TURKEY (COUNTRY)

Turkey has 1,633 miles (2,628 km) of land frontiers and 4,454 miles (7,168 km) of coastline. The European section of the country is bounded on the north by Bulgaria, on the east by the Black Sea and the Bosporus, on the south by the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles, and on the west by Greece and the Aegean Sea. Turkey in Asia is bounded on the north by the Black Sea and Georgia; on the east by Armenia and Iran; on the south by Iraq, Syria, and the Mediterranean Sea; and on the west by the Aegean Sea. Turkey is about 900 miles (1,450 km) long and some 300 miles (480 km) wide and covers an area of 300,948 square miles (779,452 sq km), of which 291,773 square miles (755,688 sq km) are in Asia and 9,175 square miles (23,764 sq km) are in Europe. The estimated population of the country in 1993 was 58,900,000. About 90 percent lives in the Asian part of Turkey and 10 percent in the European part. The capital is Ankara..

Black Sea Region. The Black Sea region is dominated by the Pontic Ranges (Kure Mountains, Iglaz Mountains), trending east-west, with rivers occupying valleys between the major ranges. In many cases these river valleys are relatively broad and open in their middle portions, but occupy deep, steep-sided gorges in their lower courses.

The Pontic Ranges rise abruptly from the sea in the west to heights of 6,000 to 7,000 feet (1,850-2,150 meters) within 20 miles (32 km) of the coast; east of Sinop, the ranges increase in elevation to 10,000 to 12,000 feet (3,050-3,700 meters), many of the highest points being volcanic peaks.

The Black Sea coast is smooth, though curved, and lacks natural harbors. The only bays are between Sinop and Samsun. Between the mountain and the sea, there is a narrow coastal plain, only a few miles wide, the continuity of which is broken by spurs of ranges that reach the water's edge.

Aegean-Marmara Region. The highlands of this region are much lower than those of the Black Sea region. The region has a drowned coast with many bays, rocky peninsulas, offshore islands, and inlets that provide easy access to the interior.

The Aegean coastal region has highland ridges that stretch like fingers into the sea as headlands; low, flat, alluvially filled valleys occupy the spaces between the "fingers." The ridges generally are lowest in the west (1,000 to 1,500 feet; 300-450 meters) and rise eastward to a general elevation of 5,000 to 6,000 feet (1,500-1,850 meters); a few peaks approach 10,000 feet (3,050 meters). The major valleys between the ridges, such as those of Gediz and Büyük Menderes, are broad and flat. These valley lowlands provide some of the most productive soils in Turkey.

Mediterranean Coastlands and Mountains. The Mediterranean coastlands and mountains lie between Fethiye in the west and the vicinity of Malatya in the east. The western and main ranges of the Taurus dominate the region and dwarf the small plains that front the Mediterranean. The Anti-Taurus Ranges, from the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta (Iskenderun) to Malatya, are in the east. The highest peaks in the Taurus proper reach 12,000 feet (3,700 meters), whereas the western Taurus and Anti-Taurus are in general lower and less rugged, reaching a maximum elevation of 10,000 feet (3,050 meters).

The western Taurus mountains extend from Fethiye on the coast northeast to Lake Ecridir, then bend abruptly southeastward to reach the coast again near Silifke. Within the triangle thus described lies the small plain of Antalya at the head of the Gulf of Antalya. The plain is low and swampy, cut off from access to the interior by the ruggedness of the surrounding ranges. Short, fast-flowing streams drain the southern slopes of the mountains.

The main range of the Taurus trends northeast from the coast near Silifke to beyond Kayseri in the interior, where it ends in the Hinzir Daci (9,022 feet; 2,960 meters). Unlike the western Taurus, the Taurus proper has been cut into a number of segments by streams that ultimately flow into the Mediterranean. Although the valleys cut by these streams are steep-sided, narrow gorges, they form passes through the Taurus. The best known pass is the Cilician Gates, one of the easiest routes from the eastern Mediterranean into Anatolia.

The Anti-Taurus Ranges parallel the main Taurus to the southeast. Along their southern flank they adjoin the plateau and plain of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. Two southwest extensions of the Anti-Taurus, the Misis Dac and Amanus, flank the north and south sides, respectively, of the Gulf of Alexandretta, the only deepwater bay of the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

At the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean, the Seyhan (Sarus) and Ceyhan rivers, flowing from the Taurus and Anti-Taurus, have built up the alluvial Adana plain (Çukurova district), one of the most highly developed agricultural districts of Turkey.

Anatolian Plateau. Occupying the interior of central Turkey, and thought of by the Turks as the "heartland" of their nation, this plateau is surrounded by mountains that, except in the west, rise 2,000 to 4,000 feet (600-1,200 meters) above the general 3,000 to 5,000-foot (900 to 1,500-meter) level of the plateau. The original undulating surface has been altered over large areas by stream erosion, and the least eroded section of the plateau is an area of interior drainage surrounding Lake Tuz toward the south. This lake has a surface elevation of 2,949 feet (899 meters). In the north the rolling upland is broken by fault ridges and cut by numerous streams draining into the Black Sea. There are also a number of volcanic peaks with attendant lava flows. Toward the east, the plateau becomes higher and adjoins the Eastern Plateau and Mountain Region.

