It has an elevation of approximately 530 m. The city is best known for its sugar beet processing plant established in 1934 as an important enterprise of the young Turkish Republic.

The first nucleus of Turhal appeared as an important fortress or fortification named Talaura (Τάλαυρα in Ancient greek) on the way between today's Amasya and Tokat provinces.

It is deduced from the tablets found in the region that Turhal had been inhabited as early as the third millennium BC and had relations as far as the Mesopotamian cultures such as Sumerians who had already invented an effective alphabet.

The famous geographer of the antiquity, Strabo has, on various occasions, drawn up different accounts on the region describing Turhal as a fortress in the north of another ancient city named Gayyura.

The Pontus Kings from the Mithridates descendance constructed an even more powerful fortress on a rocky hill in the center of the outer city whose remains are only two ruined towers and several tunnels today.