Andrey Frizyuk (frizyukm) writes:
> The question that has puzzled me for a long time: are the Caucasian
> countries and Turkey to be assigned to Europe or to Asia?
>
> IMHO the border between Europe and Asia is largely the matter of
> religion: so, Cyprus, Georgia, and Armenia are European, whereas
> Turkey and Azerbaijan are Asian countries, no?
In the qualifications to the European championships, Georgia, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Turkey, Cyprus as well as Israel are all competing for
a place, whereas Kazakhstan is not. All of the mentioned countries
are also members of the Council or Europe, save Israel and Kazakhstan.
However geographically, Cyprus (and Israel) is clearly in Asia. With
any strictly geographical definition of boundaries, the whole of
Armenia is too. And Georgia only marginly touching Europe.
However, it cannot be denied that the southern border of the Soviet
also was used as continent boundary. And before that the southern
border of Russia. So Kars, in Easter Turkey, is now in Asia, but was
in Europe for some 50 year until 1920 with that definition.
But here is an interesting tidbit for the original question. I have
an atlas of which I don't know the exact print year, but it must be
from the end of the 19th century. This map has a plate of "Euroäisches
Russland", and the border here from the Caspian follows largely the
present-day Kazakh-Russian border. Thus it goes west of the Ural
river, but then it crosses it in Orsk and up to Troitsk, it still
is close to the Kazakh border. From Trozik it still continues north-east
and briefly crosses the Tobol river before it changes into a north to
north-west direction and hits the Ural range where the Pechora river
flows. It then follows the Ural range to the coast.
I would guess that this border is based on the then-present oblast
boundaries.
--
Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm,
sommar@algonet.se 
Some questions about Europe-Asia boundary 
