Few Turks realize that the names of nearly all their major cities are versions of Hellenistic originals. Ankara was Angora, Izmir was Smyrna, Sivas was Sebasteia, Kayseri was Caesarea and Konya was Iconium.
• The Turkish name for Constantinople, Istanbul, is simply a corruption of the Greek for `up to town', eis ton poli.
• A scrub-down in the hammam may seem the ultimate Turkish experience, but the institution is in fact the linear descendant of the Greco-Roman bath-house.

• And it was Armenian architects who designed many of the grand Ottoman palaces and even mosques that have become poster portraits for attracting tourists to modern Turkish Istanbul. 

• The projecting upper stories of houses now thought of as typically Turkish were so common in Byzantine times that the emperors--like today's municipalities--had to make special laws to keep buildings apart. 

Dolmabahce Palace, Turkey.  Constructed by the Armenian Balyan family.   © Wikimedia