Karataş (Ottoman Turkish: قره طاش) is a neighborhood of İzmir, Turkey, within the boundaries of the city's central metropolitan district of Konak. The neighborhood no longer has an official delimitation or status and exists as a notional zone (semt) that is admitted to stretch along the small cove of the same name (Karataş Cove (Koyu)) in the Gulf of İzmir. Its area roughly corresponds to the officially delimited quarter (mahalle) named Turgut Reis. The inhabitants, among whom neighborhood pride is quite developed, also usually declare living in Karataş.

Karataş is historically the part of İzmir where the city's Jewish population was concentrated, particularly for middle- to richer classes. In Ottoman times, the poorest were usually either concentrated in Mezarlıkbaşı quarter or around Havra Sokağı (Synagogue Street), both of which are located in or around Kemeraltı bazaar zone, or were scattered across the city. Karataş is still the area in İzmir where most members of the city's Jewish community continue to live.

Karataş (Ancient Greek: Μεγαρσος, Mègarsus) is a small city and a district in Adana Province, on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, 47 km from the city of Adana, between the rivers of Seyhan and Ceyhan, the Pyramos of Antiquity. The city of Karataş has a population of 8,483 (in 2010), with another 13,000 living in surrounding villages.

The area has been inhabited from at least Hittite times and probably earlier. It was later part of the Assyrian province of Quwê (Que). By the time of the Greeks, who knew the city as Megarsos/Magarso, there was a port here at the mouth of the navigable Pyramos, supplying an important military and trading route into the plain of Cilicia, and also providing access to the sea for the river towns, like Mallus. In 333 BCE, just before the battle of Issus, Alexander the Great sacrificed here at a temple that, by interpretatio graeca, he took to be of Athena; the "Athena of Magarsos" who appears on Hellenistic coins has been diagnosed, from her pose and the attributes that surround her, to have Mesopotamian connections. Robin Lane Fox recognizes the origin of the cult site in the victories of Sennacherib, who instituted the shrine in 696 BCE following a sea battle with Greeks off the mouth of the river; he dedicated it to his martial goddess, Anat, or Ishtar.

Coordinates: 38°25′19″N 27°07′44″E / 38.422°N 27.129°E / 38.422; 27.129

Izmir (Turkish: İzmir) is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.95 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey. Izmir metropolitan area extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across Gediz River's delta, to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams and to a slightly more rugged terrain in the south. The ancient city was known as Smyrna, and the city was generally referred to as Smyrna in English, until the Turkish Postal Services Law of 1930 made "Izmir" the internationally recognized name.

The city of Izmir is composed of several metropolitan districts. Of these, Konak district corresponds to historical Izmir, this district's area having constituted the "Izmir Municipality" (Turkish: İzmir Belediyesi) area until 1984, Konak until then having been a name for a central neighborhood around Konak Square, still the core of the city. With the constitution of the "Greater Izmir Metropolitan Municipality" (Turkish: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi), the city of Izmir became a compound bringing together initially nine, and since recently eleven metropolitan districts, namely Balçova, Bayraklı, Bornova, Buca, Çiğli, Gaziemir, Güzelbahçe, Karabağlar, Karşıyaka, Konak and Narlıdere. Almost each of these settlements are former district centers or neighborhoods which stood on their own and with their own distinct features and temperament. In an ongoing processus, the Mayor of Izmir was also vested with authority over the areas of additional districts reaching from Aliağa in the north to Selçuk in the south, bringing the number of districts to be considered as being part of Izmir to twenty-one under the new arrangements, two of these having been administratively included in Izmir only partially.