Question 4: the correct answer is Ankara. Did you get it right? Score 1 point.
Question 5 of 10
What is the capital of New Zealand?
Why, in question 4: What is the capital of Turkey?
The answer is Ankara. Istanbul is the largest city and for centuries was the capital of the Ottoman Empire, but the Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923, chose Ankara, in the centre of the Anatolian peninsula.
The capital of the republic
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, leader of the War of Independence and first president of Turkey, used Ankara as a base during the conflict. The city was declared the capital on 13 October 1923, shortly before the proclamation of the republic on 29 October.
The choice also marked a break with the past: Istanbul symbolised the old empire, while Ankara represented the new state. Its inland position was also seen as more protected than that of a city on the sea.
In Ankara stands the Anıtkabir, Atatürk's great mausoleum, completed in 1953 on top of a hill. It is one of the most important monuments in the country and receives visitors from all over Turkey.
Istanbul is one of the few major cities divided between two continents: the Bosphorus strait separates the European part from the Asian part. Before it had this name, it was Byzantium and then Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire for more than a thousand years.
