Turkey

Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, straddles Anatolia in West Asia with a small foothold of East Thrace in Europe, touching the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Mediterranean, and bordering Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Greece and Bulgaria. Over eighty-six million people live here, Turks with a great Kurdish minority, Muslim in majority under a secular constitution; Ankara is the capital and Istanbul the economic heart. The land reaches back through Hittites, Hellenized kingdoms and Rome to Byzantium before Seljuk Turks rode into Anatolia in the eleventh century and the Ottomans, rising from 1299, took Constantinople in 1453 and built a world empire under Selim and Suleiman. From 1789 reform and nationalism gnawed at a shrinking realm, the Three Pashas led it into the First World War, and defeat brought occupation and partition. Mustafa Kemal's War of Independence swept the occupiers out, abolished the sultanate, and proclaimed the republic on 29 October 1923. Secular law, the Latin script and Ankara's planning replaced empire, and neutral Turkey reached 1945 intact.