Encyclopedia
Turkey , officially the
Republic of Turkey , is a
Eurasian country that stretches across the
Anatolian
peninsula in
Southwestern Asia and the
Balkan region of
Southeastern Europe. Turkey borders eight countries:
Bulgaria to the northwest;
Greece to the west;
Georgia to the northeast;
Armenia,
Iran and the
Nakhichevan exclave of
Azerbaijan to the east; and
Iraq and
Syria to the southeast. In addition, it borders the
Black Sea to the north; the
Aegean Sea and the
Sea of Marmara to the west; and the
Mediterranean Sea to the south.
The Republic of Turkey is a
democratic,
secular,
constitutional
republic whose political system was established in 1923. Turkey is a member state of the
United Nations,
NATO,
OSCE,
OECD,
OIC, the
Council of Europe and a candidate to join the
European Union. Due to its strategic location
straddling Europe and Asia, and sandwiched between three seas, Turkey has been a historical crossroad between
eastern and
western cultures. It has been a keystone in the development of world civilization and the location of many great civilizations.
Etymology
The Turkish name
Türkiye subdivides into two words:
Türk, means "strong" in Old Turkic and usually signifies the habitants of Turkey or a member of the Turkish nation; and the suffix
-iye which means "owner" or "related to". The root appears commonly among early Altaic tribal ethnonyms, and also appears notably in the name of
Turkmenistan. A common point of confusion that arises is the relationship between the country and the bird called "turkey". European explorers who first encountered the bird in the
New World named it as such, mistakenly believing it to have come from Turkey. The term "Türk" or "Türük" predates this by a long way, an example being the
Göktürks . Ironically, the Turkish name for the bird, turkey, is "Hindi" which can be attributed to the belief that it originated in
India.
History
Because of its strategic location at the intersection of
Asia and
Europe,
Anatolia has been a cradle for several
civilizations since
prehistoric times, with
Neolithic settlements such as
Çatalhöyük , Çayönü , Nevali Cori , Hacilar , Göbekli Tepe and Mersin. The settlement of
Troy starts in the Neolithic and continues forward into the Iron Age. Through recorded history, Anatolians have spoken
Indo-European,
Semitic and Kartvelian languages, as well as many languages of uncertain affiliation. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and
Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical center from which the
Indo-European languages have radiated. Other authors have proposed an Anatolian origin for the
Etruscans of ancient
Italy. Iron Age peoples that have settled in or conquered Anatolia include the
Phrygians, Hittites,
Lydians,
Lycians,
Celts,
Mushki,
Urartians,
Kurds,
Cimmerians,
Armenians,
Persians, Tabals and
Greeks.
The gradual conquest of Anatolia from the
Byzantines by
Turkic peoples, under the
Seljuks with the
Battle of Manzikert and the rise of the
Seljuk Empire in the
11th century was finalized by the rise of the
Ottoman Empire. By the end of the 16th century, at the height of its power, the Ottoman Empire grew to cover Anatolia, the
Balkans,
North Africa, the
Middle East,
Eastern Europe and the
Caucasus. It comprised an area of about 5.6 million km², though it controlled a much larger area, if adjoining areas dominated mainly by
nomadic tribes, where the empire's suzerainty was recognized, are included. The empire interacted with both
Eastern and
Western cultures throughout its 631-year history.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire was among the world's most powerful political entities, often locking horns with the powers of eastern Europe in its steady advance through the
Balkans and the southern part of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its navy was also a powerful force in the Mediterranean. On several occasions, the Ottoman army reached central Europe, laying
siege to
Vienna in 1529 and again in 1683 in an attempt to conquer the
Habsburg domain, and was finally repulsed only by grand coalitions of European powers at sea and on land.
Following years of decline, the Ottoman Empire entered
World War I in an alliance with
Germany in 1914, in which it was ultimately defeated. After the war, western powers sought to partition the empire through the
Treaty of Sèvres. With the support of the Allies, Greece had occupied
Izmir as provided for in the Treaty. On 19 May 1919 this prompted the beginning of a nationalist movement under the command of
Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a military commander who had distinguished himself in the
Battle of Gallipoli . Kemal Pasha sought to revoke the terms of the treaty signed by the Sultan in
Istanbul. This involved mobilizing every available part of Turkish society in what would become the
Turkish War of Independence .
By 18 September 1922 the occupying armies were repelled and the country saw the birth of a Turkish state. On 1 November 1922 the
Turkish Grand National Assembly formally abolished the office of the Sultan, ending 631 years of Ottoman rule. The
Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 led to the international recognization of the sovereignty of the newly formed Republic of Turkey as the successor state of the defunct Ottoman Empire. Kemal Pasha became the Republic's first President and instituted
far reaching reforms with the aim of modernizing the new Republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past. According to the Law on Family Names, the Turkish Grand Assembly presented Mustafa Kemal with the honorific name "Atatürk" in 1934.
