HISTORY

The Anatolian peninsula (also called Asia Minor), comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest continually inhabited regions in the world due to its location at the intersection of Asia and Europe.

The Republic of Turkey was the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, following the overthrow of Sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin by the new Republican assembly of Turkey in 1922. This new regime delivered the 'coup de grâce' to the Ottoman state which had been practically wiped away from the world stage following the First World War.

Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 by national hero Mustafa Kemal, who was later honored with the title Ataturk or "Father of the Turks". Mustafa Kemal became the republic's first president and subsequently introduced many radical social, legal and political reforms with the aim of founding a new secular republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past.

Following the end of the single-party period in 1945, the multi-party period witnessed tensions over the following decades, and the period between the 1960s and the 1980s was particularly marked by periods of political instability that resulted in a number of military coups d'états in 1960, 1971, 1980 and a post-modern coup d'état in 1997. The liberalization of the Turkish economy that started in the 1980s changed the landscape of the country, with successive periods of high growth and crises punctuating the following decades.

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 enabling it to begin accession membership talks with the European Union.