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,
Names of Istanbul popular speech, the most common way of referring to it came to be simply "the City" (Greek: "hē Polis", , Modern Greek: "i Poli", η Πόλη). This usage, still current today in colloquial Greek and Armenian (Պոլիս, pronounced "Polis" or "Bolis" in the Western Armenian dialect prevalent in the city), also became the source of the later Turkish name, "Istanbul" (see below). "Kostantiniyye" (Arabic, Persian , "Qusṭanṭīniyya", Ottoman Turkish , "Ḳosṭanṭīnīye") is the name by which the city came to be known in the Islamic world. It is an Arabic calqued form of "Constantinople", with an Arabic ending meaning 'place