Istanbul Metro

The Istanbul Metro (Turkish: İstanbul Metrosu) is a rapid transit railway network that serves the city of Istanbul, Turkey. It is operated by İstanbul Ulaşım (Istanbul Transport), a public enterprise, controlled by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The oldest section is the metro is M1 line, which opened in 1989; it now includes 70 stations in service, with 30 more under construction.

The system currently consists of five lines named M1, M2, M3, M4, and the M6 Mini-Metro. More lines are under construction or planned: M5 (Üsküdar-Çekmeköy/Sancaktepe) will be on the Asian side, while M7 (Mecidiyeköy-Mahmutbey) will be on the European side.

History

The oldest underground urban rail line in Istanbul is the Tünel, which entered service on January 17, 1875. It is the world's second-oldest underground urban rail line after the London Underground which was built in 1863, and the first underground urban rail line in continental Europe.

The first master plan for a full metro network in Istanbul, titled Avant Projet d'un Métropolitain à Constantinople and conceived by the French engineer L. Guerby, dates to January 10, 1912. The plan comprised a total of 24 stations between the Topkapı and Şişli districts and included a connection through the Golden Horn. Each station would have a 75-metre platform next to the rail line, while the distance between stations varied from 220 to 975 metres. The blueprints of the project, which was never realized, are today displayed at the Istanbul Technical University Museum.

Istanbul

Istanbul (/ˌɪstænˈbuːl/ or /ˌiːstɑːnˈbuːl/;Turkish: İstanbul [isˈtanbuɫ]), historically also known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side. The city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (coterminous with Istanbul Province), both hosting a population of around 14 million residents. Istanbul is one of the world's most populous cities and ranks as world's 6th-largest city proper and the largest European city.

Founded under the name of Byzantium on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city developed to become one of the most significant in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as an imperial capital for almost 16 centuries, during the Roman and Byzantine (330–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin (1204–1261), and the Ottoman (1453–1922) empires. It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times, before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 and transformed it into an Islamic stronghold and the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate.

Metro

Metro usually refers to:

Metro may also refer to:

Public transport

Istanbul Atatürk Airport

Istanbul Atatürk Airport (IATA: IST, ICAO: LTBA) (Turkish: İstanbul Atatürk Havalimanı) is the main international airport serving Istanbul, Turkey (followed by Sabiha Gökçen International Airport) and the biggest airport in Turkey by total number of passengers, destinations served and aircraft movements. Opened in 1924 and located in Yeşilköy, on the European side of the city, it is 24 km (15 mi) west of the city centre and functions as the main hub for Turkish Airlines.

In 1980, the airport was renamed Atatürk International Airport in honor of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. It served near 57 million passengers in 2014, making it the 13th busiest airport in the world in terms of total passenger traffic and the 9th busiest in the world in terms of international passenger traffic. It was Europe's 3rd busiest airport just after London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle and ahead of Frankfurt Airport in 2015. Once the Istanbul New Airport is finished, Atatürk will be closed.

Turkish language

Turkish ( Türkçe ), also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 10–15 million native speakers in Southeast Europe (mostly in East Thrace) and 60-65 million native speakers in Western Asia (mostly in Anatolia). Outside of Turkey, smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus (although a partially recognized state), Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin script.

The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics. Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect.