History of the Republic of Turkey
[1] The Young Ottomans who were dissatisfied with these reforms worked together with Sultan Abdülhamid II to realize some form of constitutional arrangement in 1876.
[3] The Armistice of Mudros was signed, which granted the Allies, in a broad and vaguely worded clause, the right to further occupy Anatolia "in case of disorder".
He and the other army officers alongside him dominated the polity that finally established the Republic of Turkey out of what was left of the Ottoman Empire.
[6][7] Turkey was established based on the ideology found in the country's pre-Ottoman history[8] and was also steered towards a secular political system to diminish the influence of religious groups such as the Ulema.
For about the next 10 years, the country saw a steady process of secular Westernization through Atatürk's reforms, which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law with a secular civil code modeled after Switzerland's and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code; recognition of the equality between the sexes and the granting of full political rights to women on 5 December 1934; the language reform initiated by the newly founded Turkish Language Association; replacement of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with the new Turkish alphabet derived from the Latin alphabet; the dress law (the wearing of a fez, is outlawed); the law on family names; and many others.
[16] Historically, Turkey continued the Foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire to balance regional and global powers off against one another, forming alliances that best protected the interests of the incumbent regime.
International conferences gave Turkey full control of the strategic straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, through the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and the Montreux Convention of 1936.
However, because internal fights between power groups and external events like World War II caused a lack of goods in the country, he lost some of his popularity and support.
In the late 1930s Nazi Germany made a major effort to promote anti-Soviet propaganda in Turkey and exerted economic pressure.
[24] İnönü signed a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany on 18 June 1941, 4 days before the Axis powers invaded the Soviet Union.
In July 1942, Bozkurt published a map of Greater Turkey, which included Soviet controlled Caucasus and central Asian republics.
On 27 May 1960, General Cemal Gürsel led a military coup d'état, removing President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Menderes, the second of whom was executed.
Following a decade of Cypriot intercommunal violence and the coup in Cyprus in 1974 staged by the EOKA B paramilitary organisation, which overthrew President Makarios and installed the pro-Enosis (union with Greece) Sampson as dictator, Turkey invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974 by unilaterally exercising Article IV in the Treaty of Guarantee (1960), but without restoring the status quo ante at the end of the military operation.
The fractured political scene and poor economy led to mounting violence between ultranationalists and communists in the streets of Turkey's cities, resulting in some 5,000 deaths during the late 1970s.
Under Özal, the economy boomed, converting towns like Gaziantep from small provincial capitals into mid-sized economic boomtowns.
[42] The leader of PKK, Abdullah Öcalan was captured in Nairobi by the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT)[44] and taken to Turkey where he was sentenced for terrorism[45][46] and treason charges[47][48] in the first days of February 1999.
The 1995 elections brought a short-lived coalition between Mesut Yılmaz's ANAP and the True Path Party, now with Tansu Çiller at the helm.
The events began with an armed attack on several coffee shops in the neighborhood, where an Alevi religious leader was killed.
[52] In 1997, the military, citing his government's support for religious policies deemed dangerous to Turkey's secular nature, sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan requesting that he resign, which he did.
A series of economic shocks led to new elections in 2002, bringing into power the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The outcome of this election, which brought the Turkish and Kurdish ethnic/nationalist parties (MHP and DTP) into the parliament, affected Turkey's bid for the European Union membership.
[58] AKP is the only government in Turkish political history that has managed to win three general elections in a row with an increasing number of votes received in each one.
The AKP has positioned itself in the midpoint of the Turkish political scene, much thanks to the stability brought by steady economic growth since they came to power in 2002.
Although the 2013 protests in Turkey started as a response against the removal of Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul, they have sparked riots across the country in cities such as Izmir and Ankara as well.
[59] Three and a half million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest.
[60] In August 2014, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Turkey's first direct presidential election.
[61] In the Turkish parliamentary elections of 1 November 2015, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won back the absolute majority in parliament: 317 of the 550 seats.
[74][75] In the aftermath of the failed coup, major purges have occurred, including that of military officials, police officers, judges, governors and civil servants.
[78] In December 2016, an off duty police officer, Mevlut Altintas, shot dead a Russian Ambassador inside an Art Gallery.
[88] In May 2023, President Erdogan won a new re-election and his AK Party with its allies held parliamentary majority in the general election.
