Izmir, Turkey

İzmir is a large metropolis 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 Istanbul. It is located along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir on the eastern shoreline of the Aegean Sea. The city was formerly known as Smyrna.The city of İzmir is composed of several districts. Of these, Konak district corresponds to historical İzmir, this district's area having constituted "İzmir Municipality" area until 1984, Konak until then having been a name for a central neighborhood around Konak Square, still the core of the city. With the constitution of "Greater İzmir Metropolitan Municipality", the city of İzmir became a compound bringing together initially nine, and since recently eleven metropolitan districts, 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 processus, 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, two of these having been administratively included in İzmir only partially.