History UsefulNotes / Turkey

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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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.

* Istanbul, or Constantinople, or Konstantiniyye was the principle setting of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations.'' The game was probably responsible for introducing no small number of people to some of the intricacy of Turkish history.

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 Iranic 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 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 anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 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/{{Uzbekistan}} Uzbek]], [[UsefulNotes/{{Kazakhstan}} Kazakh]] and [[UsefulNotes/{{Xinjiang}} Uyghur]] than anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 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 Korean, Mongolian and Japanese than anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

Turkey has a notable cultural industry, especially in the music area - the Holly Valance song "Kiss Kiss" was originally sung in Turkish (strangely enough, the original singer is male, while a significant number of the various covers have been sung by women.) Plus belly dancers, which people tend to focus on. The oil wrestling is male-only, so it's usually ignored (of course, it largely depends on the demographic).

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 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 Korean, Mongolian and Japanese than anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 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 Korean, Mongolian and Japanese than anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 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 Korean, Mongolian and Japanese than anything in 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages a family]] whose roots laid in Mongolia and whose other members are mainly spoken in Central Asia (the major exception is Azerbaijani, which is also spoken in West Asia). 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

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 and Hitler after 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. 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.

The Turks were a conglomerate of nomadic peoples who had origins in Western Mongolia and Siberia. There were many confederations, some friendly, some hostile to each other. Although they were grouped with other "barbarian" nomadic peoples during antiquity, by the 6th century, they had set up a huge empire in Central Asia named the Turkic Khaganate, facilitating migrations to conquered areas. When the khaganate fell to civil war in 581, the Turks dispersed, some forming their own polities, others joined other nations' armies, etc. Some already reached Europe before the modern Turks did; the Bulgars formed a state in Ukraine which reached coastal Black Sea region, after which their ethnonym was claimed by a Slavic people we know today as the Bulgarians. Then there were the Khazars, who ruled the Pontic-Caspian Steppe and had extensive contacts (including marriage alliances) with the Byzantines. The Khazars notably had a Jewish aristocracy, which was very unusual outside the Levant.

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.

Asian Turkey is where things get interesting. Owing to the number of rugged mountain ranges, this region has many climactic zones. Turkey's mountains are grouped into two general ranges: the Pontic Alps in the north and the Taurus in the south, including its eastern extension, the Anti-Taurus, which merges with the Pontic Alps. The Pontic Alps separates the central highlands from the Black Sea, whose coast is the wettest region in the country. Both elevation and precipitation gradually rise from the west to east. The few rivers that penetrate the gorges into the Black Sea create deep valleys that offer a lot of SceneryPorn.

Finally, Southeastern Anatolia is located to the south of the Anti-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, semi-arid plateau crisscrossed by river valleys. 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).

* ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'' is set in Hatay, as mentioned above, the province hosting Antioch.

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 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages a family]] whose roots laid in West Siberia and whose other members are mainly spoken in Central Asia (the major exception is Azerbaijani, which is also spoken in West Asia). 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

Media who are not familiar with the Middle East tend to assume that Turkey is just another [[{{Qurac}} 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 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages a family]] whose roots laid in West Siberia and whose other members are mainly spoken in Central Asia (the major exception is Azerbaijani, which is also spoken in West Asia). 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

Turkey has the world's 17th largest gross domestic product. It is considered an industrialized upper middle income state (as opposed to a post-industrial high income state), with a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median median income]] about on par with other countries in that category such as UsefulNotes/{{Chile}} and UsefulNotes/{{Russia}}. There is a heavy economic [[https://i.redd.it/bl9vx5hmpoxz.jpg regional divide]] in Turkey, with the northwest portion of the country being on par with lesser first world countries such as UsefulNotes/SouthKorea and UsefulNotes/{{Italy}},[[note]]Note that nearly a fifth of the entire population of Turkey lives in that tiny purple region; that's Istanbul.[[/note]] and the rest of the country being much closer to the rest of the Middle East. The Turkish economy, like most every non-developing economy, is overwhelmingly service-based, but agricultural and industrial output remain key. [[https://oec.world/en/profile/country/tur/ Main exports]] include cars, textiles, steel, and precious metals. It does the bulk of its trade with the European Union. In the past decade Turkey has maintained very high growth for an upper middle income country, and was projected to be the fastest grower in OECD from 2015 to 2025. Unfortunately, due to government overspending and mismanagement creating a construction bubble, as well as an increasingly hostile global trade environment (Turkey ending up caught in the American-China trade war), the Turkish economy entered a recession in 2018 that is still ongoing, arresting previously high growth.

Turkey had been a Presidential Dictatorship up until that point, led by Atatürk and his successor İsmet İnönü. However, in the 1950s the CHP [[note]]''Cümhüriyet Halk Partesi'', known in English as the ''Republican People's Party''[[/note]] had a staggering electoral loss to the new Democratic Party. The 1950s saw a major period of growth and expansion for the Turkish economy with new industries opening up, new infrastructural development, and improving literacy and education. However, in 1960 the DP government was ousted in a coup d'etat by the military. İnönü and the CHP were returned to office for a short time before losing another election to a selection of new successor parties to the DP. The military stepped in ''again'', starting a massive period of civil strife in Turkey that lasted for an entire decade. The 1970s saw the rise of the Grey Wolves[[note]]who were themselves a paramilitary wing of the nationalist ''Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi''[[/note]], an organization that is [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment divisive at best]], which engaged in routine street violence in the name of "stopping communism". This period of instability was ended when the military committed ''another'' coup d'etat in 1980. This coup had a profound impact on Turkey as thousands of Turks were killed, imprisoned, or purged. The 1980 coup was noticeably more violent than other coups before or since and is a major reason for modern Turks' distrust of their military.

* Mehmed the Conqueror. At the tender age of 21, he succeeded in conquering Constantinople, a city that had been previously sieged fifteen times and with only one success. The fall of Constantinople destroyed Byzantium and established the Ottomans as the spiritual successors to the Roman Empire. Mehmet II used the Byzantine administration model as a blueprint for the Ottoman State, and this model stayed in place long after his death. He also unified Anatolia under the Ottomans and brought the empire into Europe, advancing as far as Belgrade. This is the guy known for his skirmishes with UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler in Wallachia and Stefan the Great in Moldova.
* 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.
* Ahmed I. Notable only for creating the [[{{Egopolis}} Sultan Ahmed Mosque]], one of the most impressive mosques in the world and a masterpiece of Turko-Byzantine architecture. Was erected in an effort to distract the public from the Sultan's unsuccessful wars against the Habsburgs and Persia. Until this point, mosques had been paid for with 'war booty' but, due to his recent military failures, Ahmed I had to borrow from the treasury, upsetting the ulema - Muslim legal scholars. Pope Benedict XVI visited the Blue Mosque (as it is also known) in 2006, only the second time in history that a Pope has visited a Muslim place of worship.

* Orhan Pamuk. Novelist, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.

* Tarkan. No doubt it would be amiss not to mention Turkey's biggest pop star.

Media who are not familiar with the Middle East tend to assume that Turkey is just another [[{{Qurac}} 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 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages a family]] whose roots laid in West Siberia and whose other members are mainly spoken in Central Asia (the major exception is Azerbaijani, which is also spoken in West Asia). 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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_languages 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 white people[[/note]] only amplified the connection. The other wave of immigration was from the Balkans, after the dynasty's rule over the region crumbled.

TheNewTens saw the country got increasingly hectic. The Syrian Civil War erupted from 2012 and took a toll on Turkey, with it hosting the lion's share of Syrian refugees among the world and suffering from some spillover, including terrorist bombings from 2014 to 2016 and occasional missile strikes into the bordering provinces. The 2013 ceasefire with the Kurdish insurgency broke down in 2015 and hostilities resumed in the southwest. The following year saw an attempted army coup. Finally, President Erdoğan successfully campaigned for a referendum in 2018 to abolish the post of the prime minister, turning the country's government into a presidential one. [[BrokenBase To say that mixed feelings abound]] would be, uh, putting it mildly.

