Environmental setting

Anatolia is a peninsula linking the Near East–Caucasus and southeastern Europe. Due to this geographic position, Anatolia has often been misconceived as a cultural bridge, with its role in the history of civilisation downgraded to a passageway either transmitting or preventing movements of peoples and/or concepts. In this respect, another bias has been to consider Anatolia as a single, uniform unit; on the contrary, Anatolia comprises a diversity of ecological zones, each covering extensive areas, separated from each other by ranges of high mountains (Gündalı 1979). The peninsula is framed on the north and south by the steep-sided mountain ranges running parallel to the coastline. Karadeniz Dağları (or the Pontids) along the Black Sea, merges in the east with Transcaucasia, and with the Istranca Mountains in the west. The northern flanks of the Black Sea mountains, receiving high rainfall, are covered by evergreen forests, while in the south there is a gradual change from deciduous forests to open forest to steppe environments. The Taurus belt along the Mediterranean, after merging with the Amanos Mountains, a northerly extension of the Lebanon Mountains, continues to the east as the ante-Taurus or East Taurus range, forming the tip of the “Fertile Crescent” arc encircling southeastern Turkey. The dense coniferous forest cover of the Taurus and Amanos in the eastern parts gives way to strands of open forests, mainly of oak and pistachio.