Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in western Asia and Trakya (Rumelia) in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey borders eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west, Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhichevan), and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea, as is Cyprus, is to the south; the Aegean Sea and Archipelago are to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. Separating Anatolia and Trakya are the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus, which are commonly reckoned to delineate the border between Asia and Europe, thereby making Turkey transcontinental.[2]

Because of its strategic location astride two continents, Turkey's culture has a unique blend of Eastern and Western tradition. A powerful regional presence in the Eurasian landmass with strong cultural and economic influence in the area between the European Union in the west and Central Asia in the east, Russia in the north and the Middle East in the south, Turkey has come to acquire increasing strategic significance.[3][4]

Turkey, a developed country, is a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Since then, Turkey has become increasingly integrated with the West while continuing to foster relations with the Eastern world.

Etymology
Main article: Name of Turkey
The name for Turkey in the Turkish language, Türkiye, can be divided into two words: Türk, which means "strong" in Old Turkic and usually signifying the inhabitants of Turkey or a member of the Turkish or Turkic peoples,[5] a later form of "tu-kin", name given by the Chinese to the people living south of the Altay Mountains of Central Asia as early as 177 BCE;[6] and the abstract suffix -iye (derived from Arabic), which means "owner" or "related to". The first recorded use of the term "Türk" or "Türük" as an autonym is contained in the Orkhon inscriptions of the Göktürks (Sky Turks) of Central Asia (c. 8th century CE). The English word "Turkey" is derived from the Medieval Latin "Turchia" (c. 1369).[6]

History

Pre-Turkic History of Anatolia
Main article: History of Anatolia
 
Portion of the legendary walls of Troy (VII), identified as the site of the Trojan War (ca. 1200 BCE)The Anatolian peninsula (also called Asia Minor), comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest continually inhabited regions in the world due to its location at the intersection of Asia and Europe. The earliest Neolithic settlements such as Çatalhöyük (Pottery Neolithic), Çayönü (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Pottery Neolithic), Nevali Cori (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), Hacilar (Pottery Neolithic), Göbekli Tepe (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) and Mersin are considered to be among the earliest human settlements in the world.[7] The settlement of Troy starts in the Neolithic and continues into the Iron Age. Through recorded history, Anatolians have spoken Indo-European, Semitic and Kartvelian languages, as well as many languages of uncertain affiliation. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical center from which the Indo-European languages have radiated.[8]

The Celsus Library in Ephesus, dating from 135 CEThe first major empire in the area was that of the Hittites, from the 18th through the 13th century BCE. Subsequently, the Phrygians, an Indo-European people, achieved ascendancy until their kingdom was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BCE.[9] The most powerful of Phrygia's successor states were Lydia, Caria and Lycia. The Lydians and Lycians spoke languages that were fundamentally Indo-European, but both languages had acquired non-Indo-European elements prior to the Hittite and Hellenic periods.

The west coast of Anatolia was meanwhile settled by the Ionians, one of the ancient Greek peoples. The entire area was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th and 5th centuries and later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BCE.[10] Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms (including Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pergamum, and Pontus), all of which had succumbed to Rome by the mid-1st century BCE.[11] In 324 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome (later Constantinople and Istanbul). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it became the capital of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire).[12]

Turks and the Ottoman Empire
Main articles: Turkic migration, History of the Turkish people, Seljuk Empire, and Ottoman Empire
 
Selimiye Mosque, built in 1575 in Edirne, is the masterpiece of the greatest Ottoman architect Sinan and one of the most beautiful examples of Turkish architecture.The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Kinik Oðuz Turks who in the 9th century resided on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral Seas in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Oðuz confederacy.[13] In the 10th century, the Seljuks migrated from their ancestral homelands into the eastern Anatolian regions that had been an area of settlement for Oðuz Turkic tribes since the end of the first millennium.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque) is one of the most famous architectural legacies of the Ottoman Empire.Following their victory over the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Turks began to abandon their nomadic roots in favour of a permanent role in Anatolia, bringing rise to the Seljuk Empire.[14] In 1243, the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols and the power of the empire slowly disintegrated. In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman I was to evolve into the Ottoman Empire, thus filling the void left by the collapsed Seljuks and Byzantines.[15]

