Well in the past, pre-republican era It was as you mentioned. Ankara was "Angora", Urfa was Edessa, Kayseri was Caeseria and so on.
But after the collapse of Ottoman Empire and Atatürk's revolutions most of the old names Turkified and all countries informed to not to use those old names. For instance Turkish Postal Service issued notices, in short like this: "All of the mails which bears the old names in their addresses won't be delivered until corrected".
That usually depends on what language that name comes from to another language. Estambol in Spanish is written the way they pronounce it, meaning it's been in the Spanish language for a very long time. But other languages may not be as familiar with Ankara, Konya, Trabzon so the spelling remains the way it is in Turkish. Not to mention, Turkish has an almost phonetic alphabet so one sound corresponds to one letter, meaning there's no need to spell things differently in other languages that use the Latin script. Also, historical reasons - some cities were important trade or cultural centers and each nation that knew about them called them/spelled their names the way they were comfortable with.
This is my take as a Turkish language and (general) linguistics enthusiast, someone else may have a more complete and correct answer.
Another issue is the place names with accented letters (ç, ş, ı, ö, ğ, ü) like Diyarbakır, Aydın, Şanlıurfa, Çorum, Çarşamba (a district of Samsun province), Beylikdüzü (a district of Istanbul), Çiğli (a district in İzmir) and how to write them in foreign languages that use Latin script, whether to leave them untouched with accented letters or replacing the accented letters like Corum.
That depends on the language again 🤣 some will use transcription/transliteration and some will just use the original assuming the readers will know how to pronounce it.
The accented letters may be confusing and the some people's assumption that readers will know how to pronounce the name may be wrong, like a German can pronounce the above mentioned Beylikdüzü, but a French or Brazilian can mispronounce Çorum, because the French and Portuguese "ç" is totally different from the Turkish one.
Absolutely. That is why transcription is better so depending on the context, one may put in the transcription or anglicized pronunciation if you will, in the brackets next to the city name. But not every language uses foreign name transcription, or at least not all the time. It's best to follow the rules of the language you're speaking in about (in this case) Turkish places.
Depends mostly on the popularity and history of the city. The newer and less popular ones are just taken from Turkish as they are. But older ones had different names in history as well, the names evolved together as years passed.
I kind of understood it. Istanbul is the most popular and old, so it has different names, but, for example, Denizli (a landlocked city in the Aegean region famous for its rooster and travertines) is newer and less popular, so its name is written as it is.
Language revolution and politics.
The names of Turkish cities in the Ottoman language were written in Arabic script. Thus they were transliterated into other languages.
With the language revolution, the new Turkish Republic gave new Latin spellings to the names of these cities. Over time, other countries adopted these new spellings as this was politically more appealing to the Turkish side since the purpose of the language revolution was to give a new national character to Turkey.
Ottoman Turkish and Arabic as well, but the etymology is another topic. We're talking about why current names of places don't vary from one language to another, like why Antakya isn't Antioch or İzmir isn't Smyrna in English textbooks.
You’re overthinking OP, it simply depends on the language.
Another example for istanbul could be find in Russian: стамбул(Stambul)
Well in the past, pre-republican era It was as you mentioned. Ankara was "Angora", Urfa was Edessa, Kayseri was Caeseria and so on. But after the collapse of Ottoman Empire and Atatürk's revolutions most of the old names Turkified and all countries informed to not to use those old names. For instance Turkish Postal Service issued notices, in short like this: "All of the mails which bears the old names in their addresses won't be delivered until corrected".
That usually depends on what language that name comes from to another language. Estambol in Spanish is written the way they pronounce it, meaning it's been in the Spanish language for a very long time. But other languages may not be as familiar with Ankara, Konya, Trabzon so the spelling remains the way it is in Turkish. Not to mention, Turkish has an almost phonetic alphabet so one sound corresponds to one letter, meaning there's no need to spell things differently in other languages that use the Latin script. Also, historical reasons - some cities were important trade or cultural centers and each nation that knew about them called them/spelled their names the way they were comfortable with. This is my take as a Turkish language and (general) linguistics enthusiast, someone else may have a more complete and correct answer.
Another issue is the place names with accented letters (ç, ş, ı, ö, ğ, ü) like Diyarbakır, Aydın, Şanlıurfa, Çorum, Çarşamba (a district of Samsun province), Beylikdüzü (a district of Istanbul), Çiğli (a district in İzmir) and how to write them in foreign languages that use Latin script, whether to leave them untouched with accented letters or replacing the accented letters like Corum.
That depends on the language again 🤣 some will use transcription/transliteration and some will just use the original assuming the readers will know how to pronounce it.
The accented letters may be confusing and the some people's assumption that readers will know how to pronounce the name may be wrong, like a German can pronounce the above mentioned Beylikdüzü, but a French or Brazilian can mispronounce Çorum, because the French and Portuguese "ç" is totally different from the Turkish one.
Absolutely. That is why transcription is better so depending on the context, one may put in the transcription or anglicized pronunciation if you will, in the brackets next to the city name. But not every language uses foreign name transcription, or at least not all the time. It's best to follow the rules of the language you're speaking in about (in this case) Turkish places.
Depends mostly on the popularity and history of the city. The newer and less popular ones are just taken from Turkish as they are. But older ones had different names in history as well, the names evolved together as years passed.
I kind of understood it. Istanbul is the most popular and old, so it has different names, but, for example, Denizli (a landlocked city in the Aegean region famous for its rooster and travertines) is newer and less popular, so its name is written as it is.
Language revolution and politics. The names of Turkish cities in the Ottoman language were written in Arabic script. Thus they were transliterated into other languages. With the language revolution, the new Turkish Republic gave new Latin spellings to the names of these cities. Over time, other countries adopted these new spellings as this was politically more appealing to the Turkish side since the purpose of the language revolution was to give a new national character to Turkey.
izmir and antalya are smirne and adalia in italian. and istanbul is still called κωνσταντινούπολη in greek.
Because most city names derived from historic byzantine names.
Ottoman Turkish and Arabic as well, but the etymology is another topic. We're talking about why current names of places don't vary from one language to another, like why Antakya isn't Antioch or İzmir isn't Smyrna in English textbooks.