Eastern Plateau and Mountain Region. Eastward from the vicinity of Sivas is a region consisting of the high  Plateau--about 1,000 feet (300 meters) higher in the west than the Anatolian--and a tumbled mass of mountains that merge in extreme eastern Turkey with the Zagros Mountains and the mountains of Azerbaijan. This jumble of mountains is capped by the volcanic peak of Mount Ararat (16,854 feet; 5,137 meters), Turkey's highest mountain. The  Plateau is narrow, and much of its surface is deeply buried in lava. Some fault basins account for areas of relatively level land, the largest of which contains Lake Van (surface elevation 5,643 feet; 1,720 meters). This basin has interior drainage and the lake is salt. There are numerous peaks in eastern Turkey with elevations of 12,000 to 14,000 feet (3,700-4,300 meters); in this region also rise the Tigris (Dicle), Euphrates (Firat), and Araks rivers.

Along the southern border of Turkey--centering about Diyarbakir--is a northward extension of the steppe of northern Syria. The surface slopes gradually southward. It is cut deeply by stream valleys and is broken locally by low ridges, with few extensive areas of level land.

Climate. Climatic types vary from subtropical to continental and, in general, coincide with physiographic regions.

Subtropical (Transitional Type). The Black Sea coast and lower slopes of the Pontic Mountains have a transitional climate between Mediterranean and humid subtropical types. It is characterized by relatively mild temperatures, because of the marine influence of the Black Sea, and is protected from the cold air of the interior by the Pontic Ranges. The average temperature for the coldest month is 40°F. to 45°F. (4°C. to 7°C.); that of the hottest month, usually August, from the high 60's to the middle 70's F. (20°C. to 24°C.); extremes in daily temperatures are rare. This region has ample precipitation: approximately 25 inches (635 mm) per year in the west, increasing eastward to a maximum of more than 100 inches (2,500 mm). No month is without appreciable rainfall, but the maximum occurs between October and March, much of it as snow in the higher mountain areas.

Subtropical (Mediterranean Type). The Aegean and Mediterranean coastal areas have a true Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers and mild, moist winters; usually one to three summer months have less than 1 inch (25 mm) of rain. In the Aegean and Marmara areas annual rainfall totals in the coastal zone reach 20 to 30 inches (500-750 mm); in the interior, 15 to 20 inches (380-500 mm). The Mediterranean coastal areas receive amounts similar to those of the Aegean, but the slopes of the Taurus may receive more than 30 inches. Summer days are sunny and hot, with a marked fall in temperature at night. The average hot-month temperature varies from 74°F. (23°C.) at Istanbul to 81°F. (27°C.) at Izmir and 83°F. (28°C.) at Adana; day temperatures often reach the low 90's F. (32°C. to 35°C.) but fall 20°F. to 30°F. (10°C. to 5°C.) at night. The average cold-month temperature is 40°F. to 50°F. (4°C. to 9°C.) in coastal areas, and as low as 35°F. (2°C.) in the interior; winter days are often sunny and warm, but frost may be expected at night.

Semiarid (Steppe Type). The Anatolian Plateau has a steppe or semiarid climate. Summers are relatively hot and winters cold. The average hot-month temperature varies from the high 60's to the middle 70's F. (20°C. to 24°C.); the daytime high is usually in the 80's F. (27°C. to 32°C.), falling to a low in the 50's (10°C. to 15°C.) at night. The average cold-month temperature is usually a few degrees below freezing, but winter night temperatures are often well below freezing, and may drop to 0°F. (-18°C.) or below. Annual precipitation is less than 20 inches (500 mm) but rarely falls below 10 inches (250 mm). Winter is the wetter season, but often the single wettest month is May; July and August are commonly almost rainless. Much of the winter moisture falls as snow.

The eastern plateaus and mountains experience extremes in weather and climate: from bitterly cold winters to scorching, dry summers. Winters are long and cold; Diyarbakir in the south has an average January temperature of 31°F. (-1°C.), whereas within the mountains and on the Armenian Plateau, the average January temperatures are as low as 10°F. to 15°F. (-12°C. to -9°C.), often falling at night below 0°F. (-18°C.) and on occasions to -40°F. (-40° C.). Significantly, eastern Turkey is the only region within the country where low temperatures allow almost no winter sowing of crops. The average hot-month temperature varies from around 65°F. to 77°F. (18°C. to 25°C.). In the highlands there may be a large diurnal range, and frost may occur even in summer. In general, eastern Turkey is well-watered, annual totals ranging from about 15 to 30 inches (380-760 mm), depending upon location and exposure. The cool six months normally receive more precipitation than the warm six.

Soils. The most fertile and productive soils, found in river flood plains and deltas, contain minerals necessary for plant growth and also considerable amounts of organic material (humus) that is largely lacking in other soils of Turkey; the Büyük Menderes (Maeander), Gediz (Hermus), Seyhan, and Ceyhan, and the rivers watering the plain of Antalya have built up the largest and most economically productive deposits of river alluvium.