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. 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. Whatever the case, the truth is far from certain.

They're also responsible for changing the name of the city of [[IstanbulNotConstantinople Constantinople to Istanbul]], although the city was known as Kostantiniyye (the Turkish translation of Constantinople) throughout the duration of the Ottoman Empire, after it was captured from the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453. The name Istanbul itself is OlderThanTheyThink, being the Turkish form of a colloquial Greek word that had been used since medieval times (''eis ten polin'', "to the city", because by all accounts it really was the only City in the ERE). Modern Greeks still call it ''Konstantinopouli'', though.

Turkey should not be compared with the rest of the Middle East (although nowadays, it seems to get a bit more authoritarian by the day). It doesn't use the Arabic script (which hasn't been used in Turkey since 1928, rather using its own version of the Latin script) or language, the country is ''strictly'' secular (the favourite national flamewar is over wearing headscarves in public) and it's culturally somewhat different. It also isn't desert, but then again, a substantial part of the region isn't. It is Muslim, true, but if a leader says so too loudly he risks military take-over by the "Guardian of Secularism", the army. This has happened multiple times for Islam, Communism, what ever the current ideology the Army doesn't like. Recently, however, this trend has changed; the latest indication of a coup attempt lead to a strong public backlash against the Armed Forces. It seems that the Turkish military is no longer a viable force in politics.

Turkey distinctly straddles the line between East and West, given its geographic location. It has often been a melting pot of multiple cultures, being built on top of Graeco-Roman empires with influences from both the Caucasus and from the Middle East. As such, Turkey maintains a unique identity as being not quite European and not quite Middle Eastern, but somewhere in between. Nevertheless, Turkey (or rather, the Anatolian Peninsula that makes up 90% of the country's land area) ''is'' widely considered to be a part the traditional Middle East since at least the Middle Ages.

[[folder:History - Age of Turks (1400s–present)]]

[[folder:Modern Turkey]]

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. Let's not sugarcoat this: Turkey is pretty much a democratically elected dictatorship, especially under its current President Erdogan.

Turkey is also one of the few Muslim-majority countries to have friendly relations with Israel[[note]]...actually, this is kind of an understatement. There are many Muslim countries amicable to Israel, like fellow Turkic nations Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (ignore what Film/{{Borat}}'s saying) and the non-Arab Muslim African states. The significance of the Arab-Israeli War and the "Arab = Muslim" mentality is what caused this sentiment to grow.[[/note]], it had briefly deteriorated quickly in 2010, due to a certain incident involving a certain flotilla bound for a certain strip of territory in the Levant. Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu eventually apologized for the raid almost three years later, and ties had been brought to normal.

Anatolia has been a cultural melting pot region for thousands of years. The place is the UrExample for "Asia"; the term came to be used for the continent later, by which time the name was suffixed with "Minor" to refer to the original location. It would probably take up pages after pages to describe the region's history before Alp Arslan and his army marched into the peninsula in the 11th century, so here's a summary. The Hurrians and Hittites were the first peoples to settle the area, having been recorded to live there since before the Late Bronze Age collapse [[OlderThanDirt circa 1200 BCE]]. Both created empires that were major powers in the ancient Middle East, though by 700 BCE they were subsumed under the Assyrians. There were also the Urartu, the Hurrians' distant cousins who established a state at the Armenian Highlands in the east. Armenians are believed to have descended from them. Around 600 BCE, the Iranians quickly began rising in power, first with Medes and Babylonia conquering Assyria, then Medes defeating Urartu, and finally the Achaemenids took the cake by absorbing all of them and the Babylonians, setting up an empire that stretched from Northern Greece all the way to Sindh. Medes are believed to have been the ancestors of Kurds.

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 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. Let's not sugarcoat this: Turkey is pretty much a democratically elected dictatorship, especially under its current President Erdogan.

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, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. 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 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.