🇹🇷 Turkey

Anatolia's written historical record begins with clay tablets from approximately 2000 BC found at modern-day Kültepe, belonging to an Assyrian trade colony. The languages recorded include Hattian, Hurrian, Hittite, Luwian and Palaic, with the latter three among the oldest written Indo-European languages. This marks the entry of Anatolia into documented history and commerce.

Hattian rulers were gradually replaced by Hittite rulers, whose kingdom was centred on the capital Hattusa. It coexisted with Palaians and Luwians for roughly five centuries before disintegrating amid further Indo-European migrations from southeastern Europe and subsequent warfare.

From around 1000 BC Greeks settled the Aegean coast of Anatolia, founding cities including Miletus, Ephesus, Halicarnassus, Smyrna and Byzantium. These eastern Greek settlements played a vital role in shaping Archaic Greek civilisation and were grouped as Aeolis, Ionia and Doris. Further colonisation led by Miletus and Megara followed in 750–480 BC.

Around 750 BC Phrygia emerged as a power in Anatolia, its people speaking an Indo-European language closer to Greek than to the Anatolian tongues. Phrygians shared the peninsula with Neo-Hittite states and Urartu, whose capital lay near Lake Van. Both Urartu and Phrygia fell in the seventh century BC, giving way to the Carians, Lycians and Lydians.

Cyrus attacked eastern Anatolia in 547 BC and the Achaemenid Empire eventually expanded into western Anatolia. After the Greco-Persian Wars the Aegean Greek city-states regained independence, but most of the interior remained Persian. Anatolia housed two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Temple of Artemis and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

Alexander's victories in 334 and 333 BC brought the collapse of the Achaemenid Empire and increasing cultural homogeneity in Anatolia, though Hellenization met local resistance. After his death the Seleucids ruled large parts of Anatolia while native states emerged around the Marmara and Black Sea, and the kingdom of Armenia appeared in the east. Celts invaded central Anatolia in the third century BC, persisting as the Galatians.

Rome intervened when Pergamon requested assistance against the Seleucids, and Pergamum's heirless king bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, which became the province of Asia. Roman influence then grew across Anatolia, consolidated by victory in the Mithridatic Wars with Pontus after the Asiatic Vespers massacre. By around the 1st century BC Rome had expanded into Pontus and Bithynia and reduced remaining Anatolian states to satellites.

The ecumenical council held at Nicaea in 325 under Roman authority helped establish orthodox expressions of basic Christian teaching. Anatolia had already been central to early Christianity through St Paul's missionary efforts, and his letters from Anatolia comprise the oldest Christian literature. The region thus became a formative centre of the Christian church.

The eastern half of the Roman Empire, centred on Constantinople, survived the conditions that destroyed the West in the fifth century and endured until 1453. For most of its existence it remained the most powerful economic, cultural and military force in the Mediterranean world. Its citizens called themselves Romans; the term Byzantine was coined only after the empire's demise.

The Seljuk ruling family, from the Kınık branch of the Oghuz Turks, defeated the Ghaznavids at the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040 and established the Seljuk Empire in Greater Khorasan. The empire blended Turkish, Persian and Islamic influences drawn from Khurasani traditions. This laid the political foundation for later Turkish expansion westward.

In 1055 the Seljuks captured Baghdad, the Abbasid capital and centre of the Islamic world. The conquest placed the Turkish dynasty at the heart of Islamic political authority and legitimacy.

Victory at Manzikert in 1071 opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement and led to the founding of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. The arrival of the Seljuks began the Turkification of Anatolia through migration, intermarriage and conversion to Islam, a process spanning several centuries. Seljuk expansion was also one of the causes of the Crusades.

The Mongol victory at Köse Dağ in 1243 broke the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, which disappeared by the beginning of the 14th century. Its territory fragmented into various Turkish principalities, or beyliks. A second major wave of Turkic migration into Anatolia accompanied the flight from Mongol expansion in the 13th century.

Beginning in 1299 Osman I established a principality based at Söğüt, from which the Ottomans united the Anatolian beyliks and expanded into the Balkans. Ottoman chroniclers traced Osman's descent to the Kayı tribe of the Oghuz Turks. The dynasty would rule for 623 years.

