Istanbul
Istanbul (historically known in English as Constantinople) is Turkey's most populous city, and its cultural and economic center. Istanbul extends both on the European (Thrace) and on the Asian (Anatolia) side of the Bosphorus, and is thereby the only metropolis in the world which is situated on two continents. Istanbul is also the only city in the world which served as the capital to three different Empires: The Roman Empire (330-395), Byzantine Empire (395-1453) and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1923). In 1923, following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, the capital was moved to Ankara.
The population is estimated as 15.000.000 making it one of the twenty largest metropolitan areas in the world. The city was chosen as the European Capital of Culture for 2010 (along with Pécs, Hungary and Essen, Germany).
The city has had many names through the years and according to the culture, language and religion of its inhabitants. Byzantium, Constantinople and Stamboul are examples that may still be found in active use. It has also been nicknamed "The City on Seven Hills" because the historic peninsula (the oldest part of the city) was built on seven hills, also represented with seven mosques, one at the top of each hill. The "Historic Areas of Istanbul" were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985.
The urban landscape of Istanbul is shaped by many communities. The most important and most populous major religion is Islam. Religious minorities include Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, and Sephardic Jews. In Istanbul small boroughs are inhabited by ethnic Armenians, Jews and Greeks. In some quarters, such as Kuzguncuk, an Armenian Church sits next to a synagogue, and on the other side of the road a Greek-Orthodox church is found beside a mosque. The seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox Church is in Istanbul. Also based here are, the archbishop of the Turkish-Orthodox community, an Armenian archbishop and the Turkish Grand-Rabbi.
The city is traditionally the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to some Orthodox churches and seat of an Armenian archbishop as well as the archbishop of the Turkish-Orthodox community.
Daily life in Istanbul is colorful and vibrant and continues side by side with many carefully protected Roman, Byzantine and Turkish monuments. Istanbul is often considered the capital of Turkey in terms of commerce, entertainment, culture, education, shopping, tourism and art. More than half of the population lives and works on the European side. The large number of people living in the residential areas on the Anatolian side use bridges and ferries to commute to work in a city that has been the most popular stop for voyagers throughout history.
Istanbul is becoming increasingly colorful in terms of its rich social, cultural and commercial activities. Along with Turkish restaurants, Far Eastern and other cuisines are growing in number alongside many newly opened restaurants. While world famous pop stars fill stadiums, activities like opera, ballet and theatre continue throughout the year. During seasonal festivals world famous orchestras, chorale ensembles, concerts and jazz legends can be found often playing to a full house. Shows are hosted at a number of locations including historical sites such as Hagia Irene, Rumeli Fortress, Yedikule, the courtyard of Topkapı Palace, and Gülhane Park; as well as the Ataturk Cultural Center, Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall and other open air and modern theater halls. For those who enjoy night life, there are many night clubs, pubs, restaurants and taverns with live music. The night clubs, restaurants and pubs increase in number and move to open air spaces in the summer.
There are thousands of alternatives for night life in Istanbul but most popular open air summer time seaside night clubs are found on the Bosphorus, such as Reina and Anjelique in the Ortaköy district. Babylon and Nu Pera in Beyoğlu are popular night clubs both in the summer and in the winter, while The Venue in Maslak often hosts live concerts of famous rock, hard rock and heavy metal bands from all corners of the the world. Parkorman in Maslak hosted the Isle of MTV Party in 2002 and is a popular venue for live concerts and rave parties in the summer. Q Jazz Bar in Ortaköy offers live jazz music in a stylish environment. The areas around Istiklal Avenue and Nişantaşı offer all sorts of cafés, restaurants, pubs and clubs as well as art galleries, theaters and cinemas.
Turkey
Officially the Republic of Turkey (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti), is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Southwestern Asia and the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey borders eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest, Greece to the west, Georgia to the northeast, Armenia, Iran and the Nakhichevan exclave of Azerbaijan to the east, and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. In addition, it borders the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Turkey also contains the Sea of Marmara that is used by geographers to mark the border between Europe and Asia, thus making the country transcontinental.
The region comprising modern Turkey has seen the birth of major civilisations including the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Owing to its strategic location at the intersect of two continents, Turkey's culture is a unique blend of Eastern and Western tradition, often described as a bridge between the two civilisations. With a powerful regional presence from the Adriatic to China in the Eurasian landbelt between Russia and India, Turkey has come to acquire increasing strategic significance.
Turkey is a democratic, secular, constitutional republic whose political system was established in 1923 under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. Since then, Turkey has increasingly integrated with the West while continuing to foster relations with the Eastern world. It is a founding member of the United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference,the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a member state of the Council of Europe since 1949, and of NATO since 1952. Since 2005, Turkey is in accession negotiations with the European Union, having been an associate member since 1963.
The Anatolian peninsula (also called Asia Minor), comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest continually inhabited regions in the world due to its location at the intersection of Asia and Europe. The earliest Neolithic settlements such as Çatalhöyük (Pottery Neolithic), Çayönü (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Pottery Neolithic), Nevali Cori (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), Hacilar (Pottery Neolithic), Göbekli Tepe [Pre-Pottery Neolithic A) and Mersin are considered to be among the earliest human settlements in the world. The settlement of Troy starts in the Neolithic and continues into the Iron Age. Through recorded history, Anatolians have spoken Indo-European, Semitic and Kartvelian languages, as well as many languages of uncertain affiliation. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical center from which the Indo-European languages have radiated.
The first major empire in the area was that of the Hittites, from the 18th through the 13th century BCE. Subsequently, the Phrygians, an Indo-European people, achieved ascendancy until their kingdom was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BCE. The most powerful of Phrygia's successor states were Lydia, Caria and Lycia. The Lydians and Lycians spoke languages that were fundamentally Indo-European, but both languages had acquired non-Indo-European elements prior to the Hittite and Hellenic periods.