The Ottoman Empire interacted with both Eastern and Western cultures throughout its 623-year history. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was among the world's most powerful political entities, often locking horns with the powers of eastern Europe in its steady advance through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[4] Following years of decline, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I through the Ottoman-German Alliance in 1914, and was ultimately defeated. After the war, the victorious Allied Powers sought the dismemberment of the Ottoman state through the Treaty of Sèvres.[15]

Republican era
Main articles: History of the Republic of Turkey and Atatürk's reforms
 
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of the Republic of TurkeyThe occupation of Ýstanbul and Ýzmir by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I prompted the establishment of the Turkish national movement.[4] Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a military commander who had distinguished himself during the Battle of Gallipoli, the Turkish War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.[3] By September 18, 1922, the occupying armies were repelled and the country saw the birth of the new Turkish state. On November 1, the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, thus ending 623 years of Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, and the republic was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923, in the new capital of Ankara.[4]

Mustafa Kemal became the republic's first president and subsequently introduced many radical reforms with the aim of founding a new secular republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past.[4] According to the Law on Family Names, the Turkish parliament presented Mustafa Kemal with the honorific name "Atatürk" (Father of the Turks) in 1934.[3]

Turkey entered World War II on the side of the Allies on February 23, 1945 as a ceremonial gesture and became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945.[16] Difficulties faced by Greece after the war in quelling a communist rebellion, along with demands by the Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits, prompted the United States to declare the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece, and resulted in large-scale US military and economic support.[17]

After participating with United Nations forces in the Korean conflict, Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean. Following a decade of intercommunal violence on the island of Cyprus and the subsequent Athens-inspired coup, Turkey intervened militarily in 1974. Nine years later Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was established. TRNC is recognised only by Turkey.[18]

Following the end of the single-party period in 1945, the multi-party period witnessed tensions over the following decades, and the period between the 1960s and the 1980s was particularly marked by periods of political instability that resulted in a number of military coups d'états in 1960, 1971, 1980 and a post-modern coup d'état in 1997.[19] The liberalization of the Turkish economy that started in the 1980s changed the landscape of the country, with successive periods of high growth and crises punctuating the following decades.[20]

Government and politics
Main articles: Politics of Turkey, Constitution of Turkey, and Elections in Turkey
Turkey is a parliamentary representative democracy. Since its foundation as a republic in 1923, Turkey has developed a strong tradition of secularism.[21] Turkey's constitution governs the legal framework of the country. It sets out the main principles of government and establishes Turkey as a unitary centralized state.

The head of state is the President of the Republic and has a largely ceremonial role. The president is elected for a seven-year term by the parliament but is not required to be one of its members. The last President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, was elected on May 16, 2000, after having served as the President of the Constitutional Court. He was succeeded on August 28, 2007 by Abdullah Gül.[22] Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers which make up the government, while the legislative power is vested in the unicameral parliament, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature, and the Constitutional Court is charged with ruling on the conformity of laws and decrees with the constitution. The Council of State is the tribunal of last resort for administrative cases, and the High Court of Appeals for all others.[23]

The Grand Chamber of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in AnkaraThe Prime Minister is elected by the parliament through a vote of confidence in his government and is most often the head of the party that has the most seats in parliament. The current Prime Minister is the former mayor of Ýstanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, whose conservative AKP won an absolute majority of parliamentary seats in the 2002 general elections, organized in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2001, with 34% of the suffrage.[24][25] In the 2007 general elections, AKP received 46.6% of the votes and could defend its majority in parliament.[26] Neither the Prime Minister nor the Ministers have to be members of the parliament, but in most cases they are (one notable exception was Kemal Derviþ, the Minister of State in Charge of Economy following the financial crisis of 2001;[27] he is currently the president of the United Nations Development Programme).[28]

