• Premise of the study: The high mountains in southern Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean are assumed to play a major role as a primary center of genetic diversity and species richness in Eurasia. We tested this hypothesis by focusing on the widespread perennial arctic-alpine Arabis alpina and its sympatrically distributed closest relatives in the eastern Mediterranean.• Methods: Plastid ( trnL intron, trnL-F intergenic spacer) and nuclear (ITS) DNA sequence analysis was used for phylogenetic reconstruction. Broad-scale plastid haplotype analyses were conducted to infer ancestral biogeographic patterns.• Key results: Five Arabis species, identifi ed from the eastern Mediterranean (Turkey mainland and Cyprus), evolved directly and independently from A . alpina , leaving Arabis alpina as a paraphyletic taxon. These species are not affected by hybridization or introgression, and species divergence took place at the diploid level during the Pleistocene.• Conclusions: Pleistocene climate fl uctuations produced local altitudinal range-shifts among mountain glacial survival areas, resulting not only in the accumulation of intraspecifi c genotype diversity but also in the formation of fi ve local species. We also show that the closest sister group of Arabis alpina consists exclusively of annuals/winter annuals and diverged prior to Pleistocene climatic fl uctuations during the colonization of the lowland Mediterranean landscape. These fi ndings highlight that Anatolia is not only a center of species richness but also a center for life-history diversifi cation.