Turkey
- This page is about the country. For the bird, see Turkey (bird).
| Republic of Turkey
Türkiye Cumhuriyeti
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| Anthem: İstiklâl Marşı Independence March  |
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.svg) Location of Turkey
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| Capital | Ankara 39°55′N 32°50′E / 39.917°N 32.833°E |
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| Largest city | Istanbul | |||
| Official language(s) | Turkish | |||
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye also known as Anatolia) is a country in both Europe and Asia. The area of Turkey is about 780,000 square kilometres.
Turkey is a republic. There are 81 provinces in Turkey. The money of Turkey is called Turkish Lira.
The capital city is Ankara, a city in central Anatolia. The cultural and economic center is Istanbul. In the past Istanbul was known as Constantinople.
Turkey was founded in 1923 by Atatürk after the war of independence (Kurtuluş Savaşı). Before that, the Turkish Republic was part of the Ottoman Empire. Atatürk made many changes that made Turkey more modern.
Because of its place, in history the land has been home to many civilizations, like the Hittites and the Byzantine Empire. Many important events in the history of Christianity happened in Turkey.
Modern Turkey has a strong economy. It has 7th largest army (4th largest ground army) in the world. Its warm climate lets many kinds of food crops grow, and livestock and forestry are important industries. Turkey is one of the countries in the world that can make enough food to feed itself. There is a strong manufacturing sector making airplanes, electronics, cars, clothing and textiles for home and for other countries.
These days, Turkey is a popular place for tourists to visit. It has hundreds of kilometres of beautiful beaches on its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, and many important historical places.
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[change] History
the greater part of present-day Turkey: Anatolian peninsula (also called Asia minor), was one of the oldest inhabited areas in the world.
The first major Empire in the area was from Hittites (during 18th century to the 13th century BC). The Indo-European-speaking Hittites developed a high culture from Central Anatolia. Their Kingdom was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BC and the successor States were Lydia, Caria and Lycia.
From 1950 BCE, Greek peoples and Assyrians inhabited parts of southeastern Turkey. The Assyrians capital was named Tushhan (900-600 BC). The Assyrians ruled over southeastern Turkey until the Assyrian Empire was conquered by Babylonia in the year 612 BC. Then Antatolia became home for various kingdoms including the Persian Achaemenid, Hellenistic kingdoms, Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) and Mongol Empire.
During the 14th century, after the fall of Mongol Empire, Lord Osman one built a new empire named after his name: Ottoman Empire. The new Empire filled the vacuum provided from the collapse by the Mongol Empire. The Ottoman Empire became one of the longest existing empires of all time.
The ottoman Empire was also stretching across the Balkan, (Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) in Europe.The Kingdom was ruled by Muslim law, but even the Christian minorities had religion freedom of speech.
War during 1800s and at the beginning of 1900s led to the fall of the Empire. In the shadow of the Ottoman collapse an ethnic cleansing occurred of Armenians and other Christians in the Eastern Turkey. About 1 million Non-Turks was killed. Turkey remain outside and neutral at the time of second world war.
[change] Demographics
Turkey has a population of about 72,153,000. Turkey's official language is Turkish.
The majority, about 60 % of the population are ethnic Turks. A large part, 34.6 % of Turkish population are Kurds, representative 25 million Kurds in Turkey.[1] [2] [3] The majority of those living in the Kurdish regions of Eastern Turkey. Other mainly ethnic groups consider Assyrians, Iranian peoples, Iraqi people and Syrian people.
[change] European Union
Turkey try to join the European Union (EU). The EU says that before Turkey can join, it must resolve its human rights issues first, and also bring its economical and political system to equal that of the EU. But some say that the reason that Turkey was denied membership was because of its 95% Muslim majority and only 16 % of the country's surface its a part of Europe.
[change] Economy
CIA classified Turkey as an I-country, Turkey is a member of OECD and G-20 and one of the 20 biggest economy in the world. For the most of the history the state had overall control of the economy. During 1980s at the initiative of Prime Minister Turgut Özal the economy became reformed from isolated state controlled in to a open market and private sector-based model. Earthquakes in 1994, 1999 and 2001, slowed the economic growth a bit.
Turkey has gradually opened up their markets through economic reforms by reducing government controls on foreign trade and investment and the privatization of publicly owned industries, and the liberation of many sectors of participation from the private and foreign players has continued in the political debate.
Turkey's main trading partner is the EU (59% of exports and 52% of imports in 2005), the United States, Russia and Japan. Turkey has taken advantage of a customs union with the EU, signed in 1995, in order to increase its industrial production aimed at export and serves on the foreign investment from the EU to the country.
Many Turks go each year abroad as migrant workers, mainly to Germany.
[change] Export
Turkey's exports amounted to 73.5 billion dollars in 2005. In 2007 exports grew to 106 billion dollars. By May 2008 the exports of the previous year had reached more than 110 billion dollars.
[change] Culture
[change] Language
The sole official language in Turkey is Turkish. It belongs to the Turkic language group, which also includes many other languages spoken across Asia, such as Azerbaijani and Tatar. In Turkey there are also minorities who speak languages such as Kurdish, Armenian, Greek or Ladino, to name just a few.The origin of the Turkish language came from central asia. Turkey now has there own language ,it is very similar with the food.
[change] Turkish lira
The national currency of Turkey is the Turkish new lira, but on January 1, 2009 the word "new" was deleted from the name of the currency.
[change] Natural disasters
The New York Times said that over 570 people died in the Erzincan earthquake of March 13 1992.[4] The earthquake was a 6.8 on the Richter Scale.[5]
[change] Other pages
[change] Other websites
[change] References
- ↑ http://www.genocidepreventionnow.org/Home/SPECIALISSUE5ARMENIANGENOCIDECOVICTIMS/tabid/101/ctl/DisplayArticle/mid/607/aid/226/Default.aspx
- ↑ http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2008/3/kurdsworldwide289.htm
- ↑ http://www.rizgari.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=10167
- ↑ "More Than 570 Die In Quake in Turkey", New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/14/world/more-than-570-die-in-quake-in-turkey.html?pagewanted=1, retrieved 2010-03-14
- ↑ et. al. Grosser, Helmut (October 1998). "The Erzincan (Turkey) Earthquake (Ms 6.8) of March 13, 1992 and its Aftershock Sequence". Pure and Applied Geophysics (Birkhäuser Basel) 152 (3): 465-505. http://www.springerlink.com/content/nquhmbx0eay08v5n/. Retrieved March 13, 2010.
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