The mountain and rougher plateau areas have thin, rocky soils that are relatively infertile and easily eroded. Only in favored locations can such soils be used for crops. Centuries of deforestation and overgrazing by goats has added to the inherent infertility of the mountain soils; rapid surface runoff and excessive erosion have removed most of the better topsoils, leaving only thin and stony soils. The more level areas of the plateaus have steppe soils (brown earths and chernozems), often fertile and, where water is available, productive. Without irrigation, they are used for the production of winter cereals, especially wheat and barley.

The soils of the Mediterranean area are only moderately thick and fertile, but when terraced against erosion or when occurring in level areas, they yield well, especially such typically Mediterranean crops as olives, figs, and grapes.

Water Resources. Compared with the rest of the Middle East, Turkey has considerable water resources, aside from the Anatolian Plateau, which is deficient in them. However, climate, topography, land-use customs, and lack of economic development have made them difficult to use.

The greater amount of precipitation received by the highlands of Turkey and the percentage of this that falls as snow provide many permanent streams and considerable accumulations of underground water; only a relatively small part of the country (Anatolian Plateau) has interior drainage, temporary streams, and salt lakes. Except for the Black Sea coastal area, however, precipitation is very unevenly distributed throughout the year. As a result most streams have a maximum volume in spring, their flow diminishing when water is most needed for summer and irrigated crops, reaching a minimum volume in autumn before the onset of the cool-season rains. Southern Anatolia, which receives little enough rain anyway, is made even drier by a porous limestone surface that allows rapid percolation of ground water downward.

Natural Vegetation. The natural vegetation of long-settled Turkey, except in the more isolated highlands, has suffered centuries of destruction and change by people; the present types are often hybrids of the indigenous types.

Mediterranean Type. The Mediterranean type is characteristic of the south coastal area, the Aegean, and parts of the Marmara region; eastward from the Dardanelles it is transitional with the Pontic type. At low elevations the characteristic plant cover consists of stunted trees, bushes, and often thorny, flowering, and bulbous plants. The best development of this type, known as maquis, includes evergreen oak, pine, laurel, myrtle, and a variety of flowering plants. Garigue and phrygana, degenerate types of maquis, are more common in Mediterranean Turkey, occupying the poorer soils; the former has few trees but many low bushes, herbs, and plants; the latter is composed largely of low thorn shrub but few plants. Higher elevations, because of greater rainfall, have evergreen scrub-forests composed of stunted trees, both evergreen and deciduous, tall shrubs, and plants.

Steppe Type. Steppe vegetation is characteristic of the semiarid areas of the Anatolian and  plateaus. Various types of grasses are common. In favored areas a continuous cover of short grasses 6 to 18 inches (15-45 cm) high may develop, giving way, in drier areas, to patches of grass or bunch grass. Trees and shrubs grow only where permanent supplies of water are found, mainly along stream courses. During the dry summer, the steppe vegetation is dormant and the landscape is generally brown; with the onset of rain, greens predominate and flowering plants produce a profusion of color. The lower slopes of mountains surrounding the plateaus have an open, parklike vegetation of scattered trees--juniper, carob, oak, and thorn--interspersed with grasslands and low bushes and herbs.

Pontic Type. The Pontic Ranges are forested eastward from Sinop, where the transitional area with the Mediterranean type ends. This forest, the densest and most commercially valuable in Turkey, comprises deciduous hardwoods--maple, walnut, oak, and hazel.

Alpine Type. Alpine vegetation, characterized by low plants, short grasses, and stunted bushes, covers mountain slopes above the timber line. It is especially important in eastern Turkey, where winters are long and cold and trees are found only in protected locations. Alpine vegetation is an important source of forage for livestock in the pastoral economy, especially during spring and summer.

Fauna. The fauna of Turkey is of special interest because Turkey, as the bridge between Europe and Asia, has been a meeting place and a corridor for the mixing and passage of various types of fauna from both continents, although in general Asian animal types are predominant. The lynx, wolf, bear, fox, and jackal are the major carnivorous types; the gazelle, deer, and boar are the principal herbivorous types. Many varieties of rodents are also found. The pheasant, partridge, stork, and several types of vultures are among the more common larger birds.

Language. Turkish belongs to the Altaic superfamily of languages, which are spoken in most of central and northern Asia. Under the republic, two major language reforms were instituted. The Latin alphabet was adopted in 1928 in place of the Arabic script; and during the 1930's a simplification and purification of the language took place, replacing Ottoman Turkish (or Osmanlica), which was formal, stilted, and filled with Arabic and Persian words, with a more popularly used Turkish (or Türkçe). An important effect of this Turkificaton was to enable better communication between the upper classes and the bulk of the population, which had never adopted Ottoman.

Religion. Although Islam was abolished as the state religion in 1928, 99 percent of the people are still nominally Muslim. Turkish has to some extent been substituted for Arabic as the liturgical language, and the law forbids the wearing of clerical garb except by authorized religious leaders in places of worship and during divine services.