Universal suffrage for both sexes has been applied throughout Turkey since 1933, and every Turkish citizen who has turned 18 years of age has the right to vote. As of 2004, there were 50 registered political parties in the country, whose ideologies range from the far left to the far right.[29] The Constitutional Court can strip the public financing of political parties that it deems anti-secular or separatist, or ban their existence altogether.[30][31]

There are 550 members of parliament who are elected for a four-year term by a party-list proportional representation system from 85 electoral districts which represent the 81 administrative provinces of Turkey (Ýstanbul is divided into three electoral districts whereas Ankara and Ýzmir are divided into two each because of their large populations). To avoid a hung parliament and its excessive political fragmentation, only parties that win at least 10% of the votes cast in a national parliamentary election gain the right to representation in the parliament.[29] As a result of this threshold, the 2007 elections saw three parties formally entering parliament (compared to two in 2002).[32][33] However due to a system of alliances and independent candidatures, seven parties are currently represented in parliament. Independent candidates may run; however, they must also win at least 10% of the vote in their circonscription to be elected.[29]

Foreign relations
Main articles: Foreign relations of Turkey and Accession of Turkey to the European Union
 
Roosevelt, Ýnönü and Churchill at the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943Turkey is a founding member of the United Nations (1945), the OECD (1961), the OSCE (1973) and the G20 industrial nations (1999).

In line with its traditional Western orientation, relations with Europe have always been a central part of Turkish foreign policy. Turkey became a member of the Council of Europe in 1949, applied for associate membership of the EEC (predecessor of the EU) in 1959 and became an associate member in 1963. After decades of political negotiations, Turkey applied for full membership of the EEC in 1987, became an associate member of the Western European Union in 1992, reached a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and has officially begun formal accession negotiations with the EU on October 3, 2005.[34] It is believed that the accession process will take at least 15 years due to Turkey's size and the depth of disagreements over certain issues.[35] These include disputes with EU member Republic of Cyprus over Turkey's 1974 military intervention to prevent the island's annexation to Greece. Since then, Turkey does not recognize the essentially Greek Cypriot Republic of Cyprus as the sole authority on the island, but instead supports the Turkish Cypriot community in the form of the de facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.[36]

The other defining aspect of Turkey's foreign relations has been its ties with the United States. Based on the common threat posed by the Soviet Union, Turkey joined the NATO in 1952 ensuring close bilateral relations with Washington throughout the Cold War. In the post-Cold War environment, Turkey's geostrategic importance shifted towards its proximity to the volatile Middle East. As well as hosting an important American base near the Syrian/Iraq border for US operations in the region, Turkey's status as a secular democracy and its positive relations with Israel made Ankara a crucial ally for Washington. In return, Turkey has benefited from the United States political, economic and diplomatic support. However, in recent years relations have been strained by the ongoing Iraq War. Facing strong domestic opposition in Turkey, a government motion to allow U.S. troops to attack Iraq from Turkey's border failed to reach the necessary majority. A primary concern for Turkey was an independent Kurdish state arising from a destabilised Iraq; it has previously fought an insurgent war on its own soil, in which an estimated 37,000 people lost their lives, against the PKK (listed as a terrorist organization by a number of states and organisations, including the U.S. and the EU).[37] The United States reluctance to threaten the relative stability of northern Iraq by launching operations against the PKK led the Turkish parliament to authorise a cross border military operation in 2007. [38]

The independence of the Turkic states of the Soviet Union, with whom Turkey shares a common cultural and linguistic heritage, allowed Turkey to extend its economic and political relations deep into Central Asia. [39]. The most salient of these relations saw the completion of a multi billion dollar oil and gas pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, as it is called, has formed part of Turkey's foreign policy strategy to become an energy conduit to the West. However, Turkey's border with Armenia, a state in the Caucaus, remains closed following its occupation of Azeri territory during the Nagorno-Karabakh War[40]. Relations with Armenia have been further strained by the controversy surrounding the forced deportations and related deaths of hundrends of thousands of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, recognised by a number of countries and historians as the Armenian Genocide. Turkey rejects the term genocide, arguing instead that the deaths were a result of disease, famine and inter-ethnic strife[41]

