Countries

Turkey

Citation Formats

General Reference

Political Atlas. "Turkey." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-political.interactiveatlas.org/countries/turkey.

APA Style

Political Atlas. (n.d.). Turkey. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-political.interactiveatlas.org/countries/turkey

BibTeX

@misc{politicalatlas-turkey,
  author = {Political Atlas},
  title = {Turkey},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-political.interactiveatlas.org/countries/turkey},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Turkey is a republic straddling southeastern Europe and western Asia, founded from the territory of the Ottoman Empire after that empire's defeat in the First World War and the Turkish War of Independence that followed it. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk led the republic's founding and a sweeping programme of secularising reform, replacing the empire's millet system of religious communal law with a single civil code applied equally to all citizens; the country was governed as a parliamentary democracy for most of its republican history before a 2017 constitutional referendum shifted it toward a presidential system.

Facts

Founding Year

1923 1

29 October 1923 is the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and it is the date this entry uses rather than any of the other defensible candidates the transition from empire to republic offers. Not 1918, the Ottoman Empire's armistice and defeat in the First World War, which left the empire diminished but still a monarchy. Not 1 November 1922, when the Grand National Assembly abolished the Ottoman Sultanate itself, ending six centuries of Ottoman monarchy, because the country was governed for almost a year afterward with no head of state at all while the Assembly negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne, and no republic had yet been declared. Not 3 March 1924, when the Caliphate was abolished, a further secularising step that followed the republic rather than founding it. 29 October 1923 is the specific date the Grand National Assembly proclaimed Turkey a republic and elected Ataturk its first president, the moment a form of government, popular sovereignty exercised through an elected republic, replaced imperial monarchy outright. That is the same test this atlas applies to China's 1949 and Russia's 1991: not when the old order weakened or fell, but when the government presently in place was actually founded.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Ottoman Millet System

The millet system was seated at Constantinople/Istanbul, in modern Turkey's territory, though the source itself never names modern Turkey directly.

Source Ottoman Millet System (Encyclopedia.com)

Turkey (Britannica)

This source names Turkey directly: "Britannica country overview of Turkey, covering the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the founding of the Republic of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and its subsequent constitutional history."

Source Turkey (Britannica)

Sources

1. Turkey (Britannica)

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia FoundationGoverned By: Erdogan Administration, Lead section, opening sentence

Quote, Governed By: Erdogan Administration, Lead section, opening sentence

is a Turkish politician who has been the president of Turkey since 2014

View the Source

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