With a population of 14.1 million, Istanbul forms the largest urban agglomeration in Europe, and it is the largest city in Turkey; furthermore, it is the country’s economic, cultural, and historical heart, with a commercial and historical centre lying in the European part of Eurasia, while about a third of its population lives in the Asian part. Istanbul is the largest city in the Middle East, and the sixth-largest in the world. it lies over an area of 5,343 square kilometers a transcontinental city, straddling the Bosphorus strait in northwestern Turkey between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea.
