İzmir, also once called Smyrna, is Turkey's third most populous city and the country's largest port after Istanbul. It is located along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir, by the Aegean Sea. It is the seat of İzmir Province. The city of İzmir is composed of nine metropolitan districts (Balçova, Bornova, Buca, Çiğli, Gaziemir, Güzelbahçe, Karşıyaka, Konak, and Narlıdere), each with its own distinct features and temperament. The total area of the nine districts is 855 km² and together these districts constitute the area of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality headed by the mayor of İzmir. The total population of the metropolitan municipality was 2,649,582 by the end of 2007. Of these, 2,606,294 were living in central Izmir, consisting of the nine district centres of the metropolitan municipality.
Ä°zmir has almost 3,500 years of urban past, and possibly that much more of advanced human settlement. Its port, privatized in 2007 , is Turkey's first port for exports in terms of the freight handled and its free zone, a Turkish-U.S. joint-venture established in 1990, is the leader among the twenty in Turkey. Its workforce, and particularly its rising class of young professionals, concentrated either in the city or in its immediate vicinity (such as in Manisa), and under either larger companies or SMEs, affirm their name in an increasingly wider global scale and intensity. Ä°zmir is widely regarded as one of the most progressive Turkish cities in terms of its values, lifestyle, dynamism and gender roles. It is a stronghold of the Republican People's Party, although it lost a lot of ground to the ruling AKP party in the 2007 election. |
