In the realm of geography, there are the classic tidbits that get thrown around everywhere. Tallest mountain (Everest), biggest country (Russia), longest river (we're actually not 100% sure, but you'll either hear the Nile or the Amazon), but there's one that I find very interesting, and you should too. That is the highest number of countries that meet at one point.
That's quite a mouthful, but luckily there are terms for those. A meeting of three is a tripoint, a meeting of four is a quadripoint, and so on and so forth, but beyond four is where it starts to get obnoxious. According to Wikipedia, though, these do exist on the subnational level.
If you live in Europe, there's probably a tripoint pretty close to you. In fact, there are an absurd 48 in the continent! Africa and Asia also have many, although they're not as crammed in and frequent as Europe, being a small continent with many countries. South America has 15, while North America has a measly one, given its uniformity as the countries shrink down towards Panama. This one is between Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. Finally, Oceania has none.
Tripoints are all good and well, but how about four countries meeting at once? Well, sadly, such a point does not exist. To clarify, it doesn't exist on a national scale, but in the southwestern US is a place where four states coincide. Such thing exists in Canada as well, but it's very far north and desolate between Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, on the 60th parallel!
That's not to say we don't come close. Far and away the most common case of an almost-quadripoint is in southern Africa, between Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Namibia's panhandle arm stretches so far inland that it nearly extends a finger to skim against Zimbabwe where the Zambezi River meets the Chobe River, near the two towns of Kazungula, Botswana, and Kazungula, Zambia. Sadly, no such thing happened. Namibia barely, barely does not border Zimbabwe, meaning that instead of one glorious quadripoint, we get two tripoints that are all of 180 metres apart. 180 metres.
Some might see it as pedantic to care about such a minute difference, but I see it as a loss. So when I was scrolling on Google Maps (as is custom), dropping myself into Street View locations around Türkiye for whatever reason, I caught something interesting in the corner of my eye, in the far north-east of the country.
Quickly panning my way over to the spot, I zoomed in to investigate further. I knew it wasn't a true quadripoint, since I would have heard about it already, but it still intrigued me. I read out the names of the countries surrounding the near confluence in my head. Iran... Türkiye... Armenia... what? I was taken aback by the large lump that remained without a label. After a few short moments, I realized that it was the dismembered part of Azerbaijan lying thirty kilometres from the rest of the country. Later, I learned that it was called the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
The Armenia-Türkiye-Azerbaijan tripoint, on the Aras River, is 10 kilometres from the Türkiye-Azerbaijan-Iran tripoint, upstream the same river, as the crow flies. While not as close as the Kazungula crossing, it's still close enough to deceive you while not looking close enough.
I wouldn't go to the Türkiye-Azerbaijan-Armenia point, as there is a border conflict between the latter two countries, but I could see someone going to the other point without any trace of a problem. Thank you for reading his blog post, please support this project of mine, and goodbye.