A third of Turkish plant species are endemic to Turkey: one reason there are so many is because the surface of Anatolia is both mountainous and quite fragmented. In fact the Anatolian mountains resemble archipelagos like the famous Galapagos Islands. Since Darwin we know that geographic isolation between islands or separated mountains is an important means of speciation, leading to high spatial diversity. For Anatolia this assumption is confirmed by concentrations of endemism on highly isolated and relatively old massifs such as Uludağ and Ilgaz Dağ, whereas very young volcanic cones such as Ercyes Dağ and Hassan Dağ are surprisingly poor in endemics. As local endemics take a long time to evolve, we also have to compare the history of the central and north European mountains with the Anatolian ones. During each of the glacial periods the former were covered by thick shields of permanent ice, which destroyed most pre-glacial endemism and hindered neo-endemics from forming. Only less glaciated, peripheral areas, the so-called massifs de refuge, offered suitable conditions for the survival of local endemics during glacial periods.