The largest urban area in Turkey is Istanbul, followed by Ankara and Izmir. Istanbul has 14.2 million people on 1,269 km² of built-up land. 8 urban areas in Turkey have at least 1 million people or are a national capital; the table lists them all.
| # | City | Population |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Istanbul | 14.2 million |
| 2 | Ankara | 3.70 million |
| 3 | Izmir | 2.46 million |
| 4 | Bursa | 2.37 million |
| 5 | Gaziantep | 1.68 million |
| 6 | Antalya | 1.37 million |
| 7 | Sincan | 1.17 million |
| 8 | Konya | 1.02 million |
Urban area = contiguous built-up land and the people living in it in 2025, drawn the same way for every city regardless of administrative boundaries. Source: GHSL Urban Centre Database R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (CC BY 4.0); some names adjusted to the city names people use, and country attribution follows the dataset.
Official city limits are drawn differently in every country: some take in farmland and mountains, others stop at the historic core. Ranking cities by those limits mostly ranks boundary decisions. These lists use the built-up area instead, so a city's figure includes its suburbs wherever they are continuous with it, and nothing beyond.
For figures inside official limits, see the city-limits rankings; for the background, read how to compare city sizes honestly. Click any city to see it on a map at the same scale as another.