Introducing Turkey

HISTORY

The modern Republic of Turkey (Turkiye Çumhuriyet) officially came into being on October 29th, 1923. The first president was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a successful general who had fought with distinction in the First World War and against the various armies (Greece, France, Italy, Britain) who invaded or occupied parts of Turkey in the years to 1923. His legacy still dominates the country’s consciousness and political system.

Despite its relative youth as a country, the geopolitical predecessors of the current state of Turkey have left a rich and complex cultural, religious and political history that impacts on the current country and its immediate neighbours, as well as on the wider world.

Classical History

Many of the myths and legends of the ancient world are often centred on Turkey. Jason led his Argonauts along the Black Sea coast to Trebizond (Trabzon) looking for the Golden Fleece. The flames of the Chimaera still break the surface of the ground near Antalya on Mount Olympos. And the wonders of Troy are to be found on the western coast of Turkey.

Archaeological digs have revealed finds dating back to the palaeolithic age. The neolithic settlement at Çatalhöyük, south of Konya, was founded in 6500BC – a site still remarkably well preserved today. The following 8,500 years of history in the region cover much of what we know as classical history and defined the modern world. The names of historical rulers, civilisations and places are well known to people all over the world and are part of the English speaking world’s heritage as much as they are of Turkey’s.

The names of Croesus, King Midas, Alexander the Great and St Paul, the Hittites, Galatians and Phrygians and the cities of Troy, Gordion, Constantinople and Antioch are all well known, though few people realise their place in Turkish history.

Agamemnon and the wars with Troy are included in the Iliad and took place on the coast of what is now Turkey. The Phrygians were one of the earliest civilisations of Turkey and the golden touch of King Midas in his city of Gordion have remained in our folklore. Gordion lies an hour west of Ankara on the Anatolian plains and Midas’ massive tomb, one of many tumuli at Gordion, demonstrates the power and wealth he must have commanded in 700BC.

Croesus also ruled at a similar time to Midas, but over the Lydians, until the Persians invaded and pushed the Lydian civilisation aside. Having introduced the idea of using coins as currency, Croesus gave his name to the saying, ‘As rich as Croesus’.

When the Persians invaded and subjugated the Ionian cities that gave the world their majestic Ionic Columns, the Hellenistic culture of what is now Turkey went into decline. However, just too far away for the Persians to occupy successfully, Athens began its ascent as the centre of Hellenism.

Alexander the Great overwhelmed the Persians when he swept out of Macedonia in 300BC, before he went on to conquer the Middle East and reach India. As he crossed Turkey he cut the Gordion Knot at Gordium then gave his Macedonian name, Iskender, to the city of Iskenderun and left his name on a particularly delicious Turkish dish, the Iskender Kebab.

After Alexander, the Celts arrived and made their Galatian capital at what is now Ankara. The Armenians also settled in the east of the country and the great kingdom of Pergamum began its rise to power.

The Romans

The Romans arrived next: they moved into western Turkey and inherited most of Anatolia when the last Pergamum king died without an heir and left his kingdom to Rome.

The pre-Christian rulers of Turkey also left a number of monuments on the landscape that remain to this day. Mausolus left his tomb, the Mausoleum, at Halicarnassus (Bodrum) and Antiochus left a temple and huge stone heads at Nemrut Dag. The Pontic kings left magnificent rock-carved tombs at Amasya and there are Lycian tombs in the sea cliffs near Dalyan.

Once Christianity arrived it made a massive impression on the country. St Paul, from Tarsus on the south east coast of Turkey, brought back Christianity and preached at Ephesus, where he wrote his letter to the Ephesians. The Seven Churches of Revelation are all in Turkey (Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Sardis, Philadelphia, Thyatira and Laodicea). Cappadocia and Phrygia are also mentioned in the bible and the house of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is on a hill near Ephesus. The first three Ecumenical Councils of Churches were also held in Turkey, at Nicea in 325, Constantinople in 381 and Ephesus in 431.

As the western Roman Empire in Europe crumbled under assault from the Goths and Vandals, the eastern empire regrouped, grew richer and built New Rome at Byzantium, which then went on to become Constantinople.

The Romans brought peace and roads, as well as wealth and magnificent buildings. Roman remains litter modern Turkey and have survived well in the dry heat of Anatolia. So well, in fact, that the last will and testament of Augustus Caesar can still be read where it was engraved on the walls of the Temple of Augustus and Rome in Ankara.

The Islamic Empire

As the Roman Empire declined under weakening emperors, the Muslim Arabic Empire grew outward from Medina. At its peak, the Islamic Empire stretched from western Turkey to Iran and into Egypt.

Mohammed’s successors, the Caliphs, ruled over a period of great cultural achievement for almost 500 years. During this time the Turks, from central Asia, were employed as mercenaries and were a major factor in the Arabic empire’s successes.

The Turkish Selçuk Empire

The Turks eventually became too powerful to be controlled and the Turkish Selçuk Empire established itself in Persia. The Selçuk army moved west and took Baghdad, before squeezing the Byzantines westwards and taking over Anatolia. The distinctive Selçuk architecture graces many mosques in today’s Turkey and their greatest poet, Omar Khayyam, gave the world his Rubaiyat.

