October 30 - Connecting Europe and Asia!?

Posted October 30, 2020

The thing about continents is that it’s hard to agree on which huge land masses get to be continents, and which are just really large islands, and which land masses qualify as separate continents, even if they share a land border.

Only Australia and Antarctica are completely separate from every other continent. In the case of North and South America, some people in the world consider them separate continents, despite the narrow (120-mile) connection at Panama. Other people consider both Americas as one large continent named – you guessed it! – America.

In the case of Africa and Asia, the Suez Canal (the Isthmus of Suez) is considered by most to be the eastern border of Africa, so Egypt contains a bit of Asia along with all of its African territory.

The orange portion on this map is the part
of Egypt that is considered to be in Asia.

But in the case of Europe and Asia…

Well! There have been people who call the whole hugest-continent-in-the-world “Eurasia,” and there have been many who have drawn a line separating Europe and Asia (the exact placement of that separating line is not always agreed upon!). Quite a few nations are considered to have land in both Europe and Asia, including Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.

It’s the Turkey bit that I am writing about today: October 30 is the anniversary of the 1973 completion of the Bosphorus Bridge. This bridge is said to connect Europe and Asia – although of course we have seen that there are a LOT of miles of connection!

One thing that is interesting about this bridge is, not only is Turkey partly in Europe and partly in Asia, but Istanbul – Turkey’s largest city, and the city that is the nation’s economic and cultural center – Istanbul is ALSO partly in Europe and partly in Asia. It is the Bosphorus Bridge that connects the two parts of Istanbul!