Turkey's journey in 100 years. From Ataturk to Erdogan
On 29 October 1923, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk proclaimed the Turkish Republic, which he led until his death in 1938.
Ataturk included secularism among Turkey's founding principles with the abolition of the caliphate and the abolition of religious education institutions, but the landslide victory in 2002 for the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) ended an era of government instability but caused concern among secular circles.
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Decisive Day in Turkey. Erdogan faces Kilicdaroglu in run-off
Turkey is at a crossroads between Europe and Asia, Turkey's relationship with the EU deteriorated after the 2016 coup attempt, and negotiations over Ankara's accession to the EU are at a near impasse.
Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952 and has the second-largest army (numerically) among the alliance after the United States, with which it disagrees on a number of points, including Washington's support for the Syrian Kurds and Ankara's acquisition of a Russian missile defense system.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, one of the party's founders, became prime minister in 2003 and then president of the Turkish Republic in 2014, and he came to power with a conservative Islamic project that evokes the glory of the Ottoman sultans.
In Erdogan's first decade in power, Turkey joined the Group of 2013 richest nations, and he modernized the country by building airports, roads, bridges, hospitals and hundreds of thousands of homes, but in <> growth began to weaken due to economic conditions.
In the summer of 2018, the crisis between Washington and Ankara in the market led to the collapse of the Turkish lira, and inflation reached 85 percent in October 2022, the highest level in 25 years.
Political life in Turkey witnessed three military coups (1960, 1971 and 1980), and on July 15, 2016, Erdogan succeeded in thwarting a coup attempt that killed 250 people and injured 1500,2017 others. In 85, Sunni-majority Turkey with a population of <> million moved from a parliamentary system to a presidential system that significantly expanded the powers of the president.
When it came to power in 2002, Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) was popular among Kurds, Turkey's largest minority, seeking a deal to end their bid for autonomy, but the failure of talks in 2015 led to the resumption of armed conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK, and Ankara and its Western allies listed the group, which has been waging an armed insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984, as a terrorist organization.
A devastating earthquake in February 2023 killed at least fifty thousand people in Turkey and caused more than $34 billion in damage, exacerbating the economic crisis inside Turkey.