Source: MAPS IN MINUTES™ © RH Publications (1997)

A country partly in Asia and partly in Europe.

Physical

The Asian and European parts of Turkey are separated by the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the channel of the Dardanelles. The smaller, European part is bounded by Bulgaria and Greece. The much larger Asian part comprises the whole of Asia Minor and is known as Anatolia. It has the Black Sea on the north, Georgia, Armenia, and Iran on the east, Iraq and Syria on the south, and coasts on the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. Its largest river, the Kizil Irmak, is saline for nearly half its course to the Black Sea. In the east rise the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The plateau is subject to devastating earthquakes, however, lying as it does at a junction of crustal plates.

Economy

Turkey has a traditional agricultural sector, which employs a quarter of the workforce, and an expanding industrial sector. Important exports include clothing, textiles, foodstuffs, steel, household electrical goods, vehicles, and vehicle parts. Turkey has rich mineral deposits of coal, antimony, copper, iron ore, sulphur, lead, and zinc. Tourism is important.

History

Modern Turkey evolved from the Ottoman empire, which was finally dissolved at the end of World War I. By the Treaty of Sèvres at the Versailles Peace Conference parts of the east coast of the Aegean around the city of Izmir (Smyrna) were to go to Greece, and the Anatolian peninsula was to be partitioned, with a separate state of Armenia created on the Black Sea. The settlement triggered off fierce national resistance, led by Mustafa Kemal. A Greek army marched inland from Izmir, but was defeated. The city was captured, Armenia occupied, and the new Treaty of Lausanne negotiated. This recognized the present frontiers, obliging some one and a half million Greeks and some half‐million Armenians to leave the country (July 1923). In October 1923 the new Republic of Turkey was proclaimed, with Kemal as first President. His dramatic modernizing reforms won him the title of Atatürk, ‘Father of the Turks’. The one‐party rule of his Republican People’s Party continued under his lieutenant Ismel Inonu until 1950, when in the republic’s first open elections, the free‐enterprise opposition Democratic Party entered a decade of power, ending with an army coup. Civilian rule was resumed in 1961, but there was a further period of military rule (1971–73). Atatürk’s neutralist policy had been abandoned in 1952 when Turkey joined NATO. Relations with allies, however, were strained by the invasion of Cyprus (1974). A US trade embargo resulting from this was only lifted in 1978. Tension between left‐wing and right‐wing factions, hostility to Westernization by the minority Shiites, who seek to enforce Islamic puritanism, and fighting between Turks, Kurds, and Armenians, continued to trouble the country. A military coup, led by General Kenan Evren, overthrew the civilian government of Suleiman Demirel. Under Presidents Evren (1982–87) and Turgut Özal (1987–93) some political stability developed, with rather more concern for human rights. Martial law was lifted in 1987 and the state of emergency ended in 1988, some political parties having been legalized, including a neo‐fascist Nationalist Workers’ Party.

In 1989 the European Community postponed consideration of Turkey’s application for membership (1987), in part as a result of its human rights violations. Membership negotiations finally began in 2005 and constitutional changes were made in 2010 to meet EU democratic standards; nevertheless, some EU members remained opposed to Turkish membership and progress stalled.

The Kurdish Workers’ Party, claiming to speak for Turkey’s twelve million Kurds, continued its armed campaign for an independent Kurdistan. Civilian rule was resumed in 1991, with the re‐election of Suleiman Demirel at the head of a coalition. 1993 saw the election of Tansu Çiller (1946– ), Turkey’s first woman Prime Minister, and Demirel became President. However, the secular nature of the Turkish state has been increasingly challenged by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. In 1996 the pro‐Islamist Welfare Party came to power as part of a coalition. This resigned in 1997 and a series of secularist coalitions followed. However, the 2002 election was won by the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, became Prime Minister the following year. The People’s Democratic Party, formed in 2012 with trade-union and Kurdish backing, won 80 seats, giving a significant Kurdish voice in parliament for the first time. The AKP was re-elected in 2007 and 2011, but in 2013 there were demonstrations against the government’s management of the economy and alleged authoritarianism. Unable to stand for another term as Prime Minister, Erdogan became Turkey’s first directly elected President in 2014, with Ahmet Davutoğlu as Prime Minister. The AKP failed to win an outright majority in the June 2015 parliamentary elections but gained a convincing victory in new elections held in November. Erdogan was courted by Western European leaders in 2015 to assist in reducing the flow of Syrian refugees from Turkey to the EU. He received robust financial support from Europe as well as movement on Turkey’s negotiations to join the EU, and as a result the flow of migrants virtually stopped in 2016. In 2015 Turkey also became militarily involved in Syria, both to restrain the Islamic State group, which now controlled land on the Turkish border with Syria, and to restrict the actions of Kurdish forces. A failed coup attempt in 2016 provided Erdogan with an opportunity to reinforce his hold on power, dismissing thousands of soldiers, judges, university lecturers, and teachers in the process. In 2017 Erdogan won approval for a constitutional change that would abolish the position of Prime Minister and give much greater power to the President. He brought forward the next presidential and parliamentary elections by 18 months to June 2018, with he and the AKP emerging victorious in both.