Istanbul is the seat of the ecumenical patriarch, who is the head of the Orthodox Church (Byzantine Rite) in Turkey and senior patriarch of the Orthodox Church throughout the world. The Armenian Apostolic Church in Turkey is headed by a patriarch in Istanbul; the Armenian Catholic Church by the patriarch-catholicos of Cilicia; the Chaldeans by the bishops of Mardin; the Roman Catholics by an apostolic delegate in Istanbul and the archbishop of Izmir; and the Jews by a grand rabbi in Istanbul.

Population Distribution. About 50 percent of the total population lives in rural areas. Urbanization has progressed fairly rapidly. Of the 67 Turkish cities with populations of more than 50,000 in 1985 the largest and best-known are the old Ottoman capital of Istanbul, once Constantinople (5,475,982) on the European shore of the Bosporus; the present capital, Ankara (2,235,035) on the Anatolian Plateau; and the important port city of Izmir (Smyrna) (1,489,772) on the Aegean Sea.

Alleged abuses of power by the Democrat Party, which controlled the assembly from 1950 to 1960, led to the overthrow of the government by the army on May 27, 1960. A 38-man junta known as the national unity committee, headed by General Cemal Gürsel, set out to reorganize Turkey's government and political system.

A new constitution, approved by a popular referendum on July 9, 1961, introduced several important changes. The fundamental rights and freedoms of all citizens were expanded to include guarantees of freedom of the press, speech, and opinion, and of equality for non-Muslims. A bicameral legislature was created by the addition of a senate to the national assembly. Power remained largely in the hands of the lower chamber, which could override the senate by a two-thirds vote. The president was elected by a two-thirds vote of both houses meeting in joint session and served a term of seven years. Thus a more distinct separation of the head of state from the majority party in the legislature was achieved. The 1961 constitution added many social and economic duties to the government's tasks and provided for labor unions, full employment, and public health and welfare.

In 1971 army officers intervened in politics in order to suppress social agitation. The 1961 constitution was amended to curtail political and individual freedoms. Martial law was imposed until October 1973. Terrorist violence and government paralysis led to another military coup in September 1980, and martial law was imposed again.

In 1981 the military regime appointed a consultative assembly to draft a new constitution. A constitution was approved by the assembly in September 1982. It went into effect when it was approved by a national referendum in November 1982.

The new constitution enumerated a long list of civil and political rights, but it made them subordinate to considerations of "national security," "national unity," and "public morality." It also contained provisions enabling the government to impose emergency rule or martial law. The constitution established a popularly elected single-chamber national assembly with full legislative powers, a prime minister and cabinet responsible to the national assembly, and a constitutional court to review the constitutionality of legislation. It provided for a president, with extensive executive powers and the right to veto legislation, to be elected by the assembly for a term of seven years. However, a "temporary article" provided that the head of the military regime, General Kenan Evren, would be president for the first seven years after the constitution went into effect.

Political Parties. From 1961 until the military takeover of 1980 Turkish politics was dominated by the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Justice Party. The CHP had been founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal. It had ruled Turkey from 1923 until 1950 and was a strong advocate of secularism and a government-controlled economy. The Justice Party consisted largely of former members of the equally nationalist, but more conservative, Democrat Party, which had held power from 1950 to 1960. The two parties were roughly equal in strength, and most governments were coalitions that included one or more of the smaller parties.

The military regime that seized power in 1980 outlawed all political parties and banned their leaders and parliamentary deputies from all political activity. In 1983, preparatory to elections in November for the national assembly, new parties were permitted to form. However, the military government retained control over the process by prohibiting parties from choosing leaders or parliamentary candidates displeasing to it. Two important parties, the left-wing Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the right-wing True Path Party (DYP), were excluded as disguised revivals of, respectively, the Republican People's Party and the Justice Party.

The three parties allowed to contest the 1983 elections were the Nationalist Democracy Party (MDP), which was strongly favored by the military regime, the moderately leftist Populist Party (HP), and the conservative, private-enterprise oriented, Motherland Party (ANAP). In the elections the military-backed MDP finished a poor third, and ANAP won an absolute majority of assembly seats. Its leader, Turgut Özal, an economist who had been deputy prime minister for economic affairs during the first 21 months of military rule, became prime minister in December 1983.

Local elections in 1984, in which the SDP and DYP were allowed to compete, clarified the relative strength of the major parties. The ANAP confirmed its position as Turkey's leading party, with a comfortable margin over the SDP. The DYP, HP, and MDP all did very poorly. However, in local elections in 1989 the SDP and DYP were the big winners.

Özal was elected president in 1989. In elections for the national assembly in 1991, the ANAP lost its majority in the assembly; the DYP and SDP formed a coalition government, with Süleyman Demirel, leader of the DYP, as prime minister. Soon after Özal died of a heart attack in 1993, Demirel was elected president. Tansu Çiller, now leader of the DYP, became the first woman prime minister of Turkey, and maintained the coalition government.

Local Government. Turkey is divided for administrative purposes into 67 l (vilayets, or provinces), which are subdivided into lçe, and these in turn are divided into Bucak. A vali (governor), representing the government, is at the head of each province. There are also locally elected representative bodies at the village, city, and provincial levels.

