Turkey, Turkish Türkiye, republic (301,380 sq mi/780,574 sq km; 1990 population 56,969,109; 2004 estimated population 68,893,918), SW Asia and SE Europe, bordering on Iraq in the SE, on Syria and the Mediterranean Sea in the S, on the Aegean Sea in the W, on Greece and Bulgaria in the NW, on the Black Sea in the N, and on Armenia, Georgia, and Iran in the E; (cap.) Ankara.
Geography
Asian Turkey (made up largely of Asia Minor), which includes 97% of the country, is separated from European Turkey by the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles (which together form a water link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean). NE Asian Turkey includes part of Armenia, and SE Asian Turkey includes part of Kurdistan. European Turkey, which includes Edirne and most of Istanbul, is largely rolling agricultural land that extends W to the Greek border along the Maritsa River and is drained by the Ergene River. Asian Turkey is mostly made up of plateaus and mountains with some narrow strips of lowland in the W on the coasts of the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara and along the Simav, Gediz, and Menderes rivers; in the N on the Black Sea coast and along the Sakarya and Kizil Irmak rivers; and in the S on the Mediterranean coast and along the Aksu, Göksu, Seyhan, and Ceyhan rivers. The center of Asian Turkey is made up of the vast semiarid Plateau of Anatolia (average elevation c.3,000 ft/914 m), which includes lakes Tuz and Beysehir and which is fringed in the N by the Köroglu mountains and in the S by the Taurus Mountains and the Armenian-Kurdistan Mount Knot. The ancient region of Cappadocia lies E of the Plateau of Anatolia. The plateau, with deserts in the SE, have harsh winters with frequent snowfall; summers are hot and dry. Only the marginal lowlands of the W and S coast have an equable Mediterranean climate. While the rainfall here is about 20–30 in/50–75 cm, it increases to c.100 in/254 cm in the semi-tropical E part of the Black Sea belt. The generally mild Bosporus and Thrace have occasional cold winds and rain all year round. In N Turkey are the Pontic Mountains and in E Turkey are the Anti-Taurus Mountains Great Ararat mountain (16,945 ft/5,165 m), the highest point in Turkey, and Lake Van are in the extreme E part of the country. SE Turkey is drained by the upper courses of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Population
Although the Turks regard the Osmanlis, or Ottomans, as their ancestors, they are a highly composite ethnic mixture. About 80% of the population is Turkish, and 17% is Kurdish. The official language is Turkish, and Kurdish is widely used in the E and SE; there are also small Arabic, Circassian, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and Laze-speaking minorities. About 99% of the people are Muslim, mostly of the Sunni branch; there are also small groups of Orthodox Christians (Istanbul is the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch), Gregorians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.
Economy
Since the late 1940s, with the help of considerable aid from the U.S., the pace of industrialization in Turkey has accelerated. Although the Turkish economy is basically agricultural, great strides have been made in the 1970s and 1980s to strengthen and diversify the economy. The most productive farmland is in W Turkey, but in recent years the country has instituted a massive development called the Southeast Anatolia Project (Turkish Guneydogu Anatolu Projesi) in the SE to use the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for irrigation and hydroelectric power. This massive, $32-billion project includes the construction of twenty-two dams and nineteen hydroelectric plants on the two rivers; the giant Atatürk Dam and Reservoir on the upper Euphrates, has been completed. Although plagued by the conflict with Kurdish separatists and bitterly opposed by Syria and Iraq (who are concerned that the downstream water flow from the rivers to them will be severely impeded), the project is continuing.
The government's goal is to transform arid SE Turkey into a prosperous agricultural-industrial region. The chief crops are tobacco, cotton, wheat, barley, maize, rye, oats, rice, olives, figs, raisins, sugar beets, and fruit. Large numbers of sheep, goats (including many mohair-producing Angora goats), and cattle are raised. The principal minerals extracted are coal, chromium, lignite, copper and iron ores, antimony, mercury, boron. Some petroleum is produced. The leading industrial centers are Istanbul, Ankara, Karabük, Bursa, Izmir, Adana, Samsun, and Diyarbakir. Products from the country’s chief manufacture includes textiles, dried fruit, processed food, iron and steel, petroleum, construction materials (especially cement), forest products, wine, and chemical fertilizer. Turkey is also noted for the manufacture of carpets; Meerschaum pipes and artifacts; and pottery. Major projects are underway along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to increase the supply of hydroelectric power. There is a substantial, and growing, tourist trade. Turkey’s main ports are Istanbul, Izmir, Samsun, Iskenderun, Mersin, and Trabzon.
