In terms of popularity alone, Istanbul is far stronger than Ankara, and even though Turkey has been the capital of Ankara for nearly a hundred years, people's first impression of Turkey is still Istanbul. Istanbul's historical accumulation and strategic location were too important compared to Ankara, but when the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923, Mustafa Kemal chose Ankara, with a population of no more than 15,000 people, as the new capital of the country, and Istanbul, with its 1,600-year-old capital, was ultimately defeated. So what was the reason for Turkey at that time to exclude Istanbul, a historical and cultural city, and finally determine Ankara as its capital?
Going back to the background of the times, this question is easy to answer, Ankara was the "military center" at that time. After the end of World War I, the Ottoman Turkish Empire faced the dismemberment of the Entente group because it was on the wrong side, especially the Greek military offensive against Turkey. In this case, Mustafa Kemal led the Turkish military and civilians to rise up in resistance, and it is no exaggeration to say that Turkey at that time was on the verge of national subjugation. Once Mustafa Kemal was defeated, there would be no Turkish state on today's map, but fortunately, the Turks repelled the Allied attack, and the rear base supporting Mustafa Kemal and others was Ankara.
At this time, the nascent Turkey was faced with the choice of where to make the capital, and many people thought that the military power of the Allies at that time was too strong, and Mustafa Kemal excluded Istanbul for security reasons. If Istanbul was an internationally administered city before Mustafa Kemal's military victory, turkey could have returned the capital to Istanbul under a peace agreement after the Lausanne Convention. In fact, Mustafa Kemal refused to make Istanbul its capital because the city did not fit the nascent Turkey's position of itself.
Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople and earlier Byzantium, was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for a thousand years, in other words, a typical Greco-Romanized city. After conquering Constantinople, the Ottoman Turkish Empire did imitate the former to build a vast and multi-ethnic pluralistic empire. Judging from the subsequent historical developments, the Ottoman Empire was undoubtedly successful, because it not only spanned the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, ruling dozens of ethnic groups, but also allowed the coexistence of various faiths, including Orthodox Christianity and Islam. At this time, the Empire's capital in Istanbul was undoubtedly the best choice, because it was the hub that controlled the junction of Europe and Asia.
Photo - Istanbul
However, by the time of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal was determined to cut off the past history, and with the decline of national power, the Ottoman Empire could not repeat its former glory, and if it stubbornly adhered to the previous ideas, it would only bury the future of the country. At this time, Mustafa Kemal's goal was to establish a secular, modern nation-state, and Istanbul, which had been the capital of the Ottoman Empire for five hundred years, had too much historical inertia and did not conform to the founding concept of the Turkish Republic. At this point the Turks narrowed their gaze back to the peninsula of Asia Minor, and found Ankara in the middle of the Anatolian Peninsula.
Photo - Ankara
At that time, Ankara was small in scale and culturally weak, but it was precisely because of this that it had the capital to build from scratch. Due to its inland location, the city's inhabitants are basically pure Turks, and the religious power is far less powerful than Istanbul, which is very much in line with the new country's self-positioning. At the same time, the relative proximity to the national geographic center also enables the government decrees from Ankara to quickly reach the whole country, and now after nearly a hundred years of development planning, Ankara has long become a metropolis with a population of more than 5 million.