İzmir İzmir was historically known as Smyrna and is a large city in western Anatolia and the capital of the İzmir Province in Turkey. It is Turkey's third most populous city and the country's second largest port city after İstanbul. It is located along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir on the eastern shoreline of the Aegean Sea. The city of İzmir is composed of several districts. Of these the Konak district corresponds to historical İzmir due to this districts area having constituted the İzmir Municipality area until 1984. Konak until that time having been a name given a central neighborhood around Konak Square which was still the core of the city. With the constitution of the Greater İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, the city of İzmir became a compound bringing together initially nine, and recently eleven metropolitan districts in total, 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 process the Mayor of İzmir 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 İzmir to twenty-one under the new arrangements. İzmir has almost 3,500 years of recorded urban history and possibly even longer as an advanced human settlement. Lying on an advantageous location at the head of a gulf running down a deep indentation midway on the western Anatolian coast, the city has been one of the principal shipping cities of the Mediterranean Sea for much of its history. Its port is Turkey's primary port for exports in terms of the freight handled and its free zone - a Turkish-U.S. joint-venture that was established in 1990 is the leader among the twenty in Turkey. İzmir is served by national and international flights through the Adnan Menderes International Airport and there is a modern rapid transit line running from the southwest to the northeast. The city is trying to attract investors through its strategic location and its relatively new and highly developed technological infrastructure in transportation, telecommunications and energy.
İzmir