Turkey entered
World War II on the Allied side in the latter stages of the war as a ceremonial gesture and became a charter member of the United Nations. Difficulties faced by Greece after World War II in quelling a communist rebellion and demands by the
Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits prompted the United States to declare the
Truman Doctrine in 1947. The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece and resulted in large scale U.S. military and economic support.
After participating with United Nations forces in the
Korean conflict, Turkey in 1952 joined the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization . Turkey intervened and militarily invaded
Cyprus in July 1974 in response to a Greek Cypriot coup by
EOKA-B. The resultant breakaway de-facto independent
Northern Cyprus is not officially recognised by any country except Turkey itself.
Turkey experienced a series of
coups: Coup of 60, Coup by Memorandum, Coup of 80 and the Postmodern Coup D'etat. The period of the 70s and 80s was marked by political instability and rapid, but at times erratic economic growth. A series of economic shocks led to new elections in 2002, bringing into power the conservative Justice and Development Party led by the former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In October 2005, the
European Union opened accession negotiations with Ankara and thus Turkey is a candidate country to join the European Union as a full member, having been an associate member since 1964.
Politics
The Politics of Turkey takes place in a framework of a
secular parliamentary representative democratic
republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Turkey is the head of government, and of a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government.
Legislative power is vested in both the government and the
Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
Executive branch
The function of Head of State is performed by the
President of the Republic '. A president is elected every seven years by the Grand National Assembly but he does not have to be a member of parliament. The current President Ahmet Necdet Sezer was elected on May 16, 2000.
Executive power rests in the Prime Minister ' and the Council of Ministers ', who make up the government. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Ministers have to be members of Parliament; nevertheless almost all the time they are . The Prime Minister is elected by the parliament through a vote of confidence in his government, and he is generally the head of the party that has won the elections. The current Prime Minister is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamic conservative AKP won an absolute majority of parliamentary seats in the 2002 general elections.
The President of the Parliament is Bülent Arinç, also from the same party.
Legislative branch
Legislative power is invested in the 550-seat
Grand National Assembly of Turkey that represents the Turkish Nation. Its members are elected for a five year term by mitigated proportional representation with a national election threshold of 10%. There are 85 electoral districts that represent the 81 administrative provinces of Turkey . To avoid a hung parliament and its excessive political fragmentation, only parties that win at least 10% of the national vote in a national parliamentary election gain the right to parliamentary representation. Independent candidates may run, and to be elected, they must only win 10% of the vote in the district they are running from. Political parties deemed anti-secular or separatist by the Constitutional Court can have their public financing and activities suspended or its existence be banned altogether. Turkey has a multi-party system, with several well-established parties, ranging from the extreme-left to the extreme-right.
Judicial branch
The freedom and independence of the Judicial System is guaranteed by the constitution. There is no organization, person, or institution that can interfere in the functioning of the courts: the executive and legislative structures must follow the decisions of the courts. The courts, who are independent in discharging their duties, must explain all of their rulings on the basis of the provisions of the Constitution, the applicable laws, the corresponding jurisprudence and their personal convictions as jurists.
The Judicial system obeys a strict hiearachy. Turkish courts have no jury system; judges render decisions after establishing the facts in each case based on evidence presented by lawyers and prosecutors. A
Justice of the peace statutes on misdemeanor charges and petty complaints, and he does so as a single judge. Three-judge courts of first instance have jurisdiction over major civil suits and felony charges. Any conviction in a case can be taken to a Court of Appeals for judicial review. If that fails, the case can be referred to the
Danistay for administrative cases and to
Yargitay for judicial cases, conforming to the principle of the seperation of powers. The Constitutional Court statutes on the conformity of laws and regulations to the Constitution, and it can be seized by the President of the Republic, the government, the members of Parliament or any judge before which an exception of unconstitutionality has been raised by a defendant or a plaintiff. The Constitutional Court has the right to both
a priori and
a posteriori review, and it can invalidate whole laws or regulations and ban their application for all future cases. The current President of the Constitutional Court is Mustafa Bumin.
The Turkish military also plays an informal political role, seeing itself as the guardian of the secular, unitary nature of the republic and reforms of
Ataturk.
Foreign Relations
Turkish - EU relations
Turkey's main political, economic and military relations remain rooted within
Western Europe and the
United States. An associate member of the European Union since 1964, Turkey is currently in the process of accession pending the completion of
negotiations. Based on what it views as lukewarm support for its accession to the EU and alleged double standards in its negotiations the Turkish public has become increasingly
euroskeptic in recent times. A mid-2006 Eurobarometer survey revealed that 43% of Turkish citizens view the EU positively; just 35% trust the EU, 45% support enlargement and just 29% support an EU constitution. It is believed that the accession process would take at least 10 years, and the earliest date that Turkey could enter the EU is 2013, the date when the next six-year EU budget will come into force .