On 29 May 1453 Mehmed II captured Constantinople, completing the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire. The city, later renamed Istanbul, became the imperial capital and remained the seat of successive Turkish states. The conquest marked the Ottomans' arrival as a leading world power and is widely regarded as marking the end of the medieval period in the eastern Mediterranean. Classical Ottoman architecture subsequently emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Selim I brought Anatolia fully under Ottoman control, and the empire became a global power during his reign and that of Suleiman the Magnificent. Turkification continued as Ottomans mixed with indigenous peoples in Anatolia and the Balkans.

Following their expulsion from Spain, Sephardic Jews settled in the Ottoman Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries. Their arrival added to the empire's religious and commercial diversity.

Persecution of Muslims during Ottoman contraction and in the Russian Empire caused an estimated 5 million deaths, including Turks. Between five and nine million refugees migrated into modern-day Turkey from the Balkans, Caucasus, Crimea and Mediterranean islands, shifting the empire's demographic centre to Anatolia. The refugees were overwhelmingly Muslim and included Circassians, survivors of the Circassian genocide, and Crimean Tatars.

From the second half of the 18th century the Ottoman Empire had begun to decline. The Tanzimat reforms launched in 1839 aimed to modernise the Ottoman state in line with progress made in Western Europe, reshaping law, administration and the military.

In 1858 the Ottomans adopted the French Penal Code of 1810, which imposed no penalties on private same-sex intimacy. Before 1858 the empire had maintained a lenient legal accommodation of same-sex intimacy.

The Ottoman default of 1875 accelerated the empire's shrinking in size, military power and wealth. It triggered uprisings in the Balkan provinces that culminated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

The Ottoman constitution of 1876 was the first among Muslim states, though it proved short-lived. It nonetheless marked an early attempt at constitutional government in the Islamic world.

Balkan uprisings following the 1875 default culminated in war with Russia in 1877–1878. The conflict accelerated Ottoman territorial contraction and the rise of nationalist sentiment among subject peoples.

Rising ethnic tensions amid Ottoman decline burst into violence in the Hamidian massacres of Armenians, which claimed up to 300,000 lives. The killings foreshadowed the far larger genocidal campaigns of the First World War.

Ottoman territories in Europe were lost in the First Balkan War of 1912–1913. Some territory, including Edirne, was recovered in the Second Balkan War of 1913. Paul Mojzes has described the Balkan Wars as an unrecognised genocide in which multiple sides were both victims and perpetrators.

Following the 1913 coup d'état, the Three Pashas took control of the Ottoman government. Under their leadership the empire entered the First World War on the side of the Central Powers.

The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in 1914 and was ultimately defeated. Mustafa Kemal Pasha distinguished himself as a commander at the Battle of Gallipoli during the conflict.

The share of non-Muslims in modern-day Turkey fell from 19.1% in 1914 to 2.5% in 1927. The change reflected genocide, war, and the population exchange with Greece, decisively reshaping the country's religious composition.

During the First World War Ottoman authorities deported the empire's Armenian subjects to Syria and killed large numbers of them, with estimates of the dead ranging from 600,000 to 1.5 million; genocidal campaigns were also committed against Assyrians and Greeks. Armenia and many historians and governments describe the events as genocide, while the Turkish state disputes that characterisation, stating that Armenians were only relocated from the eastern war zone though acknowledging that large numbers died.

The armistice of 1918 ended Ottoman participation in the First World War in defeat. The victorious Allied Powers then sought the partition of the empire, and Allied forces occupied Istanbul in 1918 and İzmir in 1919.

Allied occupation of Istanbul and İzmir initiated the Turkish National Movement under Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The war was waged to revoke the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, and by 1921–1923 Armenian, Greek, French and British armies had been expelled. Its success created the conditions for an independent Turkish state.

The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres provided for the partition of the Ottoman Empire among the victorious Allies. Its terms galvanised the Turkish National Movement and were later superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne. The Treaty of Alexandropol of the same year introduced the name Türkiye into international documents for the first time.

On 23 April 1920 the provisional government in Ankara declared itself the country's legitimate authority and began formalising the legal transition from Ottoman to Republican political system. It waged both armed and diplomatic struggle against occupation and partition.

