Market Information
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 People's Congress
of Kurdistan 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; it holds a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council from 2009-10. 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.
To find out more about how Export To Turkey can help your business, please call us on +44 (0) 870 879 5320
or e-mail us at info@exporttoturkey.com
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