The history of the Turkish people has been marked by dynamic changes resulting from migration, conquest, cultural contact, assimilation, and human aspiration. Geographically, historically, and culturally, their country straddles Christian Europe and Muslim Asia. Turkey is one of the very few Third World countries that did not experience European colonialization or direct domination, yet chose to adopt European political, legal, educational and cultural ways. Today the democratic republic of Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an associate member of the European Economic Community, and member of the Islamic Congress.
The modern Turkish Republic was constructed on the crumbled foundations of the Ottoman empire by the charismatic Kemal Ataturk. The European victors of World War I had partitioned the Turkish sultan's lands, and Greek forces had taken control of western Asia Minor. However, Ataturk--the most impressive general in the defeated Ottoman army--revitalized the exhausted Turks into a military force that drove foreign occupation troops from Anatolia and secured present-day Turkey as their independent homeland. Ataturk then embarked on the ambitious project of molding Turkey into a modern nation-state in the form of the leading European powers.
Accusing Islamic-Ottoman institutions and culture of causing the Empire's collapse and the Turks' miserable condition, Ataturk envisioned a new Turkey based on the principles of nationalism, secularism, statism, populism, and reform. Among his many revolutionary acts was the abolition of the Caliphate and Sultanate, which were the highest religious and political offices in the Islamic world at that time. He also disestablished Islam as the state religion, closed Turkey's religious schools and brotherhoods, replaced Islamic law with European legal codes, and adopted a secular constitution that promoted sexual equality.
Despite these measures, Ataturk's goal of removing religion's influence over political and social life was never fully realized. Ataturk ruled Turkey through a single party as a firm but benevolent and popular dictator from 1923 until his death in 1938. His successor, Ismet Inonu, continued Ataturk's secular policies but launched the country into a true, multi-party democratic political era in 1950. Since that time, the Turks have demonstrated an unswerving determination to preserve their newly formed democratic institutions.
The Turkish people originated from Inner Asia. Their language belongs to the Altaic family along with Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, and Chuvash. The earliest evidence of Turkish writing dates from the eighth century A.D. runic inscriptions found along the Orkhon River near present-day Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
During subsequent centuries, the famed Turkish horsemen of the Asiatic steppe galloped west into Muslim lands, where they found employment as soldiers and bodyguards under Persian and Arab rulers. Converting to Islam, they soon superseded their employers. Turkish dynasties, such as the Seljuks and Ottomans, gained military and political dominance.
The Ottomans harnessed the vitality of the Turkish tribesmen to the aggression of European mercenaries to forge a supreme military force that conquered Constantinople in 1453 and then the Balkans, much of the Middle East, and large stretches of Africa.
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