Military advance and diplomatic success led to the signing of the Armistice of Mudanya on 11 October 1922. It confirmed the nationalist position ahead of the peace settlement at Lausanne.

On 1 November 1922 the parliament in Ankara abolished the Sultanate, ending 623 years of monarchical Ottoman rule. The act cleared the way for the proclamation of a republic the following year.

The Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923 superseded Sèvres and secured international recognition of the sovereignty of the new Turkish state as successor to the Ottoman Empire. The accompanying Lausanne Convention stipulated a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. On 4 October 1923 the last Allied troops withdrew from Istanbul, ending the occupation.

The Turkish Republic was officially proclaimed on 29 October 1923 in Ankara, the country's new capital, with Mustafa Kemal as first president and the name Türkiye Cumhuriyeti adopted. The declaration followed the Treaty of Lausanne, which recognised the new state's borders after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Atatürk's sweeping reforms aimed to transform a religion-based, multi-communal monarchy into a Turkish nation state governed as a parliamentary republic under a secular constitution, including language and alphabet reform.

Atatürk's reforms caused discontent among some Kurdish and Zaza tribes, leading to the Sheikh Said rebellion in 1925. A further uprising, the Dersim rebellion, followed in 1937.

The Civil Code adopted in 1926 was based on the Swiss Civil Code of 1907 and the Swiss Code of Obligations of 1911. Despite changes in 2002, it retains much of the basis of the original code, anchoring Turkish private law in the European tradition.

Women gained the national franchise in 1934, and universal suffrage for both sexes has applied throughout Turkey since that year. The reform was part of the wider Kemalist programme of social transformation. The Surname Law of the same era bestowed on Kemal the honorific surname Atatürk.

İsmet İnönü succeeded Atatürk as president in 1938. He led the country through the Second World War and the beginnings of its post-war reorientation.

In 1939 the Republic of Hatay voted in favour of joining Turkey in a referendum. The accession expanded Turkish territory on the eve of the Second World War.

Turkey remained neutral through almost all of the Second World War before entering on the Allied side on 23 February 1945. Later that year it became a charter member of the United Nations, anchoring its post-war international position.

After a period of one-party rule, an experiment with multiparty politics led to the opposition Democratic Party's 1950 election victory and the peaceful transfer of power; Turkish political parties have multiplied ever since.

Turkey joined the Council of Europe in 1950, aligning itself with Western European institutions in the early Cold War.

Turkey's population grew from 20.9 million in 1950 to 83.6 million in 2020, reaching 85.4 million by 2023. Growth has since stalled, with a rate of 0.1% in 2023 and a total fertility rate of 1.51, well below the replacement level of 2.10.

Following threats from the Soviet Union, Turkey sought alliance with the United States and, after fighting as part of UN forces in the Korean War, joined NATO in 1952. Accession alongside Greece extended the alliance's founding membership into the eastern Mediterranean during the early Cold War, making the country a bulwark against Soviet expansion. Turkey has since maintained one of the alliance's largest standing armies, and membership remains the foundation of its defence posture.

The 27 May coup removed prime minister Adnan Menderes, who was later tried and executed. A new constitution followed in 1961, and the military went on to intervene in politics repeatedly over the following decades.

Heads of state and government from NATO's member countries met in Ankara on 7 and 8 July for the alliance's annual summit. Security services had carried out extensive raids across the capital in the weeks beforehand.

The move eased one of the remaining barriers between the two neighbours, which have no formal diplomatic relations and a border closed since 1993. It followed a December 2025 agreement on visa-free travel for diplomatic and service passport holders.

The ruling reinstated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as chairman of the main opposition CHP in place of Özel, who had been re-elected at a special congress the previous September. The party said it would appeal and described the ruling as part of a wider pattern of legal pressure on opposition-run bodies.

Missiles were shot down over Hatay and Gaziantep provinces on 4, 9 and 13 March, near the Syrian border. No casualties were reported, and neither Ankara nor Tehran gave a public account of the launches.

The pipeline had been shut since March 2023 following an international arbitration ruling against Turkey. Its reopening restored a route for northern Iraqi crude to reach Turkey's Mediterranean coast for export.

