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Sources for Anatolia map:

Only the successor to the Medes, the Achaemenid Persians, laid claim to the entire peninsula. Some regions belonged to dependent princes, the same as in the era of the Hittites. Isolated spots were practically independent.

Troy, Taurus, Anti-Taurus

Principle Features of Eastern Anatolia: Nemrut, Sipan, Ararat, Binguel

Everyday that the Macedonians spent in Anatolia was a day in which the Persians could rush troops to the Cilician Gates and block this exit from the Peninsula. Except at the Gates, there was no southern route out of Anatolia, for the Taurus mountains were impassible. The alternative was to go east, through the more torturous Antitaurus, a route of 215 miles at heights of up to 5,000 feet

Eastern Anatolia, which can be defined as the part of eastern Turkey located south of the Pontic Range, bordered to the west by the upper stretches of the Euphrates River and, to the south, by the Taurus Mountains, is mainly a region of mountains and highlands. The Taurus Range, which runs west to east from the Mediterranean almost as far as the Zagros Mountains, forms the region’s southern backbone and acts as a clear-cut geographic and ecological border that separates the eastern Anatolian highlands from the lowlands of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria. Much more difficult to identify are its geographical eastern borders, because of the strong geographic and ecological continuity with the Lesser Caucasus.

Features of eastern Anatolia’s landscape: Ararat, the Nemrut, and the Supan Dağ, Lake Van (the largest lake in Turkey), Bingöl, Van, Kars, and Sarıkamış districts.}}

Largest Rivers: Araxes, Çoruh, Kara Su, Murat, and Euphrates

The Euphrates, Kara Su, Murat, and Araxes therefore form part of a complex natural communication system connecting eastern Anatolia both to the southern Caucasus and the Upper Euphrates Valley and, more indirectly, to the lowlands of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria.