History UsefulNotes / Turkey

Turkey ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye''), [[SpellMyNameWithAnS officially known as]] the Republic of Türkiye ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye Cumhuriyeti''), is a Southern UsefulNotes/{{Europe}}an and West Asian country, one of a few countries spanning multiple continents. It is a UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} member and applicant to UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, and the third most populated country in both Europe and UsefulNotes/TheMiddleEast. UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} is the country's biggest city, though the capital city is actually Ankara.

Out of that chaos, the military ruled ''de facto'' for a while with a puppet civilian government. Slowly democracy was re-introduced, but it was unstable at best with no ideology gaining a majority, causing many weak coalitions to form. All of this, of course, was under the spectre of another military intervention. Eventually a tenuous coalition government led by Islamist parties emerged, with the dominant one being the decidedly Islamist RP [[note]]Refah Partisi, in English the "Welfare Party"[[/note]]. When this coalition began to get to "cozy" in regards to religious issues, the military asked Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to resign, in what was deemed a "soft coup". A more left-leaning coalition formed but proved to be unstable, especially because the social-democratic DSP [[note]]''Demoktratik Sol Party'', in English the Democratic Left Party[[/note]] and the nationalist MHP were forced into a coalition despite being on [[EnemyMine opposite sides of the political spectrum.]] Turkey was then [[FromBadToWorse wracked by an economic crisis]]. The end result was that the new center-right AKP [[note]]''Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi'', in English the ''Justice and Development Party''[[/note]] led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan[[note]]The Mayor of Istanbul and a member of the RP, he was arrested after the military ultimatum but returned to politics after his release[[/note]] was swept into office. AKP has effectively governed Turkey for the past decade-and-a-half, which itself is a contentious topic.\\\

Historically, Turkey is synonymous with the Ottoman Empire, which was in fact referred to as the "Turkish Empire" or "Imperium Turcicum" by its contemporaries. Since the end of the Turkish Empire, this period has become known as the Ottoman or Osmanic Empire, just as the Eastern Roman Empire has become known as the Byzantine Empire. At its height, the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents and controlled vast swathes of North Africa, Southern and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Its main opponents for most of its lifetime were the Habsburgs and the Venetians; the former finally turned the tables on the Turks following the last siege of Vienna while the latter were eventually rendered powerless by the Italian Wars of 1494-1559. In the last centuries of its life, the Ottoman Empire also came into conflict with the Russian Empire, who made some serious gains in the Caucasus. Following the First World War, the empire collapsed, but the institution of the Turkish Sultan actually outlived the Habsburg Emperor and the Russian Tsar by around four years. During its life, the Ottoman Empire served as the main enemy for Christendom, since it had destroyed the Byzantine Empire and made rapid gains into Europe. The only ally it had in Europe was France, who was squeezed on all sides by Habsburg possessions. That's not to say that the Christendom was the Empire's only enemies though; on the eastern side, the empire also had a famously heated rivalry with Persia's Safavid and later Qajar dynasties. In fact, Persia's conversion to Shia Islam is thought of as a way to [[BatmanGambit defend themselves from being integrated]] into the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire (which had controlled much of the Middle East and is threatening to encroach further east).\\\

Turkey ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye''), [[SpellMyNameWithAnS officially known as]] the Republic of Türkiye ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye Cumhuriyeti''), is a Southern European and West Asian country, one of a few countries spanning multiple continents. It is a UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} member and applicant to UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, and the third most populated country in both Europe and the Middle East. UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} is the country's biggest city, though the capital city is actually Ankara.

Turkey ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye''), [[SpellMyNameWithAnS officially known as]] the Republic of Türkiye ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye Cumhuriyeti''), is a Southern European and Western Asian country, one of a few countries spanning multiple continents. It is a UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} member and applicant to UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, and the third most populated country in both Europe and the Middle East. UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} is the country's biggest city, though the capital city is actually Ankara.

Media who are not familiar with the Middle East tend to assume that Turkey is just another [[AllMuslimsAreArab Arab country]]. Those who study the region's ethnography will be in for a surprise. The Turkish language is unrelated to most Middle Eastern languages, being part of an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages East Asian language family]] whose roots laid in UsefulNotes/{{Mongolia}} and whose other members are mainly spoken in Central Asia (the major exception is Azerbaijani, which is also spoken in Western Asia), being more closely related to [[UsefulNotes/{{Kazakhstan}} Kazakh]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Uzbekistan}} Uzbek]] and [[UsefulNotes/{{Xinjiang}} Uyghur]] than the Iranian and Semitic languages spoken in the rest of the region. Unlike UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}, you cannot handwave the mistake because of "unfamiliarity with the Arabic script", because Turkish is written with a Latin alphabet and has been since 1928; [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atatürk the leader of that time]] did it precisely to distance the country from its Arab neighbors. Culturally, the country is a weird [[CultureChopSuey Balkan-Caucasian-Greek-Persian mishmash]]. It was built on top of the heart of the [[UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire Eastern Roman Empire]], whose heritage Turkey's last imperial dynasty claimed. The same dynasty was quite a [[ForeignCultureFetish Persian-lover]], as well. Eastern Turkey actually has more in common with UsefulNotes/TheCaucasus and the 19th century-era immigration of Caucasians[[note]]Indigenous inhabitants of the Caucasus, not immigrated Russians[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

** Vice President: Fuat Oktay
** Assembly Speaker: Mustafa Şentop

* Suleiman the Magnificent. The tenth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the longest-reigning. Presided over the expansion of Turkey into Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Also known as "Suleiman the Lawmaker" for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system. A distinguished goldsmith and poet, he also oversaw the Golden Age of Ottoman artistic, literary and architectural development. The Süleymaniye Mosque - the second largest mosque in Istanbul - is named after him.

A peculiarity of Turkey that has been around for a while is the idea of derin devlet, or "deep state", [[UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories an elite group of elites that is believed to secretly control Turkey]]. Turks see this organization/cabal/whatever as simple fact, whereas foreigners tend to see it as merely an odd cultural phenomenon. There was a US-backed counter-guerilla movement trained to keep Turkey out of the hands of the reds, whose existence was revealed in 1974, but this group is defunct and it's not entirely clear how it relates to the deep state of today, other than serving as the inspiration for the "theory." Even Turks themselves can't seem to agree what the deep state's agenda is or who the head members are; they have been seen as anti-democratic by democratic factions, anti-worker by socialist factions, anti-Islamic by Islamist factions, anti-Kurdish by Kurds, and as ultra-nationalists by everyone else. Some argue that they work for the betterment of Turkey or that they are merely a covert arm of government, others believe their goal is to undermine the government and launch coups, which is understandable since that sort of thing seems to happen a lot. It's not clear who leads them, either; it's been said to be led by descendents of the Ottoman sultans, high-level military brass, US-backed guerrillas, criminal kingpins, and corrupt politicians. While the notion of a secret cabal controlling the entire country is (probably) false, it is inspired by very real forces in Turkish politics and history. Namely, the ''derin devlet'' conspiracy theory seems to have evolved out of a need to explain the numerous military coups, the ''kontrgerilla'', the shadiness of the MİT, and the corruption that is endemic to government in general. It also represents a fatalist attitude that is common among Turks; there's a reason the word ''kader'' get's uttered whenever anything goes wrong. Whatever the case, the truth is far from certain.\\\

Turkey ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye''), officially known as the Republic of Türkiye ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye Cumhuriyeti''), is a Southern European and Western Asian country, one of a few countries spanning multiple continents. It is a UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} member and applicant to UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, and the third most populated country in both Europe and the Middle East. UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} is the country's biggest city, though the capital city is actually Ankara.

* [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Türkiye]] from ''Manga/ShoukokuNoAltair'' is basically Ottoman Empire but with a different government system (the country is ruled by a stratocracy instead of caliphate) along with a healthy dose of HistoricalBeautyUpgrade.

