Turkey
Republic of Turkey
Capital: Ankara
The Turkey Bulletin
Weekly Brief: October 12, 2015
Top Story Russia announced on Monday that its “volunteer” ground forces would join the fighting in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he will not send Russian soldiers to Syria, but the plan to deploy irregulars parallels Russian operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The news comes as Russia intensified airstrikes it began last […]
Weekly Brief: April 13, 2015
Africa One of the gunmen responsible for the attack on Kenya’s Garissa University College last week, which killed 148 people, was the son of a Kenyan district official. He had been missing for over a year, since dropping out of law school. His father has been cooperating with authorities since reporting his son missing last […]
Weekly Brief: April 6, 2015
Top Story Parties negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear program announced a framework agreement on Thursday, which they intend to finalize by the end of June. The talks had intensified ahead of a March 31 soft deadline for a deal. By Monday, three primary sticking points remained: the process of lifting restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after 10 years, […]
Weekly Brief: March 30, 2015
Middle East Fighting in Yemen continued to escalate this week. On Wednesday, the Houthi rebels seized an airbase as they moved closer to the city of Aden, where President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was sheltered. By Thursday, Mr. Hadi had briefly sought shelter in Oman before moving on to Riyadh. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia led airstrikes against the Houthis in […]
History
Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 from the Anatolian remnants of the defeated Ottoman Empire by national hero Mustafa KEMAL, who was later honored with the title Ataturk or "Father of the Turks." Under his authoritarian leadership, the country adopted wide-ranging social, legal, and political reforms. After a period of one-party rule, an experiment with multi-party politics led to the 1950 election victory of the opposition Democratic Party and the peaceful transfer of power. Since then, Turkish political parties have multiplied, but democracy has been fractured by periods of instability and intermittent military coups (1960, 1971, 1980), which in each case eventually resulted in a return of political power to civilians. In 1997, the military again helped engineer the ouster - popularly dubbed a "post-modern coup" - of the then Islamic-oriented government. Turkey intervened militarily on Cyprus in 1974 to prevent a Greek takeover of the island and has since acted as patron state to the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus," which only Turkey recognizes. A separatist insurgency begun in 1984 by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - now known as the Kurdistan People's Congress or Kongra-Gel (KGK) - has dominated the Turkish military's attention and claimed more than 30,000 lives. After the capture of the group's leader in 1999, the insurgents largely withdrew from Turkey mainly to northern Iraq. In 2004, KGK announced an end to its ceasefire and attacks attributed to the KGK increased. Turkey joined the UN in 1945 and in 1952 it became a member of NATO. In 1964, Turkey became an associate member of the European Community. Over the past decade, it has undertaken many reforms to strengthen its democracy and economy; it began accession membership talks with the European Union in 2005.
Geography
Metric Units
| Total Area | 783,562 sq km |
| Land Boundaries | 2,648 km |
| Border Countries | Armenia 268 km, Azerbaijan 9 km, Bulgaria 240 km, Georgia 252 km, Greece 206 km, Iran 499 km, Iraq 352 km, Syria 822 km |
| Coastline | 7,200 km |
| Terrain | high central plateau (Anatolia); narrow coastal plain; several mountain ranges |
| Minimum Elevation | 0 m |
| Maximum Elevation | 5,166 m |
| Climate | temperate; hot, dry summers with mild, wet winters; harsher in interior |
| Natural Resources | coal, iron ore, copper, chromium, antimony, mercury, gold, barite, borate, celestite (strontium), emery, feldspar, limestone, magnesite, marble, perlite, pumice, pyrites (sulfur), clay, arable land, hydropower |
| Arable Land | 26.21% |
| Permanent Crops | 3.94% |
Economy
| Gross Domestic Product | $1.13 trillion |
| GDP (per capita) | $15,000 |
| GDP Growth | 3% |
| Unemployment Rate | 9% |
| Population in Poverty | 16.9% |
| GINI Index | 40.2 |
Budget & Debt
| Expenditures | $200.4 billion |
| Revenue | $179.9 billion |
| Current Account Balance | $-59.74 billion |
| External Debt | $331.4 billion |
Trade
| Exports | $154.2 billion |
| Export Items | apparel, foodstuffs, textiles, metal manufactures, transport equipment |
| Export Partners | Germany 10.3%, Iraq 6.2%, UK 6%, Italy 5.8%, France 5%, Russia 4.4% (2011) |
| Imports | $225.6 billion |
| Import Items | machinery, chemicals, semi-finished goods, fuels, transport equipment |
| Import Partners | Russia 9.9%, Germany 9.5%, China 9%, US 6.7%, Italy 5.6%, Iran 5.2% (2011) |
People
| Population | 80,694,485 |
| Population Growth | 1.16% |
| Ethnic Groups | Turkish 70-75%, Kurdish 18%, other minorities 7-12% (2008 est.) |
| Religion | Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews) |
| Life Expectancy | 73.03 years |
| Infant Mortality | 1.02 deaths/1,000 live births |
| Maternal Mortality | 1.7 deaths/100,000 live births |
Energy
| Electricity Production | 201.2 billion kWh |
| Electricity Consumption | 155.2 billion kWh |
| From Fossil Fuels | 65.3% |
| From Nuclear | 0% |
| From Hydroelectric | 32.5% |
| From Renewable Sources | 2.2% |
