Izmir

İzmir (Turkish pronunciation: `{`‘izmi?`}`) is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia and the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara.`{`1`}``{`2`}` It is one of the most westernized cities in Turkey. İzmir’s metropolitan area extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across the delta of the Gediz River, 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 (Greek: ?µ???? Smyrni `{`‘zmirni`}`), and the city was generally referred to as Smyrna in English, until the Turkish adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928 made “İzmir” the internationally recognized name.</p> <p>The city of İzmir is composed of several metropolitan districts. Of these, Konak district corresponds to historical İzmir, this district’s area having constituted the “İzmir Municipality” (Turkish: İzmir Belediyesi) area until 1984.`{`citation needed`}` With the constitution of the “Greater İzmir Metropolitan Municipality” (Turkish: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi), the city of İzmir grouped together initially nine, and more recently eleven, metropolitan districts, namely Balçova, Bayraklı, Bornova, Buca, Çiğli, Gaziemir, Güzelbahçe, Karabağlar, Karşıyaka, Konak and Narlıdere.`{`citation needed`}` In an ongoing process, the Mayor of İzmir was also vested with authority over additional districts reaching from Bergama in the north to Selçuk in the south, bringing the number of districts considered as being part of İzmir to twenty-one, two of these having been only partially administratively included in İzmir.`{`citation needed`}`</p> <p>In 2014, İzmir had a population of 2,847,691, while İzmir Province had a total of 4,113,072.