Turkish food is commonplace, especially in Europe. Many Turkish immigrants work as street vendors or restaurant owners, especially in Germany, and the food of choice is almost always kebab. Turks are also famous for creating sherbet, although some dispute this. Turkish food generally has a lot more in common with the food of the Balkans and Greece than with its southernly neighbors, usually emphasizing a large amount of dairy products like goat cheese and yogurt. ''Kahve''[[note]]coffee[[/note]] and ''Çay''[[note]]tea[[/note]] are the favored beverages, with the former still enjoyed in the ''kahvehane''[[note]]coffee houses[[/note]] of Istanbul. Unlike many Muslim-majority countries, the sale of alcohol is perfectly legal and although public drinking is typically discouraged (especially in more conservative areas), alcohol consumption isn't much different than in the West.\\\

In 2022, the country renamed itself to "Türkiye" in order to avoid confusion with the bird of the same name.

-->--'''Mustafa Kemal Atatürk''', now the motto of the Republic of Turkey

In 2022, the country is in process of renaming itself to "Türkiye" in order to avoid confusion with the bird of the same name.

Turkey has some other issues relating to human rights and freedom of speech. Their government officially [[WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide denies the Armenian Genocide]] as well as [[NeverMyFault similar genocides]] suffered by the Greeks and Assyrians as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, even though they were committed by the government the present republic deposed [[note]] The reasons for this include the fears that Turkey would be forced to pay reparations of both money and land to the descendants of the victims, and the fact that more than a few of their national heroes such as the Young Turks were involved in the genocide, which taints their national pride. Most citizens of Turkey just have absolutely no idea there was ever a genocide, thanks to their government. But a slowly growing number of citizens who do know about it ''want'' the genocide to be recognized, and the Kurds in the country are generally apologetic over the issue now that they've taken the place of the Christians as Turkey's most oppressed minority.[[/note]]. They also tend to be uptight about the word "Kurd" and the idea of a separate identity for their [[UsefulNotes/{{Kurdistan}} eastern, Kurdish-speaking provinces]]. They were called "mountain Turks". This is all apparently "insulting Turkishness", the idea of a unified Turkish nation-state. This concept of 'insulting Turkishness' is one of the reasons sites like Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} are [[BannedInChina banned in Turkey]], allegedly because of insults to Atatürk as you can be prosecuted for insulting Atatürk in Turkey, or saying anything else that allegedly insults Turkishness.\\\

Turkey, as the Ottoman Empire, was initially neutral during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. Before the conflict, it was being wooed by Imperial Germany, who invested heavily in Turkey, created the Berlin-Baghdad railway and helped modernise the Ottoman army. After the British forcefully requisitioned two warships ordered by the Ottoman Government, Turkey fell further into the orbit of the Central Powers, and officially joined the war after a German FalseFlagOperation. During UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, Turkey fought mainly against the British Empire and her colonies/dominions like Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada in the Middle East and on the Gallipoli peninsula. The Gallipoli Campaign is notable for being a pilgrimage site for Australians and New Zealanders due to the involvement of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Australia}} ANZACs]], as popularised in the Creator/MelGibson film ''Film/{{Gallipoli}}''. Similarly, the war in the Middle East became famous for the actions of T. E. Lawrence (of ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'' fame), who incited the Great Arab Revolt which saw the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire revolt against their Turkish masters. Unfortunately, this ended as a FullCircleRevolution for the Arabs, who were promised a unified, independent Arab State but were instead placed under the control of the British and French empires. Turkey also put up a very weak fight against the Russians, owing to their Supreme Commander - Enver Pasha - being a ModernMajorGeneral with delusions of conquering Central Asia. Like Napoleon before him, Enver Pasha made the sad mistake of trying to invade in ''winter''. The Russo-Turkish conflict was one of the few theatres of the First World War where the Russian Army did well against an opponent. Enver Pasha and much of the Turkish leadership scapegoated the Armenian minority in the region rather than admit that their own strategic failures caused their abysmal performance, and in response the Ottoman government forcibly "deported" millions of Armenians from the Caucasus region. Of course, these deportations left most Armenians stranded in the Syrian desert with no provisions and no water, and they were denied entry into cities like Aleppo (something that actually bothered local governors like Mehmet Celal Bey, who ignored the orders and worked to save thousands of Armenian lives). The end result is that at least 1.5 million Armenians died from starvation, dehydration, the conditions of the grueling march, or the occasional abuse from their Turkish guards. It became evident that this was intentional on part of CUP, and them and the Young Turks' movement had always regarded the Armenian minority with distrust and hate, believing them to be more loyal to foreign powers than to the Ottoman state, and expecting them to revolt like the Greeks and Serbs before them. Of course, the deportations did nothing to actually reverse the dramatic Turkish losses on the Caucasus Front. Fortunately for them, the Turks were saved by the collapse of the Tsarist regime and UsefulNotes/RedOctober. Less fortunately for them, the Central Powers still ended up losing, and the Ottoman Empire soon lost all its territory outwith Anatolia and Thrace.\\\

