Turkey

This article is about the country. For the bird, see Turkey (bird).

Republic of Turkey Türkiye Cumhuriyeti
Flag
Motto: Peace at Home, Peace in the World
Anthem: İstiklal Marşı Independence March
Location of Turkey
Capital		Ankara 39°55′N 32°50′E
Largest city		Istanbul 41°1′N 28°57′E
Official language(s)		Turkish
Ethnic groups ()		70–75% Turks       18% Kurds   7–12% others
Demonym		Turkish
Government		Parliamentary republic
-	Founder	Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
-	President	Abdullah Gül
-	Prime Minister	Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
-	Speaker of the Parliament	Cemil Çiçek
-	President of the Constitutional Court	Haşim Kılıç
Legislature		Grand National Assembly
Succession to the Ottoman Empire		to the Ottoman Empire
-	Treaty of Lausanne	24 July 1923
-	Declaration of Republic	29 October 1923
Area
-	Total	783,562 km2 (37th) 302,535 sq mi
-	Water (%)	1.3
Population
-	2012 estimate	74,724,269 (17th)
-	2000 census	67,803,927
-	Density	97/km2 (108th) 239.8/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$1.288 trillion (15th)
-	Per capita	$17,499 (52nd)
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$774.336 billion (18th)
-	Per capita	$10,362 (61st)
Gini (2008)		39.0
HDI (2011)		0.699 (high) (92nd)
Currency		Turkish liraa (TRY)
Time zone		EET (UTC+2)
-	Summer (DST)	EEST (UTC+3)
Date formats		dd/mm/yyyy (AD)
Drives on the		right
Internet TLD		.tr
Calling code		90
a. The Turkish lira (Türk Lirası, TL) replaced the Turkish new lira on 1 January 2009.

Topographical map of Turkey

Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye) 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 called 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. This war of independence was between 1919-1922 after World War I. Atatürk made many changes that made Turkey more modern. But some people did not like some of the things he did because they thought they were against Islam. For example Atatürk got rid of religious secondary schools. Many civilizations were here, like the Hittites and the Byzantine Empire. Many important events in the history of Christianity happened in Turkey.

Modern Turkey has a strong economy. 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 kilometers of beautiful beaches on its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, and many important historical places.

History

People have been living in Anatolia (the Asian part of Turkey - also called Asia Minor) longer than almost anywhere else in the world, except Africa.

The first major Empire in the area was the Hittites (during the 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, Greeks and Assyrians inhabited parts of southeastern Turkey. The Assyrian 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 the Mongol Empire, Lord Osman built a new empire named after himself: the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire became one of the longest existing empires of all time.

The Ottoman Empire also stretched across the Balkans, (Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) in Europe. The Kingdom was ruled by Muslim law, but even the Christian minorities had freedom of speech.^[source?]

In World War 1 the Ottoman Empire was one of the Central Powers. During the war hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire died. Armenia says this was a genocide, but Turkey says it was not. The Central Powers lost the war and the Ottoman Empire was destroyed, but after that Ataturk led the army to get rid of foreign enemies, like the Greeks, and became the leader of Turkey.

For many years Kurdish guerrillas (usually called the "PKK") fought the Turkish government. They said they were fighting so that the Kurds in the south east of Turkey could decide more things for themselves. But the government and most other countries in the world said they were terrorists. In 2013 the PKK stopped fighting.

People

Oil-wrestling at Kırkpınar

About 80 million people live in Turkey. Most of them are ethnic Turks. About 20% are ethnic Kurds. A lot of people from Syria live in Turkey because they have ran away from the civil war in Syria.

A lot of the people in Turkey are teenagers or young adults.

European Union

Turkey is trying to join the European Union (EU). The EU says that before Turkey can join, it must start trading with the Republic of Cyprus and improve human rights.

Economy

Turkey is in the OECD and the G-20, and is one of the 20 countries with the most money in the world. Turkish money is called liras or lire. The first coins were made in Turkey.

In the 1970s many Turks moved to other countries, like Germany, to get good jobs. They often come back to Turkey for their summer holidays.

Until the 1980s the government owned most companies, but then Prime Minister Turgut Özal sold them. Before foreigners were usually not allowed to buy companies or land or houses, but now they are allowed to. Earthquakes in 1994, 1999 and 2001, slowed economic growth a bit.

Turkey mostly buys and sells with the EU (59% of what it sold and 41% of what it bought in 2005), the United States, Russia and Japan. Turkey and the EU agreed not to put a lot of tax on what they buy and sell to each other. After that it was easier for Turkish factories to sell stuff to the EU and for businesspeople in the EU to buy companies in Turkey.

Turkey's exports in 2010 were worth 117 billion dollars.

Turkey has not got any gas underground so it spends a lot of money buying gas from other countries, like Russia.

Provinces

The capital city of Turkey is Ankara. Turkey is divided into 81 provinces. Each province has its own little government but they can only decide about small things: the government in Ankara decides about important things. The provinces are in 7 regions. Each province is divided into districts. There are 923 districts altogether.

Culture

Language

Main page: Turkish language

Most people in Turkey speak Turkish. It belongs to the Turkic language group, which also includes many other languages spoken across Asia, such as Azerbaijani and Tatar. The Turkish language came from central Asia, but now it is a bit different from the languages spoken in central Asia.

In Turkey there are also minorities who speak languages such as Arabic, Kurdish,Armenian, Greek or Ladino, to name just a few.

Many young people can also speak English.

Religion

Most Turks are Muslim.

Turkish people have many ethnic and famous food, such as manti, kebab, iskender, Turkish dessert, baklava, ciboria, icli kofte etc.

Earthquakes

The 1999 İzmit earthquake was an approximately 7.4 magnitude earthquake that struck northwestern Turkey on August 17, 1999, at about 3:02am local time and 18.000 people are passed away . Many people have been killed by earthquakes in Turkey.

For example the New York Times said that over 570 people died in the Erzincan earthquake of March 13 1992. The earthquake was a 6.8 on the Richter Scale.

Other websites

• CIA World Factbook - Turkey