History of Turkey

[6] The Urfa Man statue is dated c. 9000 BC, to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and is defined as "the oldest known naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human".

After the fall of the Hittites, the new states of Phrygia and Lydia stood strong on the western coast as Greek civilization began to flourish.

After Alexander's death, his conquests were split amongst several of his trusted generals, but were under constant threat of invasion from both the Gauls and other powerful rulers in Pergamon, Pontus, and Egypt.

The Seleucid Empire, the largest of Alexander's territories, and which included Anatolia, became involved in a disastrous war with Rome culminating in the battles of Thermopylae and Magnesia.

[30] The Thracians (Ancient Greek: Θρᾷκες, Latin: Thraci) were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting a large area in Central and Southeastern Europe.

[34] By the 5th century BC, the Thracian presence was pervasive enough to have made Herodotus[35] call them the second-most numerous people in the part of the world known by him (after the Indians), and potentially the most powerful, if not for their lack of unity.

Before the expansion of the Kingdom of Macedon, Thrace was divided into three camps (East, Central, and West) after the withdrawal of the Persians following their eventual defeat in mainland Greece.

[38][39] The Persian Achaemenid Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC,[40] which led to increasing cultural homogeneity and Hellenization in the area.

During the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565), the empire reached its greatest extent after the fall of the west, re-conquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including Africa, Italy and Rome, which it held for two more centuries.

The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources, and during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, it lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Rashidun Caliphate.

(Tokhara Yabghus, Turk Shahis) Historians generally agree that the first Turkic people lived in a region extending from Central Asia to Siberia.

[49] The earliest separate Turkic peoples appeared on the peripheries of the late Xiongnu confederation about 200 BC[49] (contemporaneous with the Chinese Han Dynasty).

Unlike its Xiongnu predecessor, the Göktürk Khanate had its temporary khans from the Ashina clan that were subordinate to a sovereign authority controlled by a council of tribal chiefs.

[citation needed] Turkic peoples and related groups migrated west from Turkestan and what is now Mongolia towards Eastern Europe, Iranian plateau and Anatolia and modern Turkey in many waves.

The Seljuq Turkmens created a medieval empire that controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf.

From their homelands near the Aral Sea, the Seljuqs advanced first into Khorasan and then into mainland Persia before eventually conquering eastern Anatolia.

After largely expanding to Europe and Anatolia, in 1453, the Ottomans nearly completed the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople during the reign of Mehmed II.

The Ottoman Empire would continue to expand into the Eastern Anatolia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, North and East Africa, the islands in the Mediterranean, Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian peninsula in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

At sea, the empire contended with the Holy Leagues, composed of Habsburg Spain, the Republic of Venice and the Knights of St. John, for control of the Mediterranean.

Its inhabitants were of varied ethnicities, including Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Greeks, French, and Italians (particularly from Genoa and Venice).

Following the loss of its outer territories and the expulsion of Muslims from former Ottoman Europe, Ottomanist pluralist ideas fell out of favor, replaced by anti-Christian sentiment.

[70] Faced with territorial losses on all sides the Ottoman Empire under the rule of the Three Pashas forged an alliance with Germany who supported it with troops and equipment.

In 1921–1923, the Armenian, Greek, French, and British armies had been expelled:[75][76][77][78] The military advance and diplomatic success of the Ankara Government resulted in the signing of the Armistice of Mudanya on 11 October 1922.

The handling of the Chanak Crisis (September–October 1922) between the United Kingdom and the Ankara Government caused the collapse of David Lloyd George's Ministry on 19 October 1922[79] and political autonomy of Canada from the UK.

The reforms aimed to transform the old religion-based and multi-communal Ottoman monarchy into a Turkish nation state that would be governed as a parliamentary republic under a secular constitution.

[85] The fez was banned, full rights for women politically were established, and new alphabet for Turkish based upon the Latin script was created.

An invasion was threatened in 1941 but did not happen and Ankara refused German requests to allow troops to cross its borders into Syria or the USSR.

The demands by the Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits, prompted the United States to declare the Truman Doctrine in 1947.

The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece, and resulted in large-scale U.S. military and economic support.

[94] After participating with the United Nations forces in the Korean War, Turkey joined NATO in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean.