotamia spoke Old Akkadian, they were called "tells". The concept was old then.
I remember my Turkish guide proudly saying that these dwellings have not been settled for centuries "because we were never invaded again so we don't need to hide here anymore".
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220810-derinkuyu-turkey...
Also this is all a bit white-washed. This underground was in use until the 1920's when the mass killing of Christian Ottomans across Anatolia happened, which is the largely unacknowledged Greek genocide. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period.
It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide
There's something positively evil about playing this up as some kind of whimsical "gee, what happened?" It was genocide.
tldr; This city is 'forgotten' because the Turks slaughtered the Greeks living there and chased off the survivors who would have had knowledge of its expansive underground.
https://talkafricana.com/african-cities-that-were-completely...
nartho•5mo ago