Izmit

Izmit is a city on the Gulf of Izmit in Turkey's Kocaeli Province, about 100 kilometers east of Istanbul, with 365,893 residents in 2023 and a metropolitan population of 2,102,907. Known in antiquity as Nicomedia, it served as the eastern and senior capital of the Roman Empire under Diocletian's Tetrarchy from 286 to 324 and as Constantine the Great's interim capital before he founded Constantinople in 330; it anchors one of Turkey's principal industrial regions today, with major petrochemical, automotive and manufacturing activity, and was the epicenter of a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in 1999 that killed more than 17,000 people and displaced roughly half a million.