Turkey has one of the Middle East’s best road and railroad systems. The annual value of imports into Turkey is usually considerably higher than the value of exports. The chief imports are crude oil, machinery, motor vehicles, metals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, rubber, and chemicals; the principal exports are apparel, foodstuffs, textiles, iron and steel products, leather, plastic and rubber products, and minerals. The leading trade partners are Germany, Italy, the U.S., and the U.K. Since 1964, Turkey has been an associate member of the EU. It has sought full membership in the EU since 1987, and is currently making substantial legal and economic reforms to effectuate full membership. Large numbers of Turks are employed in W Europe, especially in Germany. Turkey has universities located at Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Erzurum, and Trabzon, among other places. The University of the Bosporus (formerly Robert College) is in Istanbul.
History to 1922
Although Anatolia (the W portion of Asian Turkey) is one of the oldest inhabited regions of the world, the history of Turkey as a national state began only with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. For the earlier history of the region now constituting Turkey, see (for the ancient period) Asia Minor; Ionia; Pontus; Thrace; Byzantium; (for the medieval period) Byzantine Empire; Armenia; Konya; Karaman; (for the modern period before 1918) Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, which had been tottering since the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774, was dealt its death blow in World War I. By the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) the victorious Allies reduced the once mighty empire to a small state comprising the N half of the Anatolian peninsula and the narrow neutralized and Allied-occupied Zone of the Straits. Sultan Muhammad VI accepted the treaty, but Turkish nationalists rallied under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (from 1934 known as Kemal Atatürk) and organized their forces for resistance. In April, 1920, even before the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, a Turk. national government and national assembly began to function at Ankara. The nationalists defied the authority of the sultan, took the offensive against the Allies in Anatolia, and concluded (1921) a treaty of friendship with the USSR, which restored the Kars and Ardahan regions to Turkey in exchange for Batumi. In the meantime the Greeks, encouraged by the Allies, launched an offensive against the nationalists from their base at Izmir.
History - 1922 to 1928
The Turkish counteroffensive, beginning in August 1922, ended with the complete rout of the Greeks and with the Turkish capture of Izmir (September, 1922). On November 1, 1922, the Ankara government declared the sultan deposed, but it allowed his brother, Abd al-Majid, to succeed to the spiritual office of caliph. Shortly afterward, a conference opened at Lausanne to revise the Treaty of Sèvres. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) established the present boundaries of Turkey, except for the disputed region of Alexandretta (Iskenderun), which Syria ceded to Turkey in 1939. Turkey was to exercise full sovereign rights over its entire territory, except the Zone of the Straits (see Dardanelles), which was to remain demilitarized; this last restriction was lifted in 1936. Under a separate agreement negotiated at Lausanne in 1923, approximately 1.5 million Greeks living in Turkey were repatriated to Greece and approximately 800,000 Turks living in Greece and Bulgaria were resettled in Turkey. Turkey was formally proclaimed a republic in October 1923 with Kemal as its first president; he was reelected in 1927, 1931, and 1935. The caliphate was abolished in 1924, and in the same year a constitution was promulgated. Kemal governed as a virtual dictator, and his Republican People’s party was the only legal party, except for brief periods. During the fourteen years of Kemal’s rule, Turkey underwent a great transformation. Kemal’s westernization of Turkey was more successful than that of Russia under Peter the Great, and it went further than the Meiji reform in Japan, for it changed the religious, social, and cultural bases of Turkish society as well as its political and economic structure.