Finally, Southeastern Anatolia is located to the south of the Taurus and west of the Zagros. It is also not part of historical Anatolia, being the northern extension of the Arabian Plate and sharing the same geographical features as northern Syria. It is a rather hilly plateau crisscrossed by river valleys, including the Tigris and Euphrates, and featuring Mediterranean climate. The irrigation projects of the 20th century further cemented this region as a prominent breadbasket. The largest cities in Southeastern Anatolia are Gaziantep and Diyarbakır. There is also a city called [[AwesomeMcCoolName Batman]], although the name's etymology is far more mundane (it's a shortened form of ''Batı Raman'', the name of a local mountain).\\\

* Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Politician, the 25th Prime Minister (2003–2014) and the 12th President of Turkey (2014–present). Also the current head of the AKP party, which has dominated the country since 2002. He oversaw an era of economic growth, relaxation of the strict secularist policies (the hijab ban was lifted during his tenure), and gradual erosion of parliamentary politics, culminating with the successful 2018 referendum to switch into presidential governance. He entered Turkey into the Syrian Civil War on the side of the rebels, bringing him face to face with Russia and the United States. [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment A very divisive figure]], to say the least.

* Ahmet Ertegun was one of the founders of Atlantic Records, and incredibly influential record label that had major hits in soul, rock, and R&B music. Atlantic would go on to be a label for musicians and bands like Ben E. King, Wilson Pickett, Music/ArethaFranklin, Music/OtisRedding, Percy Sledge, Music/LedZeppelin, Music/TheRollingStones, and was even the guy who brought Music/NeilYoung in to Music/CrosbyStillsNashAndYoung.

As a result of being bordered by mountain ranges at all sides, Central Anatolia is mostly semi-arid steppe, very hot during the summer but chilly during the winter. The geological formation of the plateau produces some impressive landforms, such as the Cappadocian fairy chimneys. The little available rainfall is important for agriculture, since there are few rivers and the lakes are saline. Nevertheless, Central Anatolia has several large cities (including Ankara) and is way livelier than its eastern neighbor, Eastern Anatolia, which is basically the same but with the cold turned UpToEleven. Outside of a couple of population centers like Erzurum and Van, it is sparsely populated and very rural. It has both Lake Van and Mount Ararat (called ''Ağrı'' in Turkish), the country's largest lake and highest mountain, respectively. Historically, this region is not included within Anatolia proper, instead being mostly the western half of the Armenian Highlands. Meanwhile, the extreme southeast, in the provinces of Hakkâri and Şırnak, is part of the Zagros mountain range.\\\

The last couple of years have seen the economy nosedive. Economic analysts blame Erdoğan for fucking with the interests rates against the advice of his ministers, on top of spending excessively on borrowed capital. Erdoğan's popularity has fallen as a result, as his managing of the economy was one of the biggest reasons he had enjoyed so much support in the past. Turkey has also drifted further from its NATO allies, with Erdoğan getting in repeated diplomatic rows with European nations by calling any European politician he doesn't like a "Nazi." They were recently denied the export of the new F-35 stealth fighter as a consequence of purchasing S400 air-defense systems from Russia[[note]]The US hasn't sold Turkey air-defence weapons since the 1960s, and the ones they sold them back then were hideously outdated single-man quad cannons that almost certainly could not shoot down a modern jet aircraft. This was likely done on purpose to foster a dependence on the US, as Turkey would need American troops with American air-defenses on their soil, such as at İncirlik Airbase. Losing out on the disastrous and expensive F-35 is a small price to pay to secure an independent air defense network.[[/note]], and they were supporting an opposing side of the Syrian Civil War from the US and EU, who had backed the mostly-Kurdish SDF. Turkey and its militias have engaged in conflict with the SDF on multiple occasions, and it is likely that US forces withdrew from SDF territory in 2016 to avoid causing an international incident with the country that is ostensibly their ally. Erdoğan has tried to repair relations with Russia, a long-time enemy of the Turks, but numerous diplomatic incidents (including the shooting down of a Russian jet during a dispute over air space, and the assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey by a former member of Erdoğan's security detail no less) and competing goals in Syria and the Caucuses have made rapprochement difficult. Turkey has cozied up tightly to Azerbaijan, a country that shares ethnic and linguistic ties, and Turkey supported them in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2021.

