Turkey

Republic of Türkiye
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (Turkish)
Flag of Turkey
Anthem: 
İstiklal Marşı
"Independence March"
Location of Turkey
CapitalAnkara
39°55′N 32°51′E / 39.917°N 32.850°E / 39.917; 32.850
Largest cityIstanbul
41°1′N 28°57′E / 41.017°N 28.950°E / 41.017; 28.950
Official languagesTurkish[1][2]
Spoken languages
  • Predominantly Turkish[3]
Ethnic groups
(2016)[4]
Demonym(s)
  • Turkish
  • Turk
GovernmentUnitary presidential constitutional republic
• President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Cevdet Yılmaz
Numan Kurtulmuş
Zühtü Arslan
LegislatureGrand National Assembly
Establishment
c. 1299
19 May 1919
23 April 1920
1 November 1922
24 July 1923
29 October 1923
9 November 1982[5]
Area
• Total
783,562 km2 (302,535 sq mi) (36th)
• Water (%)
2.03[6]
Population
• December 2023 estimate
Neutral increase 85,372,377[7] (17th)
• Density
111[7]/km2 (287.5/sq mi) (83rd)
GDP (PPP)2023 estimate
• Total
Increase $3.613 trillion[8] (11th)
• Per capita
Increase $41,887[8] (46th)
GDP (nominal)2023 estimate
• Total
Increase $1.154 trillion[8] (17th)
• Per capita
Increase $13,383[8] (65th)
Gini (2019)Steady 41.9[9]
medium
HDI (2022)Increase 0.855[10]
very high (48th)
CurrencyTurkish lira () (TRY)
Time zoneUTC+3 (TRT)
Calling code+90
ISO 3166 codeTR
Internet TLD.tr

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye (Turkish: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti[a]), is a country mainly in Anatolia in West Asia, with a smaller part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea (and Cyprus) to the south; and the Aegean Sea, Greece, and Bulgaria to the west. Turkey is home to over 85 million people; most are ethnic Turks, while ethnic Kurds are the largest ethnic minority.[4] Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city; Istanbul is its largest city, and its economic and financial center, as well as the largest city in Europe. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, Antalya, Konya and Adana.

Human habitation began in Late Paleolithic.[11] Home to important Neolithic sites like Göbekli Tepe and some of the earliest farming areas, present-day Turkey was inhabited by various ancient peoples.[12][13][14] Hattians were assimilated by the incoming Anatolian peoples.[15][16] Increasing diversity during Classical Anatolia transitioned into cultural Hellenization following the conquests of Alexander the Great;[17][18] Hellenization continued during the Roman and Byzantine eras.[19][20] The Seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in the 11th century, starting the Turkification process.[20][21] The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into Turkish principalities.[22] Beginning in 1299, the Ottomans united the principalities and expanded; Mehmed II conquered Istanbul in 1453. During the reigns of Selim I and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire became a global power.[23][24][25]

From the late 18th century onwards, the empire's power and territory declined;[26] reforms were also made.[27] In the 19th and early 20th centuries, persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction and in the Russian Empire resulted in large-scale loss of life and mass migration into modern-day Turkey from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea.[28] The Second Constitutional Era ended with the 1913 coup d'état. Under the control of Three Pashas, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I in 1914. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Greek and Assyrian subjects.[29][30][31] After its defeat, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned.[32] The Turkish War of Independence resulted in the abolition of the sultanate in 1922 and the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The Republic was proclaimed on 29 October 1923, modelled on the reforms initiated by the country's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Turkey is an upper-middle-income and emerging country; its economy is 17th or 11th-largest in the world. It is a unitary presidential republic with a multi-party system. Turkey is a founding member of the OECD, G20, and Organization of Turkic States. With a geopolitically significant location, Turkey is a regional power[33] and an early member of NATO. An EU-candidate, Turkey is part of the EU Customs Union, CoE, OIC, and TURKSOY. Turkey has coastal plains, a high central plateau, and various mountain ranges; its climate is temperate with harsher conditions in the interior.[34] Home to three biodiversity hotspots,[35] Turkey is prone to frequent earthquakes and is highly vulnerable to climate change.[36][37] Turkey has universal healthcare, growing access to education,[38] and increasing innovativeness.[39] It has 21 UNESCO World Heritage sites, 30 UNESCO cultural practices,[40] and a rich and diverse cuisine.[41] Turkey is a leading TV-content exporter[42] and is the fourth most visited country in the world.

