Turkey

This article is about the country. For the bird, see Turkey (bird). For other uses, see Turkey (disambiguation).
"Türkiye" redirects here. For other uses, see Türkiye (disambiguation).

Republic of Türkiye
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (Turkish)
Flag of Turkey
Anthem: 
İstiklal Marşı
"Independence March"[1]
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[2][3]
Spoken languages
List
Ethnic groups
(2016)[5]
Demonym(s)
  • Turkish
  • Turk
GovernmentUnitary presidential republic
• President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Cevdet Yılmaz
Numan Kurtulmuş
Kadir Özkaya
LegislatureGrand National Assembly
Establishment
c. 1299
19 May 1919
23 April 1920
1 November 1922
24 July 1923
29 October 1923
9 November 1982[6]
Area
• Total
783,562 km2 (302,535 sq mi) (36th)
• Water (%)
2.03[7]
Population
• December 2023 estimate
Neutral increase 85,372,377[8] (17th)
• Density
111[8]/km2 (287.5/sq mi) (83rd)
GDP (PPP)2024 estimate
• Total
Increase $3.457 trillion[9] (12th)
• Per capita
Increase $40,283[9] (54th)
GDP (nominal)2024 estimate
• Total
Increase $1.344 trillion[9] (17th)
• Per capita
Increase $15,666[9] (64th)
Gini (2019)Steady 41.9[10]
medium inequality
HDI (2022)Increase 0.855[11]
very high (45th)
CurrencyTurkish lira (₺) (TRY)
Time zoneUTC+3 (TRT)
Calling code+90
ISO 3166 codeTR
Internet TLD.tr

Turkey,[a] officially the Republic of Türkiye,[b] is a country mainly located 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 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.[5] Officially a secular state, Turkey has a Muslim-majority population. Ankara is Turkey's capital and second-largest city, while Istanbul is its largest city and economic and financial center. Other major cities include İzmir, Bursa, and Antalya.

Turkey was first inhabited by modern humans during the Late Paleolithic.[12] Home to important Neolithic sites like Göbekli Tepe and some of the earliest farming areas, present-day Turkey was inhabited by various ancient peoples.[13] The Hattians were assimilated by the Anatolian peoples, such as the Hittites.[14] Classical Anatolia transitioned into cultural Hellenization following the conquests of Alexander the Great; Hellenization continued during the Roman and Byzantine eras.[15] The Seljuk Turks began migrating into Anatolia in the 11th century, starting the Turkification process.[16] The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into Turkish principalities.[17] 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.[18][19] From 1789 onwards, the empire saw a major transformation, reforms, and centralization while its territory declined.[20]

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.[21] Under the control of the Three Pashas, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I in 1914, during which the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian subjects.[22][23][24] Following Ottoman defeat, the Turkish War of Independence resulted in the abolition of the sultanate and the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne. The Republic was proclaimed on 29 October 1923, modelled on the reforms initiated by the country's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Turkey remained neutral during most of World War II, but was involved in the Korean War. Several military interventions interfered with the transition to a multi-party system.

Turkey is an upper-middle-income and emerging country; its economy is the world's 17th-largest by nominal and 12th-largest by PPP-adjusted GDP. It is a unitary presidential republic. Turkey is a founding member of the OECD, G20, and Organization of Turkic States. With a geopolitically significant location, Turkey is a regional power[25] 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.[26] Home to three biodiversity hotspots,[27] Turkey is prone to frequent earthquakes and is highly vulnerable to climate change.[28][29] Turkey has a universal healthcare system, growing access to education, and increasing levels of innovativeness.[30] It is a leading TV content exporter.[31] With 21 UNESCO World Heritage sites, 30 UNESCO intangible cultural heritage inscriptions,[32] and a rich and diverse cuisine,[33] Turkey is the fifth most visited country in the world.

  1. ^ "The Turkish Flag and The Turkish National Anthem (Independence March)". Republic of Türkiye, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 4 August 2024.
  2. ^ "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.
  3. ^ "Mevzuat: Anayasa" (in Turkish). Constitutional Court of Turkey. Archived from the original on 21 June 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  4. ^
  5. ^ a b "Turkey (Turkiye)". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 19 May 2024.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Constitution2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ "Surface water and surface water change". Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Archived from the original on 24 March 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2020.
  8. ^ a b "The Results of Address Based Population Registration System, 2023". www.tuik.gov.tr. Turkish Statistical Institute. 6 February 2024. Archived from the original on 6 February 2024. Retrieved 6 February 2024.
  9. ^ a b c d "World Economic Outlook Database, October 2024 Edition. (Türkiye)". www.imf.org. International Monetary Fund. 22 October 2024. Retrieved 22 October 2024.
  10. ^ "Gini index (World Bank estimate) – Turkey". World Bank. 2019. Archived from the original on 17 May 2019. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
  11. ^ "Human Development Index (HDI)". United Nations Development Programme. Archived from the original on 10 June 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
  12. ^ Howard 2016, p. 24
  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"
    • McMahon & Steadman 2012a, pp. 3–12
    • Matthews 2012, p. 49
  14. ^
    • Ahmed 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."
    • Steadman 2012, p. 234: "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"
    • Michel 2012, p. 327
    • Melchert 2012, p. 713
    • Howard 2016, p. 26
  15. ^
    • 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. ... 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."
    • Ahmed 2006, p. 1576: "Subsequently, hellenization of the elites transformed Anatolia into a largely Greek-speaking region"
    • McMahon & Steadman 2012a, p. 5
    • McMahon 2012, p. 16
    • Sams 2012, p. 617
  16. ^
    • Davison 1990, pp. 3–4: "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."
    • Howard 2016, pp. 33–44
  17. ^ Howard 2016, pp. 38–39
  18. ^ Howard 2016, p. 45
  19. ^ Somel 2010, p. xcvii
  20. ^
  21. ^
    • 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"
    • Fábos 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."
    • Bosma, Lucassen & Oostindie 2012a, p. 17: "In total, many millions of Turks (or, more precisely, Muslim immigrants, including some from the Caucasus) were involved in this ‘repatriation’ – sometimes more than once in a lifetime – the last stage of which may have been the immigration of seven hundred thousand Turks from Bulgaria between 1940 and 1990. Most of these immigrants settled in urban north-western Anatolia. Today between a third and a quarter of the Republic’s population are descendants of these Muslim immigrants, known as Muhacir or Göçmen"
  22. ^ Tatz, Colin; Higgins, Winton (2016). The Magnitude of Genocide. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-3161-4.
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ^ Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2021). The Thirty-Year Genocide - Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674251434.
  25. ^ "The Political Economy of Regional Power: Turkey" (PDF). giga-hamburg.de. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 February 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
  26. ^ "Turkey". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on 28 August 2022. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
  27. ^ Birben, Üstüner (2019). "The Effectiveness of Protected Areas in Biodiversity Conservation: The Case of Turkey". CERNE. 25 (4): 424–438. doi:10.1590/01047760201925042644. ISSN 0104-7760. Turkey has 3 out of the 36 biodiversity hotspots on Earth: the Mediterranean, Caucasus, and Irano-Anatolian hotspots
  28. ^ Ahmed 2006, pp. 1575–1576
  29. ^ World Bank Türkiye - Country Climate and Development Report 2022, p. 7
  30. ^
  31. ^ 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.
  32. ^ "Türkiye". UNESCO. Archived from the original on 2 March 2024. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
  33. ^ 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. Archived from the original on 2 March 2024. Retrieved 2 March 2024.


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