Turkey

The Republic of Turkey is the Turkish nationstate located on the shores of the Mediterranean and Black seas at the crossroads between Europe and the Middle East; it was established in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The 1982 constitution defines modern Turkey as a secular democratic republic and a social welfare state, respecting human rights and the rule of law. Its capital is Ankara, its flag is red with a white crescent and a star, and the official language is Turkish. Turkey is situated in Asia Minor (Anatolia) and in a small portion in eastern Thrace, stretching from east to west between Asia and Europe. The total area of Turkey is 780,580 square kilometers (301,384 square miles), 97% of which lies in Asia and 3% in Europe. The population of the country was 74.8 million in 2009. Approximately 80% of the population is Turkish, and 15%–20% is of Kurdish origin. Turkmens, Arabs, Circassians, Anatolian Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and Assyrians make up a small portion of the population. The Kurdish population is mostly concentrated in southeastern Anatolia and in big urban centers, the Arab-origin people in the south along the Syrian border, and the nonMuslim communities in Istanbul, the largest city, and in Izmir, the port city in western Anatolia.

About 99% of the population is Muslim, the majority of which is Sunnī. There are also Shi'ite communities, mostly the Alevi population, which makes up about 20% of the Muslims. The Sunnī population belongs to the Hanefi School. The Greeks are affiliated with the Great Orthodox Patriarchate, and the Armenian Gregorian population with the Armenian Patriarchate, both located in the old imperial capital, Istanbul. There are also Armenian Catholic, Protestant, and Assyrian Orthodox churches. The majority of the Jewish community, about 20,000, lives in Istanbul, and the rest is dispersed in western Anatolian cities.

Turkish, the official language, is a branch of the Ural-Altaic language family and is predominantly spoken in the country, together with some Kurdish dialects of Indo-European origin among some communities in eastern Anatolia. Turkish, written in the Latin alphabet since 1928, is a phonetic language using o, u, c, g, and s with diacritical marks as well. Kurdish and Armenian are also printed in Latin in dailies and periodicals.

The Republic of Turkey was established after the National Liberation War, which lasted 3 more years following the Great War. World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire on October 18, 1918, with the Mudros Agreement, and the Allied forces started to occupy strategic locations in Anatolia, depending on the interallied agreements during the war. Following the occupation of Izmir on May 15, 1919, by the Greek forces, and the partition of the country by the British, French, and Italian forces, the nationalist resistance was started in [Page 1311]Anatolia by Mustafa Kemal, the military hero of the Gallipoli campaign. Since the Ottoman government in Istanbul and Sultan Mehmet Vahdettin cooperated with the British with the idea of saving the remnants of the empire, the nationalist resistance was carried out both against the Allied imperialist occupation and against the Ottoman ancien régime. The Liberation War ended in 1922 with the Turkish victory, and the 1923 Lausanne Treaty became the cornerstone of the establishment of the modern Turkish nation-state.

...