Legal System. The old Ottoman laws that were based on religious law (Shari‘a) were gradually abolished in modern Turkey. The religious courts were suppressed in 1924, and the constitution promulgated in that year guaranteed full independence to the remaining courts. The judicial system consists of courts of justices of the peace, of limited but summary criminal and civil jurisdiction; courts of first instance, with wider powers; central criminal courts, which hear serious criminal cases; commercial courts; and a court of cassation, the highest court, which serves as a court of appeal. The 1982 constitution provided also for a constitutional court to judge the constitutionality of legislation. The Turkish legal codes have been adapted from the Swiss civil, the Italian penal, and the German commercial codes.

Armed Forces. After 1947 Turkey's armed forces were extensively reorganized with U.S. assistance. Military service is compulsory for 20 months. In 1981 the Turkish army was approximately 470,000 strong, and it was estimated that more than 2 million men could be mobilized in an emergency. The navy had 14 destroyers, 14 submarines, and about 45,000 men. The 53,000-man air force had more than 300 combat aircraft and Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missiles.

International Relations. Before World War II Turkey maintained friendly relations with Yugoslavia, Romania, and Greece, and concluded the Balkan Pact with them in 1934. Relations with Bulgaria were periodically tense. Friendly relations with the Soviet Union established by Lenin and Mustafa Kemal (known later as Atatürk) continued through most of the interwar period, and did not deteriorate until the conclusion of the German-Soviet pact in 1939. Relations with the Arab countries were cool because of Arab resentment of the Kemalist program, regarded as inimical to the traditional institutions of Islam. They worsened after 1939, when Turkey induced France and the League of Nations to accept its annexation of the Syrian province of Alexandretta (Hatay), in which Turks were the largest single community.

Turkey did not enter World War II until Feb. 23, 1945, when it declared war on Germany and Japan in order to become a founding member of the United Nations. After the war Soviet attempts to obtain control of the Black Sea straits led to a war of nerves during which, in the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the United States took over from Britain responsibility for aiding Turkey. Turkey was admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952. In 1955 Turkey signed security pacts with Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and Britain to form the Baghdad Pact, known, after Iraq's withdrawal in 1959, as the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). CENTO disbanded after Pakistan and Iran withdrew in 1979.

In 1954 Turkey, Greece, and Yugoslavia signed a defensive military alliance. However, conflict over Cyprus, then a British colony, soon established Turkey's antagonism with Greece as the central concern of its foreign policy. Greek claims to Cyprus were based on the fact that 80 percent of Cypriots were Greek and that these Cypriots overwhelmingly desired political union (enosis) with Greece. Turkish claims were based on the island's location, 50 miles (80 km) off Turkey's southern coast, and on the fear of the Turkish fifth of the Cypriots that they would be persecuted by the Greek majority. In 1959 Turkey, Britain, and Greece signed an agreement guaranteeing the independence of Cyprus and prohibiting both the union of Cyprus with Greece and the partition of the island. The conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots recurred in 1963-1964 and 1967, and in summer 1974 it nearly brought about a war between Turkey and Greece. After several months of increasingly tense confrontation with Turkey over control of oil resources under the Aegean, the military dictators then ruling Greece moved to take over Cyprus. In mid-July the officers of the Greek army who commanded the Greek Cypriot national guard overthrew the Cypriot government and installed a notorious right-wing terrorist as president. When the Turkish Cypriots appealed for protection, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus and occupied the northern third of the island. The Greek and Cypriot dictatorships immediately collapsed. However, Turkish forces remained on Cyprus into the early 1990's in order to support the government that the Turkish Cypriots set up in northern Cyprus.

In setting as a goal the creation of a modern, secular, western state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stressed the building of a modern economy. The railroads constructed under the Ottoman Empire by European investors were acquired from their foreign owners, extended, and linked into a national system; new factories were erected; and a banking system was created to make Turkey independent of the foreign banks that had dominated its commercial life.

Atatürk at first relied largely on private initiative, but the results during the republic's first decade were disappointing. This was partly because of the lack of an entrepreneurial class. Commerce in Turkey had been dominated for centuries by foreigners. In addition, many of the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews who had formed the backbone of the commercial community had emigrated. The worldwide depression from 1929 on also dried up foreign markets for exports. The government therefore actively promoted economic development in the early 1930's. To accelerate the pace of industrialization, it constructed and operated manufacturing, mining, and power facilities. This program, known as statism, or state capitalism, was pursued through the medium of specially created state economic enterprises, of which the most important were the Sümer Bank in manufacturing and the Eti Bank in mining and power. Statism has remained a significant feature of the Turkish economy, and many additional state economic enterprises have since been established.

The drive for development was interrupted by World War II, which made it impossible to obtain the imported capital goods on which further industrialization depended. After the war the effort was resumed with outside financial and technical assistance. Since 1948 Turkey has received more than $2.9 billion in grants and loans from the United States. Since the middle of the 1950's Turkey has also received substantial loans from European countries, notably Germany and Britain. Turkey created, with U.S. aid, a national highway network linking previously semi-isolated regions and greatly facilitating the movement of goods and people. Major investments were also made in electricity production, coal mining, and irrigation, and new textile, sugar, and cement factories were opened. During the 1950's the economy expanded on the average by 6.3 percent annually, but growth was uneven; rapid expansion in the early 1950's was succeeded by a period of inflation, economic dislocation, and relative stagnation in the late 1950's.

