Ankara, also known as Angora or Ancyra, is the capital of Turkey. The city was founded by the Phrygians in 1000 BC following the destruction of their capital Gordion by an earthquake, and it later came under Lydian, Persian, and Macedonian rule. In 300 BC, Greeks from Pontus developed the city as a trading center for the commerce of goods between the Black Sea ports and Crimea to the north, Assyria, Cyprus, and Lebanon to the south, and Georgia, Armenia, and Persia to the east. Around the same time, it became known as "Ancyra", meaning "anchor" in Greek. In 278 BC, the Celtic Galatians occupied central Anatolia and made Ancyra one of their main tribal centers. The Celts formed a warrior aristocracy which ruled over the Phrygian peasants, and Celtic rule was later replaced by Roman rule. In 25 BC, Emperor Augustus made Ancyra the capital of the Roman province of Galatia. During the prime of the Roman Empire, Ancyra had a population of 200,000 people. It flourished as a crossroads of trade, and, during the 4th century AD, it became a center of Christian activity. In 622, the Sassanid Persians conquered Ancyra from the Byzantine Romans, but it returned to Byzantine hands by 628. In 654, the Arabs of the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Ancyra, but it was later recaptured by the Byzantines, and was captured and recaptured several times during the wars between the two empires. In 1073, it was captured by Turkish settlers, and the Seljuks began to fight for control of Anatolia with Byzantium. In 1356, the Ottoman Empire captured the Turkish city-state, and it had a population of 28,000 people prior to World War I in 1914, a third of whom were Christian. In 1920, after the Greeks occupied Turkey following the war's end, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the Turkish National Movement made Ankara their base, and, on 29 October 1923, it became the new capital of a now-republican Turkey. It became an important commercial and industrial city, and, in 2017, it had a population of 5,445,025 people.