  1. ^ "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Anayasası" (in Turkish). Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Archived from the original on 2 July 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020. 3. Madde: Devletin Bütünlüğü, Resmi Dili, Bayrağı, Milli Marşı ve Başkenti: Türkiye Devleti, ülkesi ve milletiyle bölünmez bir bütündür. Dili Türkçedir. Bayrağı, şekli kanununda belirtilen, beyaz ay yıldızlı al bayraktır. Milli marşı "İstiklal Marşı" dır. Başkenti Ankara'dır.
  2. ^ "Mevzuat: Anayasa" (in Turkish). Constitutional Court of Turkey. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  3. ^
  4. ^ a b "Turkey". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Constitution2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Surface water and surface water change". Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Retrieved 11 October 2020.
  7. ^ a b "The Results of Address Based Population Registration System, 2023". www.tuik.gov.tr. Turkish Statistical Institute. 6 February 2024. Retrieved 6 February 2024.
  8. ^ a b c d "World Economic Outlook Database, October 2023 Edition. (Türkiye)". IMF.org. International Monetary Fund. 10 October 2023. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  9. ^ "Gini index (World Bank estimate) – Turkey". World Bank. 2019. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  10. ^ "Human Development Index (HDI)". United Nations Development Programme.
  11. ^ Howard 2016, p. 24
  12. ^ Leonard 2006, p. 1576: "Turkey’s diversity is derived from its central location near the world’s earliest civilizations as well as a history replete with population movements and invasions. The Hattite culture was prominent during the Bronze Age prior to 2000 BCE, but was replaced by the Indo-European Hittites who conquered Anatolia by the second millennium. Meanwhile, Turkish Thrace came to be dominated by another Indo-European group, the Thracians for whom the region is named."
  13. ^ Howard 2016, pp. 24–28: "Göbekli Tepe’s close proximity to several very early sites of grain cultivation helped lead Schmidt to the conclusion that it was the need to maintain the ritual center that first encouraged the beginnings of settled agriculture—the Neolithic Revolution"
  14. ^ Steadman & McMahon 2011, pp. 3–11, 37
  15. ^ Steadman & McMahon 2011, p. 327
  16. ^ Steadman & McMahon 2011, pp. 233, 713: "By the time of the Old Assyrian Colony period in the early second millennium b.c.e . (see Michel, chapter 13 in this volume) the languages spoken on the plateau included Hattian, an indigenous Anatolian language, Hurrian (spoken in northern Syria), and Indo-European languages known as Luwian, Hittite, and Palaic" ... "The weight of current linguistic evidence supports the traditional view that Indo-European speakers are intrusive to Asia Minor, coming from somewhere in eastern Europe...Recent research argues against the notion of Indo-European “invaders” imposing themselves on a Hattian population in central Anatolia and points rather to a gradual assimilation."
  17. ^ Howard 2016, p. 29: "The sudden disappearance of the Persian Empire and the conquest of virtually the entire Middle Eastern world from the Nile to the Indus by Alexander the Great caused tremendous political and cultural upheaval. Working out vague notions of the fundamental commonality of the human spirit, summed up in the ideal of the “brotherhood of man” attributed to Alexander himself, statesmen throughout the conquered regions attempted to implement a policy of Hellenization. For indigenous elites, this amounted to the forced assimilation of native religion and culture to Greek models. It met resistance in Anatolia as elsewhere, especially from priests and others who controlled temple wealth."
  18. ^ Leonard 2006, p. 1576: "Subsequently, hellenization of the elites transformed Anatolia into a largely Greek-speaking region"
  19. ^ Steadman & McMahon 2011, pp. 5, 16, 617
  20. ^ a b Davison, Roderic H. (2013). Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774-1923: The Impact of the West. University of Texas Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-0292758940. Archived from the original on 6 August 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2016. So the Seljuk sultanate was a successor state ruling part of the medieval Greek empire, and within it the process of Turkification of a previously Hellenized Anatolian population continued. That population must already have been of very mixed ancestry, deriving from ancient Hittite, Phrygian, Cappadocian, and other civilizations as well as Roman and Greek.
  21. ^ Howard 2016, pp. 33–44
  22. ^ Mehmet Fuat Köprülü&Gary Leiser. The origins of the Ottoman Empire. p. 33.
  23. ^ Howard 2016, p. 45
  24. ^ Masters, Bruce (2013). The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516–1918: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-03363-4.
  25. ^ Somel, Selcuk Aksin (2010). The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1-4617-3176-4.
  26. ^ Marushiakova, Elena; Popov, Veselin Zakhariev; Popov, Veselin; Descartes), Centre de recherches tsiganes (2001). Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: A Contribution to the History of the Balkans. Univ of Hertfordshire Press. ISBN 978-1-902806-02-0.
  27. ^ Roderic. H. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774–1923 – The Impact of West, 1990, pp. 115–116.
  28. ^
    • Kaser 2011, p. 336: "The emerging Christian nation states justified the prosecution of their Muslims by arguing that they were their former “suppressors”. The historical balance: between about 1820 and 1920, millions of Muslim casualties and refugees back to the remaining Ottoman Empire had to be registered; estimations speak about 5 million casualties and the same number of displaced persons"