Uludağ, a correspondent for Germany's Deutsche Welle, was detained in Ankara over social media posts. Press freedom groups said the case was part of a wider pattern of prosecutions of journalists critical of the government.

The warrants named prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defence minister Israel Katz and armed forces chief Eyal Zamir among others. Israel dismissed the move, which followed Turkey's closure of its ports and airspace to Israeli traffic in August 2025.

The withdrawal followed the group's May 2025 decision to disband and disarm after more than four decades of armed conflict with the Turkish state. Fighters were reported to be relocating to bases in northern Iraq.

The order came as Turkey continued to seek readmission to the United States' F-35 programme, from which it was suspended in 2019. It ranked among the largest export orders in the Eurofighter consortium's history.

The order, covering narrow- and wide-body jets, formed part of the carrier's long-term fleet expansion as it seeks to grow its global route network from Istanbul.

In 2024 the four states agreed to connect Iraqi port facilities to Turkey via road and rail. The corridor would strengthen Turkey's position as a transit hub between the Gulf and Europe.

In 2024 and 2025 Turkey's first electron accelerator, quantum computer and domestically manufactured communication satellite became operational. These milestones mark a deliberate push into high-technology capability under the National Technology Initiative.

Production started in 2023 at the recently discovered Sakarya gas field. The development supports domestic energy supply alongside investment in a low-carbon transition, though fossil fuel subsidies persist until at least 2030.

The magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes on 6 February destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings. Turkish authorities recorded more than 50,000 deaths in Turkey alone; estimates of the combined regional toll vary and remain disputed.

In December 2021 Erdoğan called for expanded official usage of Türkiye, and in May 2022 the government asked the United Nations and other international organisations to use the name officially in English; the UN agreed. Until 2022 the official English name had remained the Republic of Turkey.

The migrant crisis of the 2010s and early 2020s brought millions of refugees and immigrants, and Turkey hosted the largest number of refugees in the world as of April 2020. There were 3.6 million Syrian refugees in November 2020, falling to an estimated 3.3 million by August 2023, with 238,000 granted citizenship by November 2023.

Turkey launched the National Technology Initiative in 2019 to boost the output of high-value-added products. Research and development spending rose from 0.47% of GDP in 2000 to 1.40% in 2023, still around half the OECD average, and the country ranked 43rd in the 2025 Global Innovation Index.

In 2018 Turkish forces and Turkish-backed groups launched an operation in Syria aimed at ousting the US-backed YPG, which Turkey considers an offshoot of the PKK, from the enclave of Afrin. The campaign demonstrated Turkey's willingness to project force across its southern border.

A 2017 referendum replaced the parliamentary republic with an executive presidential system, abolishing the office of prime minister and transferring its powers to the president. On referendum day the Supreme Electoral Council lifted a rule requiring each ballot to carry an official stamp while voting was underway, and opposition parties claimed up to 2.5 million unstamped ballots were accepted as valid.

On 20 May 2016 parliament removed immunity from almost a quarter of its deputies, including 101 from the pro-Kurdish HDP and the main opposition CHP. The measure significantly altered the balance between government and opposition.

Rogue soldiers seized bridges and attacked parliament in Ankara on 15 July, but the attempt collapsed within hours amid public resistance and loyalist forces. More than 250 people were killed, and a subsequent crackdown led to tens of thousands of arrests and dismissals.

Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won the country's first direct presidential election in 2014. The vote marked a shift in the locus of executive authority towards the presidency.

In 2013 the court ruled that the minority provisions of the Lausanne Treaty should also apply to Assyrians in Turkey and to the Syriac language. The judgment expanded formal recognition of minority rights beyond the traditionally recognised communities.

Widespread protests erupted in 2013, sparked by a plan to demolish Gezi Park and growing into general anti-government dissent. From the same period, the independence and integrity of the Turkish judiciary has increasingly been questioned by institutions, parliamentarians and journalists at home and abroad.

In 2013 the Kurdistan People's Congress (KGK, formerly the PKK) and Ankara agreed a ceasefire that has held despite slow progress in ongoing peace talks.

