The Asian region of Anatolia comprises a large part of today's Turkey , although the surface area mentioned above was only a small portion of the pre World War I Ottoman Empire which reached from the Adriatic Sea to the Persian Gulf i.e. Indian Ocean. The eastern region of Turkey, Thrace, lies in Europe and has 23,000 km2 surface area. The elevation rises from west towards east and stabilizes at around 800m above sea level in the Central Anatolian Plateau. Further east, the elevation increases and reaches 2,000- 2,200m on the average in Eastern Anatolian.

In the South, the Taurus Mountain lay parallel to the Mediterranean with average elevations around 2,500m sometimes reaching 4,00m above sea level. The Pontic chain in the North lies parallel to the Black Sea coast with an average elevation of 1,500m, reaching 3,600m as one travels east . In Western Anatolia , the mountain ranges lies from east to west, perpendicular to the Aegean Sea creating fertile valleys irrigated by the rivers of famous ancient times legends such as, Meandrous, Castros, Pactole and Selinus. These mountain ranges, perpendicular to the sea, created many peninsulas and bays and thus, a coastal line full of natural wonders. In the South, there are many rivers that carry the snow water down from the peaks of the Taurus Mountains to the Mediterranean. These rivers fed fertile plains of various sizes. The high plateaus east of the sunken salt lake bowl contain many volcanoes with elevations of 3,000- 4,000m and higher. The highest of these mountains is Mt. Ararat (5,165m).

The largest lake in the country, Lake Van (3,600 km2) is also in this region. The high plains of Eastern Anatolia are generally large areas for cattle farming, but there are lower, warmer and more fertile plains such as the Igdir plain. The rivers that originate in this region, such and Euphrates and Tigris, from south as the elevation decreases rapidly. They irrigate the South Eastern Anatolia region and ,forming Upper Mesopotamia, they leave Turkey. In the Black Sean, it is noticeable that the mountains generally lie close to the sea. As a result of this, only several (Çarşamba , Bafra , etc.) fertile plains were formed, and other than these plains, the mountains are almost perpendicular to the coastline. The region around the Marmara Sea, both in Anatolia and in Thrace has very few changes in large, flat, fertile lands.