Istanbul Province Istanbul Province Istanbul Province (), also the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality ("İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi") is a province of Turkey. It has an area of and is located in the Marmara region in the north-west of the country, bordered by Tekirdağ Province to the west and Kocaeli Province to the east. The Bosphorus Strait between the Black Sea to the north and the Sea of Marmara to the south divides Istanbul Province into European and Asian sides, which makes it one of only two transcontinental provinces in Turkey, along with Çanakkale Province. Istanbul Province has a population of 14,804,116 as of 2016,
Strait is the Gate gate of virtue is too narrow for two people, too narrow for love, and too narrow for two people in love. Alissa so deliriously desires that even though she loves Jerome, this love between them has become, in her mind, his impediment to virtue. She rejects him, time and time again, and yet this is the way in which she expresses love, because this is the only way he would enter the strait gate. What Alissa longs for, is not the strait gate itself, but the process of getting through the gate - it is the striving in “strive to