History in Turkey
The location of Turkey at the intersection of Asia and Europe, known as Anatolian peninsula (also Asia Minor), has resulted in it being one of the oldest continually inhabited regions in the world.
The first major empire in the area was that of the Hittites, from the 18th through the 13th century BCE.
From around 1200 BC, the west coast of Anatolia was settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. The entire area was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th and 5th centuries and later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BCE.
In 324 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome (later Constantinople and Istanbul). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it became the capital of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire).
The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Kınık Oğuz Turks who in the 9th century resided on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral Seas in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Oğuz confederacy.
Following the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt) in 1071 of the Seljuks gave rise to the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate; which developed as a separate branch of the larger Seljuk Empire that covered parts of Central Asia, Iran, Anatolia and Southwest Asia.
In 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 over the next 200 years into the Ottoman Empire. In 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman armies of Mehmed II, marking the abolition of the Byzantine Empire.
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
After years of gradual decline the Ottoman Empire entered World War I through the Ottoman-German Alliance in 1914, and was ultimately defeated. After the war through the Treaty of Sèvres, the 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. By September 18, 1922, the occupying armies were repelled and the country saw the birth of the new Turkish state. On November 1, the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, thus ending 623 years of Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of July 24, 1923, led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed Republic of Turkey which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923, in the new capital of Ankara.
Mustafa Kemal became the republic's first president.
Turkey entered World War II on the side of the Allies on February 23, 1945 as a ceremonial gesture and became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945.
Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was established. The TRNC is recognised only by Turkey.
The 1960s and the 1980s was marked by periods of political instability that resulted in a number of military coups d'états in 1960, 1971, 1980 and a post-modern coup d'état in 1997.