Turkish - American relations
Turkey has remained a close ally of the United States, supporting it in the
war on terror in the post September 11th climate. However, the
Iraq war faced strong domestic opposition in Turkey and as such, the Turkish parliament voted against allowing US troops to attack Iraq from its south-eastern border. This led to a period of cooling in relations, but soon regained momentum through diplomatic, humanitarian and indirect military support. Turkey is particularly cautious about an independent Kurdish state arising from a destabilised
Iraq. Turkey has fought an insurgent war against the Kurdistan Workers Party , that seeks Kurdish independence, in which some estimated 30,000 people have lost their lives. This has led Ankara to pressure the US into clamping down on guerrilla training camps in northern Iraq, though it remains reluctant due to its relative stability compared to the rest of Iraq. Turkey must therefore balance domestic pressures with commitments to its strongest ally.
Turkish - Greek relations
Historically, relations with neighbour
Greece have been strained and occasionally close to war. The antagonism can be traced all the way back to centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule over the Greek people and consequent struggle by the latter for the creation of a Greek nation state. The last one emerged over the
Cyprus dispute and conflicts on the status of the
Aegean Sea are the current main points of contention. Cyprus remains divided between a Greek Cypriot south, and a
Turkish Cypriot north recognized only by Turkey. Efforts to reunite the island under the auspices of the
United Nations have failed thus far. As far as the Aegean Sea is concerned, Ankara considers it strategically important for easy passage of Turkish vessels. Turkey does not recognise the extension of Greek territorial waters to 12-mile around the islands of the Aegean. Ankara argues that the Turkish Aegean coasts would then be blocked by Greek territorial waters, despite the innocent passage of vessels that is universally recognised within the
territorial waters of any state according to the Law of the Sea. Turkey has warned that such an act would be considered a
casus belli or an act of war on Turkey.
Nonetheless, following consecutive earthquakes in both Turkey and Greece and the prompt response of aid and rescue teams from both sides, the two nations have entered a much more positive period of relations, with Greece actively supporting Turkey's candidacy to enter the
European Union. In 2002, Turkey and Greece made an unsuccessful attempt to jointly host the
2008 UEFA European Football Championship. The bid was one of the four candidacies that was recommended to the UEFA Executive Committee, the joint Austria/Switzerland bid winning the right to host the tournament.
A clear sign of improved relations was visible in the response to a mid air collision by Greek and Turkish fighter jets in the southern Aegean in May 2006. While the Turkish pilot ejected safely, the Greek pilot lost his life. Both countries agreed that the event should not affect their bilateral relations.
Military
The
Turkish Armed Forces consists of the
Army,
Navy and
Air Force. The
Gendarmerie and the
Coast Guard operate as parts of the Department of Internal Affairs in peacetime. They are subordinated to the Army and Navy Commands respectively in wartime, during which they both have law enforcement and military functions. The Turkish Armed forces, with a combined troop strength of 1,043,550 people, is the second largest standing armed force in NATO, after the United States of America. The Turkish Armed Forces became a member of the NATO Alliance on February 18, 1952. Currently, 36,000 troops are stationed in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Every fit male Turkish citizen has to serve military service for varying time periods ranging between 1 month to 15 months depending on his education and job location.
In 1998, Turkey announced a modernization programme worth some $31 billion over a period of ten years including tanks, helicopters and assault rifles. Turkey is also a level three contributor to the
Joint Strike Fighter program, gaining an opportunity to develop and influence the creation of the next generation fighter spearheaded by the United States.
The Armed forces have traditionally been a politically powerful institution, considering themselves the guardians of Atatürk's legacy. They have staged three coups between 1960 and 1980, whilst also influencing the removal of the Islam-oriented government of Necmettin Erbakan in 1997. Through the National Security Council , the army has influenced policy on issues it deems a threat to the country, including those relating to Kurdish insurgency and Islamism. In recent years, reforms have seen an increased civilian presence on the NSC and a decline in the military's influence as it attempts to comply with the EU's
Copenhagen criteria. Despite its influence in civilian affairs, the military continues to enjoy strong support from the nation, frequently seen as Turkey's most trusted institution.
The Commander of The Turkish Armed Forces is
The Chief of the General Staff General
Yasar Büyükanit who succeeded General
Hilmi Özkök on August 30, 2006. The President, as the Head of State, is The Commander in Chief, in times of peace. The Chief of the General Staff becomes the Commander in Chief, on behalf of the President, in times of war.
Geography
- Main article: Geography of Turkey
The territory of Turkey extends from 36° to 42° N and from 26° to 45° E in
Eurasia 