History - 1928 to World War II
In 1928, Islam ceased to be the state religion, and the Latin alphabet was substituted for the Arabic script. In 1930, Constantinople, which had been replaced as the capital by Ankara in 1923, was renamed Istanbul. At the death (1938) of Kemal, Turkey was well on its way to becoming a state on the Western model. In the economic field, Kemal aimed at obtaining self-sufficiency for Turkey without the aid of foreign capital. Turkey sought friendly relations with all its neighbors. It entered the League of Nations in 1932, guaranteed its European borders by joining (1934) with Greece, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia in the Balkan Entente, and signed (1937) a treaty (the Saadabad Pact) with Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. Although Communism was severely suppressed at home, relations with the USSR were cordial until World War II. Turkey obtained a revision of the Straits Convention by the Montreux Convention of 1936 and gained a satisfactory solution of the Alexandretta dispute through an agreement with France in 1939.
History - World War II to 1952
Ismet Inonu, who succeeded Kemal as president in 1938, warily steered a neutral course through the first five year of World War II, although Turkey received lend-lease aid from the U.S. after 1941. Despite considerable Allied pressure, Turkey declared war on Germany and Japan only in February 1945; as a result of its declaration of war, Turkey took part in the conference (April–June, 1945) at San Francisco that founded the UN. Relations with the former Soviet Union became acrimonious after the USSR denounced (March 1945) its friendship pact with Turkey and demanded a thorough revision of the Montreux Convention and joint control of the Straits. Turkey rejected all Soviet demands, and in 1947 it became, with Greece, the recipient of U.S. assistance under the Truman Doctrine. By 1971, the U.S. had given Turkey about $5.7 billion in aid under various programs. U.S. influence was partly responsible for the relaxation of the Turkish system of state capitalism in favor of free enterprise as well as for the lifting of the ban on opposition parties. The sincerity of the government's move toward political democracy was demonstrated in the elections of 1950, when the government party was defeated and Celal Bayar, leader of the Democratic party (established in 1946), succeeded Inönü as president. With Adnan Menderes as premier, the new government followed a policy of firm alignment with the West.
History - 1952 to 1991
Turkish troops fought with distinction in the Korean War, and in 1952 Turkey became a full member of NATO; U.S. air and missile bases were subsequently established at Izmir and Adana. Turkey concluded a military defense pact with Yugoslavia and Greece (the Balkan Pact) in 1954 and played a leading part in the creation (1954–1955) of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO; until 1959 known as the Baghdad Pact). Tension with Greece over the island of Cyprus, whose population is mostly Greek but includes a vocal Turkish minority, began in the mid-1950s and continued after Cyprus became independent in 1960. Partly as a result of aid under the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program), the Turkish economy expanded considerably after 1950, and foreign capital was attracted by favorable investment laws. In 1969 the U.S. and Turkey signed a military agreement under which Turkey gained some influence over the number of troops and types of weapons the U.S. deployed in Turkey. W Turkey suffered severe earthquakes in 1970–1971. Largely as a result of U.S. pressure, the growing of opium poppies in Turkey was banned in 1971 (effective 1972), although in 1974 the government announced it would allow cultivation of opium poppies under state control for medical purposes only. In the early 1970s, the discovery of oil on the continental shelf under the waters surrounding the Greek Islands caused further conflict between Greece and Turkey.
History - 1991 to Present
During the first Gulf War (1991) Turkey allowed the U.S. to launch air strikes against Iraq from Turkey. Although the war caused a massive dislocation of Kurds in Iraq, Turkey kept its borders closed in an effort to avoid an increase in Kurdish nationalism, which Turkey has traditionally suppressed. In 1991 the Anap party came to power with Mesut Yilmaz as its prime minister. Tansu Ciller, the country's first female prime minister, was elected in 1993. Another election was held in 1996, and Neckmettin Erbakan of the Welfare Party (an Islamic political party) came to power. His was the first islamic-led government since 1923. Erbakan’s support for Muslim education and culture alarmed the secular military, and he was pressured to resign, which he did in June 1997; Mesut Yilmaz became the new prime minister. Into the late 90s, there were increasing disputes with Greece over territorial waters, airspace, and especially the partition of Cyprus.
Government
In May 2000 Ahmet Necdet Sezer was elected president by the National Assembly for a seven-year term. The head of government is Prime Minister Recep Tayyipo Erodogan, appointed March 2003.
