Starting around 1200 BC, the coast of Anatolia was heavily settled by 

Aeolian and Ionian Greeks.
Numerous important cities were founded by these colonists, such
as Didyma, Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna (now İzmir) and Byzantium (now Istanbul), the latter founded
by Greek colonists from Megara in 657 BC.[53] Some of the most prominent pre-Socratic philosophers
lived in the city of Miletus. Thales of Miletus (c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC) considered as first philosopher
in the Greek tradition.[54][55] and he is otherwise historically recognized as the first individual known to
have entertained and engaged in scientific philosophy.[56][57] In Miletus, he is followed by two other
significant pre-Socratic philosophers Anaximander (c. 610 BC – c. 546 BC) and Anaximenes (c. 585
BC – c. 525 BC) (known collectively, to modern scholars, as the Milesian school).
For several centuries prior to the great Persian invasion of Greece, perhaps the very greatest and
wealthiest city of the Greek world was Miletus, which founded more colonies than any other Greek
city,[58] particularly in the Black Sea region. Diogenes the Cynic was one of the founders
of Cynic philosophy born in one of the Ionian colonies Sinope on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia in
412.[59]

The Sebastian of the city Aphrodisias. The city was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty. In
2017, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.[60]

The Library of Celsus in Ephesus was built by the Romans in 114–117.[61] The Temple of Artemis in Ephesus,

built by king Croesus of Lydia in the 6th century BC, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.[62]

Trojan War took place in the ancient city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy
took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events
in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most
notably Homer's Iliad. Whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open
question. Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical
conflict usually date it to the 12th or 11th century BC, often preferring the dates given
by Eratosthenes, 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a
catastrophic burning of Troy VII,[63] and the Late Bronze Age collapse.
The first state that was called Armenia by neighbouring peoples was the state of
the Armenian Orontid dynasty, which included parts of what is now eastern Turkey beginning in the
6th century BC. In Northwest Turkey, the most significant tribal group in Thrace was the Odyrisians,
founded by Teres I.[64]
All of modern-day Turkey was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th century
BC.[65] The Greco-Persian Wars started when the Greek city states on the coast of Anatolia rebelled
against Persian rule in 499 BC.
Artemisia I of Caria was a queen of the ancient Greek city-state of Halicarnassus and she fought as
an ally of Xerxes I, King of Persia against the independent Greek city states during the second
Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC.[66][67]
The territory of Turkey later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC,[68] which led to increasing cultural
homogeneity and Hellenization in the area.[12] Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, Anatolia was
subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms, all of which became part of
the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC.[69] The process of Hellenization that began with
Alexander's conquest accelerated under Roman rule, and by the early centuries of the Christian Era,
the local Anatolian languages and cultures had become extinct, being largely replaced by ancient
Greek language and culture.[15][70] From the 1st century BC up to the 3rd century AD, large parts of
modern-day Turkey were contested between the Romans and neighbouring Parthians through the
frequent Roman-Parthian Wars.
Galatia was an ancient area in the highlands of central Anatolia inhabited by the Celts. The terms
"Galatians" came to be used by the Greeks for the three Celtic peoples of Anatolia: the Tectosages,
the Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii.[71][72] By the 1st century BC the Celts had become so Hellenized that
some Greek writers called them Hellenogalatai (Ἑλληνογαλάται).[73] Galatia was named after
the Gauls from Thrace (cf. Tylis), who settled here and became a small transient foreign tribe in the
3rd century BC, following the supposed Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC.
Kingdom of Pontus was a Hellenistic kingdom, centered in the historical region of Pontus and ruled
by the Mithridatic dynasty of Persian origin,[74][75][76][77] which may have been directly related to Darius
the Great and the Achaemenid dynasty.[78][77] The kingdom was proclaimed by Mithridates I in 281 BC
and lasted until its conquest by the Roman Republic in 63 BC. The Kingdom of Pontus reached its
largest extent under Mithridates VI the Great, who conquered Colchis, Cappadocia, Bithynia, the
Greek colonies of the Tauric Chersonesos. After a long struggle with Rome in the Mithridatic Wars,
Pontus was defeated.
All territories corresponding to modern Turkey eventually fell into Roman Empire’s control.