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The places in Anatolia that are called provinces reflect the different people groups in that area now known as Turkey. Galatia is well known to us due to Paul as are the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Lystra, Pergammum, Thyatira, and Antioch. The island of Patmos is famous to us because of the Apostle John. The ancient city of Troy had ceased to be a major city by the time Paul evangelized Asia. A small city near the original site is still there. The Phrygians and Lydians had their own writing and were part of the Etruscan empire. Little is known of the influence of them specifically. Their influence and domination was felt before the Greek or Roman civilizations rose to prominence. Some think that it stretched from what is now Italy to the Ukraine and encompassed parts of Anatolia. Their alphabet was similar to that of the Lydian and Phyrgian alphabets used and not too dissimilar to the Phoenician alphabet. During the time of Paul and the Roman Empire, Greek culture was still in evidence. The people of Asia at that time in what is now Turkey were probably not too different from their ancestors. Things changed with the rise of Islam.

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Turkic peoples, of Central Asian ancestry, were a military threat to the Byzantine and Persian Empires from the 6th century. After several waves of invasions, during which most of the Turks adopted Islam, the Seljuk Turks took (1055) Baghdad. They ruled Persia, Iraq and, after 1071, Asia Minor, where massive numbers of Turks settled. The empire was divided in the 12th century into smaller states ruled by Seljuks, Kurds (Saladin, circa 1137-93), and Mamluks (a military caste of former Turk, Kurd, and Circassian slaves), which governed Egypt and the Middle East until the Ottoman era (circa 1290-1922).

Osman I (1290-1326) and succeeding sultans united Anatolian Turkish warriors in a militaristic state that waged holy war against Byzantium and Balkan Christians. Most of the Balkans had been subdued, and Anatolia united, when Constantinople fell (1453). By the mid-16th century, Hungary, the Middle East, and North Africa had been conquered. The Turkish advance was stopped at Vienna (1529) and at the naval battle of Lepanto (1571) by Spain, Venice, and the papacy.

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