Military
Main articles: Turkish Armed Forces and Conscription in Turkey
 
A KC-135R-CRAG Stratotanker of the Turkish Air Force refueling TAI-built F-16 fighter jetsThe Turkish Armed Forces consists of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. The Gendarmerie and the Coast Guard operate as parts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in peacetime, although they are subordinated to the Army and Navy Commands respectively in wartime, during which they have both internal law enforcement and military functions.[42]

The Turkish Armed Forces is the second largest standing armed force in NATO, after the U.S. Armed Forces, with a combined strength of 1,043,550 uniformed personnel serving in its five branches.[43] Every fit heterosexual male Turkish citizen is required to serve in the military for time periods ranging from three weeks to fifteen months, depending on his education and job location (homosexuals have the right to be exempt, upon their own personal request).[44]

F-247 TCG KemalReis is a SalihReis (MEKO 200TN II-B) class frigate of the Turkish NavyIn 1998, Turkey announced a program of modernization worth some US$31 billion over a ten year period in various projects including tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, submarines, warships and assault rifles.[45] Turkey is also a Level 3 contributor to the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program, gaining an opportunity to develop and influence the creation of the next generation fighter spearheaded by the United States.[46]

Turkey has maintained forces in international missions under the United Nations and NATO since 1950, including peacekeeping missions in Somalia and former Yugoslavia, and support to coalition forces in the First Gulf War. Turkey maintains 36,000 troops in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and has had troops deployed in Afghanistan as part of the U.S. stabilization force and the UN-authorized, NATO-commanded International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since 2001.[47][48] In 2006, the Turkish parliament deployed a peacekeeping force of Navy patrol vessels and around 700 ground troops as part of an expanded United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the wake of the Israeli-Lebanon conflict.[49]

The Chief of the General Staff is appointed by the President, and is responsible to the Prime Minister. The Council of Ministers is responsible to the parliament for matters of national security and the adequate preparation of the armed forces to defend the country. However, the authority to declare war and to deploy the Turkish Armed Forces to foreign countries or to allow foreign armed forces to be stationed in Turkey rests solely with the parliament.[42] The actual Commander of the armed forces is the Chief of the General Staff General Yaþar Büyükanýt, who succeeded General Hilmi Özkök on August 26, 2006.[50]

The Turkish military has traditionally held a powerful position in domestic Turkish politics, considering itself the guardian of Turkey's secular democracy[51]. It has several times within the last decades forcibly removed elected governments believed to be straying from the principles of the state as established by Ataturk and enshrined in the constitution.[51]

Administrative divisions
Main articles: Regions of Turkey, Provinces of Turkey, Districts of Turkey, and List of cities in Turkey
The capital city of Turkey is Ankara. The territory of Turkey is subdivided into 81 provinces for administrative purposes. The provinces are organized into 7 regions for census purposes; however, they do not represent an administrative structure. Each province is divided into districts, for a total of 923 districts.

Provinces usually bear the same name as their provincial capitals, also called the central district; exceptions to this are the provinces of Hatay (capital: Antakya), Kocaeli (capital: Ýzmit) and Sakarya (capital: Adapazarý). Provinces with the largest populations are Ýstanbul (+10 million), Ankara (+4 million), Ýzmir (+3.4 million), Konya (+2.2 million), Bursa (+2.1 million) and Adana (+1.85 million).

The biggest city and the pre-Republican capital Ýstanbul is the financial, economic and cultural heart of the country.[52] Other important cities include Ýzmir, Bursa, Adana, Trabzon, Malatya, Gaziantep, Erzurum, Kayseri, Ýzmit, Konya, Mersin, Eskiþehir, Diyarbakýr, Antalya and Samsun. An estimated 67% of Turkey's population live in urban centers.[53] In all, 12 cities have populations that exceed 500,000, and 48 cities have more than 100,000 inhabitants.