When the Selçuk Empire declined, it split into Sultanates, with Anatolia going its own way. During this Selçuk period the Mevlana established the mystic order of the Whirling Dervishes. Having grown to hold significant political power they were expelled to Konya by Atatürk and stripped of much of their influence.

A mostly uncharted period of Turkish history followed, when the Mongols charged in, leaving only a few buildings and little else when they left in a little over 100 years. Huge numbers of Turkic refugees fled westward across Anatolia in front of the Mongols, pushing up against the Byzantine Empire. As they went westward and fought a rearguard action against the Mongols, the Turks learnt to use the cavalry techniques of the invader. This horsemanship they put to good use against the Byzantines, and later for the Byzantine Empire as mercenaries. Though the Mongols reached beyond present day Ankara, they never completely took over the region.

While the weakening remains of the Byzantine Empire faced the fractured remains of the Selçuk Empire, they also had to contend with four crusades of European Christians heading off to liberate the Holy Land. Christian Constantinople was even invaded and pillaged by one of these crusades.

The minor Selçuk Turk fiefdoms took advantage of the weakened Byzantine Empire and picked off their lands piecemeal. Though they captured most of Anatolia and grouped around the chieftain Osman, who gave his name to the Osmanli (Ottoman) Empire, Constantinople remained a Christian Byzantine city.

The Ottoman Empire

Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans in 1453 and they moved into Europe, through the Balkans, over the next 80 years. By this time the Ottoman Empire stretched from the Arabian Peninsula to Austria and rivalled the great Empires of history.

As with most great Empires, it fell into a long and slow decline. In the case of the Ottoman Empire the decline took 300 years to really bite and Greece did not gain full independence until 1832, though it declared independence in 1822. Once the breakup started, it accelerated and the Balkan states gained independence soon after Greece.

The major powers of the time saw the chance to add to their own Empires and Britain, France, Germany and Russia all manoeuvred for influence, power and land, and eventually came to blows in the Crimean War of the 1850s.

The Young Turks

With the Sultanate intent on modernising without democracy, a young generation of Turks grew increasingly frustrated until the Young Turks took power in parliament in 1908 and then replaced the Sultan with his brother in 1909.

A committee of three Young Turks ruled the country from then on and, disastrously, they joined with Germany in the First World War. With the defeat of Germany and its allies, the victorious parties divided up the remains of the Ottoman Empire between them. Britain occupied Constantinople, Italy and France landed on the Mediterranean coast and Greece invaded at Smyrna (Izmir).

Mustafa Kemal and Modernisation

To the surprise of many, the Turks rallied under the leadership of General Mustafa Kemal, who had led the defence against the British at the Battle of Gallipoli in the First World War. Though the Greek army moved to within reach of Ankara, the Turkish army won the Battle of Sakarya in 1921 and the tide of history began to turn in Turkey’s favour. The Greek army retreated, burning everything behind them and the city of Smyrna burnt to the ground – though both sides dispute who was responsible for the destruction of the city.

In 1923 the Republic of Turkey was formally proclaimed and Mustafa Kemal began his task of remodelling an entire country.

The impact of Kemal Atatürk on Turkey should never be underestimated. His image adorns office walls and public buildings and many official publications. He set out to rebuild Turkey as a modern European nation that could take its place on the world stage with none of the baggage associated with the Ottoman Empire and made a huge impact on the country in a relatively short time.

Atatürk did not do anything by halves. He secularised the country with an official separation of state from religion. He abolished the sharia courts and introduced a civil code based on Swiss law. The fez was banned. A new phonetic alphabet was developed by European linguists to replace the Arabic script so that literacy rates could be improved. International time and calendar systems were adopted to replace the Islamic calendar.

Change swept Turkey along on a road to westernisation, then Atatürk died in 1938 only fifteen years after the founding of the state of Turkey. As subsequent politicians tried to outdo each other to be more Kemalist than the next, the pace of change slowed and arguments raged over whether Atatürk would have approved of further changes.

Despite the population being predominantly Muslim, the secularisation of government is strictly enforced; the wearing of head scarves is forbidden in public buildings, for example, and relaxation of this law only began in 2008. However, there is freedom of religious practice but, though not actually forbidden, attempting to change people’s religious beliefs is seriously frowned upon.

Atatürk’s ruling Republican Party has always been to the right of the political scale, but social and political Islam has, however, always been present in Turkey. There have been three military coups (1960, 1971 and 1980) that brought down leftist or Islamic governments. There was also a soft coup in 1997 when Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Welfare Party, who was banned from politics after the 1980 coup until 1990, was forced to resign when the army publicly warned him about his pro-Islamic pronouncements and the tanks rolled through the streets of the Ankara suburb of Sincan.

The army constitution demands that it protects Turkey’s secularism and it does so with vigour. Military rule after each coup has always been short, with the army pushing the country back to democracy as soon as it can.

This interventionist policy, though, has led to problems with Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Having first applied for membership in 1957, an association agreement was signed in 1963. A full application was then submitted in 1987, but turned down in 1989. Turkey finally signed a customs union in 1995 and was recognised as a candidate for full membership in 1997. Membership talks, however, only began in 2005 and are likely to be long and slow.

Turkish politics have always been volatile and this looks unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.