After the political revolution that occurred in 1960, which was in part a protest against the chaotic consequences of unplanned, inconsistent policies in the economy, Turkey entered upon a period of planned development. During the first five-year plan, covering 1963 through 1967, the growth rate averaged 6.7 percent yearly, a higher rate than that achieved in the late 1950's but short of the target of 7 percent. The investment rate also did not reach the expected level of almost 20 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Despite a higher target, investment did not rise significantly under the second five-year plan, covering 1968 to 1972; however, the target of a 7 percent annual growth in GDP was met. The third five-year plan, covering 1973 through 1977, called for an annual growth rate of about 8 percent, but the actual growth rate averaged only about 6.5 percent.

After the mid-1970's investment and economic growth slowed, and unemployment grew. The slump occurred partly because of the worldwide recession of the mid-1970's, which caused a sharp decline in the funds remitted to Turkey by Turks working in western Europe, and partly because of rises in the cost of imports, especially oil and finished goods. Turkey was therefore also beset by a mounting foreign debt, which it could not pay. To pay its foreign creditors Turkey obtained new loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a consortium of western European lenders, and the United States. These loans were tied to Turkey's adoption (in 1978) of an economic austerity program, which further impeded its economic growth.

Agriculture. Not only does a fourth of domestic production came from agriculture, but farming remains the occupation of about 60 percent of the working population. Cereals and livestock are raised on the Anatolian Plateau. In this region most farmers own some of the land they cultivate and large landholdings are the exception. Inheritance practices, however, have caused severe fragmentation of holdings and have affected productivity adversely. In the richer coastal regions, especially the Aegean region and the Çukurova district at the eastern end of Turkey's Mediterranean coast, large landholdings worked with hired farm labor are more common. In these areas cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and fruits are raised, and fertilizers, farm machinery, irrigation, and modern cultivating practices are more widely used.

Many peasant families own little or no land, and pressure for land reform has been especially acute in eastern Turkey. In 1973 the government approved an agrarian reform whereby 8 million acres (3.2 million hectares) of land would be redistributed to some 500,000 landless peasants over the next 15 years. One quarter of the affected lands were privately held; the rest belonged to the state.

Cereal and livestock raising together account for about two thirds of total agricultural output. Both are raised primarily on the Anatolian Plateau, with little use of improved seeds, fertilizers, or selective breeding practices. The cereal crop in 1977 totaled about 24 million metric tons, of which about two thirds was wheat and one fifth barley.

The livestock industry is especially significant in the mountainous eastern provinces. Turkey's 44 million sheep produce wool for the carpet-making industry as well as hides and mutton; its 15 million head of cattle provide milk, meat, and hides. There are 18 million goats in the country, one fourth of them Angora goats that provide mohair for export.

The remaining third of agricultural output is almost equally divided between industrial crops and fruits and vegetables. The leading industrial crops in 1977 were cotton (475,000 metric tons), tobacco (274,000 metric tons), and sugar beets (9.4 million metric tons).

Industry and Power. Industry developed rapidly in the 1950's and 1960's, and it employed roughly 15 percent of the labor force in the 1970's. Tariffs and quotas protect most Turkish industries against foreign competition, and the prices of many domestic products are artificially high. Istanbul and Hzmir, with the adjoining Marmara and Aegean provinces, account for about three fourths of total factory production and employment. The only other important industrial centers are Ankara, the Çukurova region, and Zonguldak on the Black Sea, where Turkey's bituminous coal mines are located and near which, at Karabük and Erecli, its two major steel mills are situated. Production of crude steel was about 1.4 million metric tons in 1977. There are also very many widely dispersed workshops that are responsible for about 40 percent of industrial production. The leading Turkish industries are textile manufacturing and food processing.

Production of electricity increased from 4 billion kilowatt-hours in 1963 to 20.6 billion kilowatt-hours in 1977. Most of the electricity was consumed by industrial plants. Despite the increase in production, the consumption of electricity by households remains low, and many villages still are without electricity. In 1977 about three fifths of Turkey's electricity was generated by fossil-fuel plants and the rest by water power. Two major hydroelectric projects, the Keban Dam on the Euphrates River and the Hirfanli Dam on the Kizil River, were completed in the early 1970's.

Mining and Petroleum. Turkey is rich in minerals compared with neighboring countries. The leading products are coal, lignite, copper, chrome, and iron. Lead, zinc, and sulfur are also produced. In the 1960's oil was found in southeastern Anatolia. Turkey produced 2.7 million metric tons of crude petroleum and imported almost 13 million metric tons in 1977. Imported crude petroleum is refined at Mersin and Hzmit.

Transportation and Shipping. Turkey's state-owned rail system totals about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) and has direct links with Syria and Iran and with the European countries. There are about 18,000 miles (29,000 km) of hard-surfaced highways. Turkish merchant shipping had a capacity of 1.3 million gross registered tons in 1977. Turkish Airways provides domestic and international air service. Several international airlines serve Istanbul and Ankara.

