Modern Turkey was founded in 1923
from the Anatolian remnants of the defeated Ottoman Empire by national hero
Mustafa KEMAL, who was later honored with the title Ataturk or "Father of
the Turks." Under his authoritarian leadership, the country adopted
wide-ranging social, legal, and political reforms. After a period of one-party
rule, an experiment with multi-party politics led to the 1950 election victory
of the opposition Democratic Party and the peaceful transfer of power. Since
then, Turkish political parties have multiplied, but democracy has been
fractured by periods of instability and intermittent military coups (1960,
1971, 1980), which in each case eventually resulted in a return of political
power to civilians. In 1997, the military again helped engineer the ouster -
popularly dubbed a "post-modern coup" - of the then Islamic-oriented
government. Turkey intervened militarily on Cyprus in 1974 to prevent a Greek
takeover of the island and has since acted as patron state to the "Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus," which only Turkey recognizes. A separatist
insurgency begun in 1984 by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - now known as
the Kurdistan People's Congress or Kongra-Gel (KGK) - has dominated the Turkish
military's attention and claimed more than 30,000 lives. After the capture of
the group's leader in 1999, the insurgents largely withdrew from Turkey mainly
to northern Iraq. In 2004, KGK announced an end to its ceasefire and attacks
attributed to the KGK increased. Turkey joined the UN in 1945 and in 1952 it
became a member of NATO. In 1964, Turkey became an associate member of the
European Community. Over the past decade, it has undertaken many reforms to
strengthen its democracy and economy; it began accession membership talks with
the European Union in 2005.
(Source: The World Factbook 2009.
Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2009)
For more information about Turkey:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