Coastal Anatolia, which came to be known as Ionia, was meanwhile settled by the Ionians. The entire area was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire during the 6th and 5th centuries and fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BCE. Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms (including Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pergamum, and Pontus), all of which had succumbed to Rome by the mid-1st century BCE. In 324 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it Constantinople (now Istanbul). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it became the capital of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire
The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Kinik Oğuz Turks who in the 9th century lived on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral seas in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Oğuz confederacy. In the 10th century, the Seljuks migrated from their ancestral homelands into the eastern Anatolian regions that had been an area of settlement for Oğuz Turkic tribes since the end of the first millennium.
Following their victory over the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Malazgirt in 1071, the Turks began to abandon their nomadic roots in favour of a permanent role in Anatolia, bringing rise to the Seljuk Empire. The empire was not to last however, by 1243 the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols and the power of the empire slowly disintegrated. In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman I was to evolve into the Ottoman Empire, thus filling the void left by the collapsed Seljuks and Byzantines.
The Ottoman Empire interacted with both Eastern and Western cultures throughout its 623-year history. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was among the world's most powerful political entities, often locking horns with the powers of eastern Europe in its steady advance through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Following years of decline, the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War through the Ottoman-German Alliance in 1914 - a war in which it was ultimately defeated. After the war, the victorious Allied Powers sought the dismemberment of the Ottoman state through the Treaty of Sèvres.
The occupation of İstanbul and İzmir by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I prompted the establishment of the Turkish national movement. Under the leadership Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a military commander who had distinguished himself during the Battle of Gallipoli, the Turkish War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres. By September 18, 1922, the occupying armies were repelled and the country saw the birth of the new Turkish state. On November 1, 1922, the the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, thus ending 623 years of Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 led to the international recognization of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, and the republic was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923, in the new capital of Ankara.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Founder and first President of the Republic of TurkeyKemal Pasha became the republic's first president and subsequently introduced many radical reforms with the aim of founding a new secular republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past. According to the Law on Family Names, the Turkish parliament presented Mustafa Kemal with the honorific name "Atatürk" (English: Father of the Turks) in 1934.
Turkey entered World War II on the side of the Allies in the later stages of the war as a ceremonial gesture and became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945. Difficulties faced by Greece after the war in quelling a communist rebellion, along with demands by the Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits, prompted the United States to declare the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece, and resulted in large scale US military and economic support.
After participating with United Nations forces in the Korean conflict, Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterrenean. Following a decade of intercommunal violence on the island of Cyprus and the subsequent Athens-inspired coup, Turkey intervened militarily, resulting in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus recognised only by Turkey.
Following the end of the single party period in 1945, the multi-party period witnessed tensions over the following decades, and the period between the Sixties and the Eighties was particularly marked by periods of political instability that resulted in a number of military coups d'états in 1960, in 1971, in 1980 and a post-modern coup d'état in 1997. The liberalization of the Turkish economy that started in the 1980s changed the landscape of the country, with successive periods of high growth and crises punctuating the following decades
Since the economic crisis of 2001 and the reforms initiated by the finance minister of the time, Kemal Derviş, the inflation has fallen to single-digit numbers, investor-confidence and foreign investment have soared while unemployment has fallen. Turkey has gradually opened up its markets through economic reforms by reducing government controls on foreign trade and investment and the privatisation of publicly-owned industries and the liberalisation of many sectors to private and foreign participation has continued amid political debate.
The GDP growth rate for 2005 was 7.4%, thus making Turkey one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Turkey's GDP currently ranks 17th in the world and Turkey is a member of G20 industrial nations which brings together the 20 most industrialized countries of the globe. Turkey's economy is no longer dominated by traditional agricultural activities in the rural areas, but more so by a highly dynamic industrial complex in the major cities, mostly concentrated in the western provinces of the country, along with a developed services sector. The agricultural sector accounts for 11.9% of GDP, whereas industrial and service sectors make up 23.7% and 64.5%, respectively. The tourism sector has experienced rapid growth in the last twenty years, and constitutes an important part of the economy. In 2005, there were 24,124,501 visitors to the country, who contributed 18.2 billion USD to Turkey's revenues. Other key sectors of the Turkish economy are construction, automotive industry, electronics and textiles.
As a result of continuing economic reforms, the inflation has dropped to 8.2% in 2005, and the unemployment rate to 10.3%. With a per capita GDP (Nominal) of 5,062 USD, Turkey ranks 64th in the world. One of the biggest economic problems faced by Turkey is the distribution of wealth among the populace. In 2004, it has been estimated that the wealthiest 20% of the population owned 46.2% of the annual household disposible income while the poorest 20% had access to only 6%.
Turkey's main trading partners are the European Union (52% of exports and 42% of imports as of 2005), United States, Russia and Japan. Turkey has taken advantage of a customs union with the European Union, signed in 1995, to increase its industrial production destined for exports, while at the same time benefiting from EU-origin foreign investment into the country. In 2005, exports amounted to 73.5 billion USD while the imports stood at 116.8 billion USD, with increases of 16,3% and 19,7% compared to 2004, respectively.
After years of low levels of foreign direct investment (FDI), Turkey succeeded in attracting 8.5 billion USD in FDI in 2005 and is expected to attract a higher figure in 2006. A series of large privatizations, the stability fostered by the start of Turkey's EU accession negotiations, strong and stable growth, and structural changes in the banking, retail, and telecommunications sectors have all contributed to a rise in foreign investment.
Istanbul (historically known in English as Constantinople) is Turkey's most populous city, and its cultural and economic center. Istanbul extends both on the European (Thrace) and on the Asian (Anatolia)