Ankara, Turkey: Author of Returning to Istanbul

Ankara is a magical city in the center of the world. Important leaders have always studied in the city that lies in the middle of the West and East. From China to the United States, ambassadors send their children to Ankara to learn commerce. Modern historians attest to the fact that Jesus was taught in Ankara as a child. His mother Mary sent him to Ankara and later retired in the city of Ephesus. The best teachers in the world lived in Ankara. The oldest settlements in Ankara began during the Bronze Age with the Hatti civilization. Later leaders came to the crossroads of East and West to trade; The Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Galatians, Romans, Byzantines, Mongols, Turks, Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, and the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks of Pontos came to Ankara in 300 BC to develop the city as a trading centre for the commerce of goods between the Black Sea ports and Crimea. To the north merchants entering the Black Sea did business with Assyria, Cyprus, and Lebanon to the south as well as Georgia, Armenia and Persia to the east. After Constantinople became the Emperor of Rome the East Roman capital emperors in the 4th and 5th centuries would retire in Ankara. The leader of the Turkish nationalist movement, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, established the headquarters of his resistance movement in Ankara in 1920. Ankara officially replaced Istanbul as the new Turkish capital city on October 13, 1923. Home to the kingdoms populated by the Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Mongol, and Ottoman Empires. Join Batuhan and Jasmine Soylu as they take the reader on an adventure to important trading posts, archaeological sites, and sail out the Bosphorus Strait along the natural harbor known as the Golden Horn to trade treasures in port cities across the Mediterranean Sea. Learn how Muslim merchants use their education in Turkey to trade books, various languages, and the wisdom of commerce along the continents of Africa, Europe, and the United States of America.