Foreign Trade and Payments. Turkey's merchandise exports earned $1.8 billion and its merchandise imports cost $5.8 billion in 1977. Besides bearing this trade deficit, Turkey had to pay $360 million on its foreign debt in 1977. Moreover, Turkey's other foreign earnings dropped sharply in the mid-1970's when western European countries restricted their use of Turkish migrant labor. Remittances from these workers to their families in Turkey fell from $1.4 billion in 1974--about as much as Turkey's merchandise export earnings that year--to $982 million in 1977. Price rises for oil and finished goods after 1973 also increased Turkey's burden by augmenting the cost of its imports. By the end of 1977 Turkey was unable to pay its foreign creditors and had to accept an economic austerity program proposed by the International Monetary Fund in return for new foreign loans.

Of Turkey's exports about 60 percent by value are farm products, especially cotton, nuts, tobacco, dried fruit, livestock, and mohair. The remaining 40 percent is divided between minerals, especially blister copper and chrome ore, and industrial goods, mainly food products. Imports consist primarily of industrial goods and raw materials needed by industry and fuels: oil accounts for 25 percent by value, machinery for 24 percent, iron and steel for 12 percent, and transportation equipment and parts for 10 percent. Only about 10 percent of imports are consumer goods.

About one half of Turkey's foreign trade is with members of the European Community, and another 10 percent is with other western European nations. The United States and eastern Europe each account for about 10 percent.

Finance and Banking. The unit of currency is the Turkish lira, or pound.

The Central Bank is the sole bank of issue and exercises central banking functions. In the mid-1970's there were also 12 state-owned or state-controlled banks (including the Sümer and Eti banks) and 31 private commercial banks, of which 5 were foreign.

Urban Educated Class. Distinctions can be drawn between the urban upper and urban middle classes. The urban upper class includes several groups of high status, variously determined by education, political influence, and wealth. Journalists are accorded very high status, as are university professors and most physicians. Cabinet ministers, many members of the assembly, directors of important government departments, and other high officials are also often found in upper-class circles. Commercial activity has traditionally been the virtual monopoly of non-Muslim groups and enjoyed little status among Muslims. The Turkish business community has grown since the beginning of the republic, however, and since World War II has been increasingly challenging the old military-bureaucratic elite in terms of social prestige. The members of the urban upper class are generally very Westernized: usually they speak at least one Western language, are well acquainted with the details of European and American life and culture, and have intimate contact with the diplomatic and foreign business communities residing in Turkey.

The urban middle class includes the great bulk of civil servants, the proprietors of medium-sized businesses and industries, many persons who are in service occupations, some skilled workers, and university students. These groups usually are less Westernized than the upper class and are more oriented to Turkish culture. The urban middle class also includes virtually the entire upper strata of the provincial cities, as very few persons who live outside the cities of Ankara, Istanbul, and Hzmir could be included in the urban upper class. There is a considerable mobility within the urban educated class, and many university students eventually move into the upper class.

Urban Lower Class and Peasantry. The urban lower class includes the vast numbers of semiskilled and unskilled laborers, janitors, and other service workers, and the urban unemployed. The high rate of migration of village young people to urban areas makes this probably the most rapidly increasing class in Turkey. Many of the migrants have been unable to find jobs, and others work only seasonally. Almost all live in poverty in the slums, known as gecekondu, which ring the major cities, but urbanization continues as the rural population grows and as industry offers the lure of better incomes, even though it is not able to absorb all those who flock to the cities.

Some 50 percent of the Turkish population are peasants, living in some 42,000 villages. Improved communications and transportation have brought them into closer contact with towns and cities, but in many areas the villagers live in virtually the same way they did in past centuries. The educational efforts of the government since 1923 have succeeded in bringing the national literacy level up to only about 50 percent, and the rural literacy level is generally much lower. Many rural areas are still firmly dominated by large landowners, traditional leaders of families or tribes, or religious functionaries. The village young people who move to towns and cities find their way into the middle class blocked unless they are able to obtain further education.

Labor. The labor movement in Turkey is still at a relatively early stage of development. Craft guilds existed during the Ottoman period, and a few workers' organizations were formed under the republic before World War II. The first nationwide system of labor unions were established in 1947 when changes in the Law of Associations permitted formation of occupational organizations, banned earlier for fear of fomenting class divisions. The oversupply of workers was also a hindrance to unionism, as was prohibition of the right to strike. Since the granting of the right in 1963, Türk-Io, the Turkish Confederation of Trade Unions, has established itself as an important economic and political force. In the mid-1970's its membership totaled about 1.2 million. A smaller, socialist confederation, known as the DISK, has ties to the Social Democratic Party.

Religion. Ninety-nine percent of the Turkish people are Muslims, and the bulk of them belong to the Sunni division of Islam. One of Atatürk's chief reform efforts was aimed at eliminating the influence of religion in politics. He proscribed the popular mystic orders--most notably the dervish orders--which, existing alongside the formal religion of the state, had characterized a great portion of Turkish Islam. He closed the Medreses, the mosque-connected schools that long controlled most Turkish education. He forbade the Arabic version of the ezan, or Muslim prayer call, and substituted a Turkish translation. Religious publications virtually disappeared, and public religious observance was often discouraged. The weekly day of rest was changed from the Muslim Friday to the Western Sunday.

