Asia · Western Asia
How to draw Turkey from memory
Turkey comes in 2 separate pieces on the map. The main body is wider than it is tall; sketch that first, then place the smaller pieces relative to it. It ranks among the hardest countries to draw: the border carries far more detail than a freehand stroke can capture, so anything above 50 is a strong result.
- Difficulty
- hard
- Population
- 83.4 m
- Code
- TUR
- Attempts
- 79
- Avg score
- 64
- Best
- 78
Draw Turkey
Practice · draw from memory
Turkey
A four-step strategy for Turkey
- 01
Draw a wide, shallow guide box in your head first — Turkey is much wider than tall, and getting that ratio right is worth more than any single coastline.
- 02
Anchor one unmistakable feature — the straightest border section or the sharpest cape — and draw outward from it in a single continuous stroke.
- 03
Finish the main landmass completely, then add the remaining 1 piece as separate strokes. Scoring counts total covered area, so an unclosed island can hurt more than a missing one.
- 04
Submit, read the nine-sector grid, and redraw immediately. The sector readout names the region you under-drew, and a second attempt typically gains 10–20 points.
FJQuick facts
- Continent
- Asia
- Subregion
- Western Asia
- Outline pieces
- 2
- Detail score
- 3.79
Three things that go wrong when people sketch Turkey
Each one is measured off the outline the game scores, not copied from a reference atlas: the proportions, the straight sections and the way the shape breaks into pieces are all properties of the coordinates your stroke gets compared against.
3% of the country is not the mainland
The outline is made of 2 separate pieces, and the largest one carries only 97% of the area. Sketched without the rest, the shape is short by that much even when the mainland is perfect — place the outlying piece first, then draw the mainland around it.
Both ends are pinched
The widest slice across the centre is 1.5× broader than either the northern or the southern edge. Place the two narrow ends early and the bulge between them cannot come out wrong.
Turkey is wider than it is tall
The finished outline holds a ratio of about 2.33 to 1, a horizontal shape. Most failed attempts come from defaulting to a squarish blob — and unlike position, aspect ratio is never normalised away by the scorer.
Answer key: the real shape of Turkey
- Box on the canvas
- 440 × 189 units
- Width to height
- 2.33 : 1
- Separate landmasses
- 2
- Longest straight run
- Nothing over 8% of the perimeter
- Coast against silhouette
- 1.41× the wrapping outline
Open it after you have drawn Turkey at least once. Seeing the shape first replaces the recall the score is meant to measure with tracing, and tracing always scores higher than remembering.
Why Turkey is scored this way
Country Drawing does not compare your sketch to a picture of Turkey. It scales and centres both your stroke and the real border into the same box, fills them, and measures how much of the two shapes overlap relative to their combined area. That means you are never punished for drawing Turkey small, off to one side, or rotated slightly — only for getting the shape itself wrong. The nine-sector grid then splits the real border into a 3×3 mesh and reports coverage per cell, which is how it can tell you that you lost the whole coastline rather than just handing you a number.
Turkey by the numbers
Turkey covers 783,562 km², which makes it the 35th largest of 190 countries in the game and the 8th largest in Asia. The capital is Ankara at about 39°N, 35°E, and it sits in Western Asia. It touches Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq and Syria, and 97% of its area sits in one main landmass. The rest of the perimeter is water.
Next to Turkey: its land neighbours
Size is what the outline has to fill, so comparing the countries that share this border side by side is the fastest way to get the proportions into your head before you draw.
| Country | Area | Population | Capital | Pieces | vs Turkey |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkeythis page | 783,562 km² | 83.4 m | Ankara | 2 | — |
 Armenia | 29,743 km² | 3.0 m | Yerevan | 1 | 0.04× |
 Azerbaijan | 86,600 km² | 10.0 m | Baku | 2 | 0.11× |
 Bulgaria | 110,879 km² | 7.0 m | Sofia | 1 | 0.14× |
 Georgia | 69,700 km² | 3.7 m | Tbilisi | 1 | 0.09× |
 Greece | 131,990 km² | 10.7 m | Athens | 3 | 0.17× |
 Iran | 1,648,195 km² | 82.9 m | Tehran | 1 | 2.1× |
 Iraq | 438,317 km² | 39.3 m | Baghdad | 1 | 0.56× |
 Syria | 185,180 km² | 17.1 m | Damascus | 1 | 0.24× |
Draw these next
Countries near Turkey share border conventions and coastline styles, which makes them the most useful follow-up practice.
Working through one country at a time is slow. Take the blank map of asia and label the whole region from memory — it shows you which neighbours you have never actually seen.
Turkey drawing questions
How big is Turkey?
Turkey covers 783,562 km², ranking 35th of 190 countries here by land area and 8th in Asia. About 48% of the area of Iran.
What is the capital of Turkey?
The capital is Ankara at about 39°N, 35°E. The game scores the shape of the border rather than the position of any city, so the capital and its coordinates are here to help you place Turkey on a blank map.
Is Turkey hard to draw?
It is rated hard, and carries more outline detail than 72% of the 190 borders in this game. The shape has to be placed as 2 landmasses, with no straight edge longer than 8% of the perimeter to anchor it.
Which countries border Turkey?
Turkey shares a land border with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The remaining perimeter is coast, which is the part that usually costs points.