Turkey does have its own film industry, but it hasn't gained much notoriety outside of Turkey. Turkish television, on the other hand, has gained widespread popularity over the last decade, with significant success in the Middle East, Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South and Central Asia. More recently, viewership has expanded into Western Europe and North America, namely through streaming services such as Creator/{{Netflix}}. Truly a television powerhouse, it was the second biggest exporter of serials in 2017, only behind the United States. Most [[TurkishDrama Turkish television series]] [[note]]''dizi'' in Turkish, plural ''diziler''[[/note]] live by the RuleOfDrama, feature LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, and have absurdly long runtimes: it is not uncommon for a single episode of a weekly drama to run over two hours.\\\

Turkey ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye''), officially known as the Republic of Turkey ('''Turkish:''' ''Türkiye Cumhuriyeti''), is a Southern European and Western Asian country, one of a few countries spanning multiple continents. It is a UsefulNotes/{{NATO}} member and applicant to UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion, and the third most populated country in both Europe and the Middle East. UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} is the country's biggest city, though the capital city is actually Ankara.

* After vowels, the letter ''y'' is like an ''i'' in English, so ''Kayseri'' sounds like ''Kaiseri.''

The last couple of years have seen the economy nosedive. Economic analysts blame Erdoğan for fucking with the interests rates against the advice of his ministers, on top of spending excessively on borrowed capital. Erdoğan's popularity has fallen as a result, as his managing of the economy was one of the biggest reasons he had enjoyed so much support in the past. Turkey has also drifted further from its NATO allies, with Erdoğan getting in repeated diplomatic rows with European nations by calling any European politician he doesn't like a "Nazi." They were recently denied the export of the new F-35 stealth fighter as a consequence of purchasing S400 air-defense systems from Russia[[note]]The US hasn't sold Turkey air-defence weapons since the 1960s, and the ones they sold them back then were hideously outdated single-man quad cannons that almost certainly could not shoot down a modern jet aircraft. This was likely done on purpose to foster a dependence on the US, as Turkey would need American troops with American air-defenses on their soil, such as at Incirlik Airbase. Losing out on the disastrous and expensive F-35 is a small price to pay to secure an independent air defense network.[[/note]], and they were supporting an opposing side of the Syrian Civil War from the US and EU, who had backed the mostly-Kurdish SDF. Turkey and its militias have engaged in conflict with the SDF on multiple occasions, and it is likely that US forces withdrew from SDF territory in 2016 to avoid causing an international incident with the country that is ostensibly their ally. Erdoğan has tried to repair relations with Russia, a long-time enemy of the Turks, but numerous diplomatic incidents (including the shooting down of a Russian jet during a dispute over air space, and the assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey by a former member of Erdoğan's security detail no less) and competing goals in Syria and the Caucuses have made rapprochement difficult. Turkey has cozied up tightly to Azerbaijan, a country that shares ethnic and linguistic ties, and Turkey supported them in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2021.

* In ''Series/TheBrave'', Incirlik Air Base is the main base of operations for the protagonists. The two-part finale episodes also take place in Adana, Turkey, which is literally a 20 minute drive away from Incirlik.

* Mission 4 of the GLA campaign in the base ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerGenerals'' campaign has them destroy the U.S. Air Force base at Incirlik, Turkey.