    • Gibney & Hansen 2005, p. 437: ‘Muslims had been the majority in Anatolia, the Crimea, the Balkans, and the Caucasus and a plurality in southern Russia and sections of Romania. Most of these lands were within or contiguous with the Ottoman Empire. By 1923, “only Anatolia, eastern Thrace, and a section of the southeastern Caucasus remained to the Muslim land....Millions of Muslims, most of them Turks, had died; millions more had fled to what is today Turkey. Between 1821 and 1922, more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands. Five and one-half million Muslims died, some of them killed in wars, others perishing as refugees from starvation and disease” (McCarthy 1995, 1). Since people in the Ottoman Empire were classified by religion, Turks, Albanians, Bosnians, and all other Muslim groups were recognized—and recognized themselves—simply as Muslims. Hence, their persecution and forced migration is of central importance to an analysis of “Muslim migration.”’
    • Karpat 2001, p. 343: "The main migrations started from Crimea in 1856 and were followed by those from the Caucasus and the Balkans in 1862 to 1878 and 1912 to 1916. These have continued to our day. The quantitative indicators cited in various sources show that during this period a total of about 7 million migrants from Crimea, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands settled in Anatolia. These immigrants were overwhelmingly Muslim, except for a number of Jews who left their homes in the Balkans and Russia in order to live in the Ottoman lands. By the end of the century the immigrants and their descendants constituted some 30 to 40 percent of the total population of Anatolia, and in some western areas their percentage was even higher." ... "The immigrants called themselves Muslims rather than Turks, although most of those from Bulgaria, Macedonia, and eastern Serbia descended from the Turkish Anatolian stock who settled in the Balkans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries."
    • Karpat 2004, pp. 5–6: "Migration was a major force in the social and cultural reconstruction of the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century. While some seven to nine million, mostly Muslim, refugees from lost territories in the Caucasus, Crimea, Balkans and Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, during the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries..."
    • Pekesen 2012: "The immigration had far-reaching social and political consequences for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey." ... "Between 1821 and 1922, some 5.3 million Muslims migrated to the Empire.50 It is estimated that in 1923, the year the republic of Turkey was founded, about 25 per cent of the population came from immigrant families.51"
    • Biondich 2011, p. 93: "The road from Berlin to Lausanne was littered with millions of casualties. In the period between 1878 and 1912, as many as two million Muslims emigrated voluntarily or involuntarily from the Balkans. When one adds those who were killed or expelled between 1912 and 1923, the number of Muslim casualties from the Balkan far exceeds three million. By 1923 fewer than one million remained in the Balkans"
    • Armour 2012, p. 213: "To top it all, the Empire was host to a steady stream of Muslim refugees. Russia between 1854 and 1876 expelled 1.4 million Crimean Tartars, and in the mid-1860s another 600,000 Circassians from the Caucasus. Their arrival produced further economic dislocation and expense."
  29. ^ Tatz, Colin; Higgins, Winton (2016). The Magnitude of Genocide. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3161-4.
  30. ^ Schaller, Dominik J.; Zimmerer, Jürgen (2008). "Late Ottoman genocides: the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and Young Turkish population and extermination policies – introduction". Journal of Genocide Research. 10 (1): 7–14. doi:10.1080/14623520801950820. ISSN 1462-3528. S2CID 71515470.
  31. ^ Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2021). The Thirty-Year Genocide - Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674251434.
  32. ^ Roderic H. Davison; Review "From Paris to Sèvres: The Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919–1920" by Paul C. Helmreich in Slavic Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (March 1975), pp. 186–187
  33. ^ "The Political Economy of Regional Power: Turkey" (PDF). giga-hamburg.de. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 February 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  34. ^ "Turkey". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
  35. ^ Birben, Üstüner (2019). "The Effectiveness of Protected Areas in Biodiversity Conservation: The Case of Turkey". CERNE. 25 (4): 424–438. doi:10.1590/01047760201925042644. Turkey has 3 out of the 36 biodiversity hotspots on Earth: the Mediterranean, Caucasus, and Irano-Anatolian hotspots
  36. ^ Leonard 2006, pp. 1575–1576
  37. ^ "Key Highlights: Country Climate and Development Report for Türkiye". 13 June 2022. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
  38. ^ OECD (2023). Taking stock of education reforms for access and quality in Türkiye. OECD (Report). OECD Education Policy Perspectives. doi:10.1787/5ea7657e-en. Over the last 20 years, Türkiye has achieved important progress in the expansion of access to education. This expansion includes greater access to pre-school education, with four times as many pre-school institutions today as there were twenty years ago, or one of the largest increases in educational attainment for 25-34 year-olds at upper secondary non-tertiary or tertiary education between 2011 and 2021
  39. ^ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) (2023). Global Innovation Index 2023: Innovation in the face of uncertainty. WIPO (Report). Geneva. doi:10.34667/tind.48220. Retrieved 2 March 2024. Indonesia joins China, Türkiye, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Viet Nam as most impressive innovation climbers of the last decade
  40. ^ "Türkiye". UNESCO. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  41. ^ Yayla, Önder; Aktaş, Semra Günay (2021). "Mise en place for gastronomy geography through food: Flavor regions in Turkey". International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science. 26. doi:10.1016/j.ijgfs.2021.100384.
  42. ^ Berg, Miriam (2023). Turkish Drama Serials: The Importance and Influence of a Globally Popular Television Phenomenon. University of Exeter Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-1-80413-043-8.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).