Diplomatic relations with Israel were damaged after the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, normalised in 2016 and cut again following the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. In 2024 Turkey stopped trading with Israel altogether.

The share of population below the PPP-$6.85 per day international poverty threshold fell from 20% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2021. Inequality remained pronounced, with the top 20% of earners receiving 47% of disposable income in 2021 against 6% for the bottom fifth.

Orhan Pamuk received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. Turkey's first nominee had been Yaşar Kemal for Memed, My Hawk in 1973.

The Criminal Code, originally based on the Italian model, was replaced in 2005 by a code with principles similar to the German Penal Code and German law generally. The change accompanied the opening of EU accession negotiations in the same year.

Turkey, an associate member of the European Community since 1964, opened accession negotiations with the European Union in 2005, having undertaken many reforms over the preceding decade to strengthen its democracy and economy.

Turkey has run a universal public healthcare system since 2003. Despite universal coverage, total health expenditure was the lowest among OECD countries in 2018 at 6.3% of GDP against an OECD average of 9.3%. Several city hospital complexes have been planned since 2013.

When the annual Istanbul Pride was first held in 2003, Turkey became the first Muslim-majority country to hold a gay pride march. Since 2015 parades at Taksim Square and İstiklal Avenue have been denied government permission on security grounds, though hundreds defy the ban each year.

The February crisis saw the lira lose roughly half its value within weeks after the collapse of a currency peg. Economist Kemal Derviş was brought in to lead the restructuring, which reshaped banking regulation for the following decade.

Legal changes in the 2000s permitted public use of and teaching in the Kurdish language. The reforms marked a partial relaxation of long-standing restrictions on minority language rights.

After the capture of the group's leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the Kurdish insurgents largely withdrew from Turkey, mainly to northern Iraq.

In 1997 the military helped force the ouster of the then Islamic-oriented government, an episode popularly dubbed a 'post-modern coup'.

Turkey entered the EU Customs Union in 1995, which had an important impact on the Turkish manufacturing sector by integrating it with European markets. Accession negotiations with the European Union began in 2005 but the talks are frozen as of 2024.

Tansu Çiller took office as Turkey's first woman prime minister in 1993, a landmark in the country's political development.

After the suppression of the Kurdish uprising in spring 1991 following the Gulf War ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled toward the Turkish border. Turkey largely refused entry, leaving many stranded in the mountains, though UNHCR estimated some 280,000 had crossed by 6 April 1991. Most returned to Iraq within months after a UN-protected safe haven was established, leaving around 8,000 by early 1992.

Turkey applied for full membership of the European Economic Community in 1987, beginning a long and unresolved bid for European integration.

The insurgency begun in 1984 by the PKK, now known as the Kurdistan People's Congress or Kongra-Gel (KGK), dominated the Turkish military's attention and has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

The constitution approved by referendum in 1982 determines the structure of government, lays out the ideals and standards of state conduct and sets out the state's responsibilities to citizens. It followed the 1980 military intervention and remains the country's basic law.

The PKK launched its armed campaign in the 1980s and is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The conflict has shaped Turkish security policy and domestic politics for decades. In 2025 the PKK declared a ceasefire.

General Kenan Evren led the takeover on 12 September amid political violence and economic crisis, suspending parliament and the constitution. Military rule lasted three years before a return to civilian government under a new constitution.

Turkey has maintained a force of 36,000 troops in Northern Cyprus since 1974. The deployment remains a central feature of its regional posture and a persistent source of diplomatic friction.

Turkish forces landed on the island in July following a Greek-backed coup against the Cypriot government, leading to the island's de facto partition. Northern Cyprus later declared independence in 1983, recognised only by Turkey.

Census figures have not included statistics on ethnicity since the 1965 Turkish census, leaving no reliable official data on the ethnic mix of the population. Survey estimates suggest around 77–78% of adult citizens identify as Turk and 19% as Kurd.

Military interventions in 1960, 1971, 1980 and the 1997 'post-modern' memorandum fractured Turkish democracy and complicated its transition to a stable multiparty system, though each episode eventually resulted in a return of political power to civilians. Between 1960 and the end of the century the leading electoral figures were Süleyman Demirel, Bülent Ecevit and Turgut Özal.