After Atatürk's death there was some relaxation in secularist pressure. However, no major group, with the exception of the Islamic fundamentalists represented by the National Salvation Party, favors restoring Islam's functions other than in the area of private religious observance. The thinly veiled attempt by the Democrat Party government in 1950-1960 to exploit religious feelings for political gain was one of the reasons for the revolution of 1960. In the cities some members of the middle class have developed their own blend of secularism and personal religious expression. Islam in rural Turkey, however, remains much as it was through the centuries; and it is doubtful that the influence of religious leaders, who frequently are the most literate and educated, has been significantly reduced in the lives of many rural Turks.

Women. Another of the areas in which Atatürk made great reform efforts was the status of women. He did not attempt to force women to remove the veil, as he had forced men to wear Western hats instead of the fez. However, by encouraging the women around him to shed their veils and give up wearing the heavy clothing that covered their entire bodies, he hoped to set an example for the rest of society. Atatürk also opened to women the professions and arts; he gave them the vote in 1930 and in 1935 saw to it that a number were elected to the assembly. Today women are found in the faculties of Turkish universities, in medicine and science, and in arts and letters. Turkish women who have achieved prominence in their fields include Afet Inan, one of Atatürk's protégées, a writer on Turkish history; Perihan Çambel, a cancer research specialist; soprano Leyla Gençer; and violinist Suna Kan.

In contrast to the change in the status of women belonging to the urban educated class, the position of urban lower-class and village women remains traditional. Women still perform a large portion of the farm work, and it is only in rare villages that women eat together with their husbands or sons. One of the areas where great resistance has occurred is in persuading villagers to permit girls to attend school.

Youth. Turkey has put great faith in its youth, to the extent that youth (Gençlik) has become a rather distinct concept. Youth is always represented when social or professional groups come together, and young people are always specially included in parades, ceremonies, and many social celebrations. Turkish student federations are highly organized and active, although internal differences have often limited their effectiveness. Youth groups became a focal point of social discontent and political organizing on the left and the right in the 1970's.

Social Welfare. Both private organizations and the state provide some measure of social assistance. Privately sponsored projects include the setting up of children's play groups and vacation activities and the opening of heated, lighted buildings where children from poor and crowded homes may go to do their homework. A state-run "social insurance institution" covered 2.2 million urban wage earners in 1977. Two other programs covered government employees and self-employed artisans.

Education. Education began to make rapid strides only in the years after 1923. Before the Atatürk revolution most education was confined to the cities and controlled by religious authorities. Under the republic all schools came under government supervision. The curricula were revised to include modern science and mathematics, as well as world history, secular literature, and various practical subjects; these had been neglected in Islamic schools in favor of religious and traditional subjects, like the composition of complicated Ottoman poetry. The replacement of the Arabic script by the Latin alphabet was important in making it easier to learn to read and write. The number of elementary schools increased from 4,900 in 1923 to 44,000 in 1980, but a large number of villages still have no schools, and only about 60 percent of all children of ages 5 to 14 attend school. There is also a great shortage of teachers.

Five years of free primary education are provided by the state, and most of the three-year middle schools are also run by the state. Education is compulsory through elementary school, although in many places this is not enforced, owing either to lack of necessary facilities or to popular resistance.

The first high school in Turkey, the lycée of Galatasaray, was founded in Istanbul in 1868. It was the first serious attempt by a Muslim government to provide modern secondary education in a Western language. By 1980 Turkey had more than 5,000 secondary schools with an enrollment of 1.7 million. However, secondary education is still largely confined to cities; a large percentage of the secondary schools are in Istanbul, Ankara, and Hzmir provinces. Secondary school graduates for the period 1930-1959 numbered at most about 135,000, or less than ½ of 1 percent of the population in the early 1960's. Several U.S.-run high schools serve Turkish students in Istanbul, Hzmir, Tarsus, and other cities. There are also 1,700 technical and vocational secondary schools, with an enrollment of 515,000 in 1980.

Higher education is offered at 19 universities, the largest being the universities of Ankara and Istanbul and Aegean University in Hzmir. Until the 1971 coup, the universities were virtually free of state control; restrictions were subsequently imposed on the political activities of students and faculty. The government provides a number of scholarships in return for pledges of later public service. There are also three technical universities and a number of vocational and higher teacher-training institutions, among the best being the Gazi Pedagogical Institute in Ankara. The number of students in higher education in 1980 was about 275,000.

Literature and the Arts. Turkish literature until the middle of the 19th century centered around the Ottoman court, which produced poetry and some prose. This literature represented a fusion of Persian, Arabic, and Turkish classical styles. Western influences were introduced in the 1860's by the Young Ottomans, a group of intellectuals who attempted to combine Western cultural forms with a more simple form of the Turkish language. This Westernizing trend continued throughout the 19th century and became more pronounced in the period immediately before World War I. After 1923, the republic produced an impressive number of novelists, poets, singers, musicians, and artists. Novelists who gained international fame include Halide Edib and Reoat Nuri Güntekin. Several important works dealt with village life: these range from Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoclu's Yaban ("The Stranger") in the 1930's to Mahmut Makal's A Village in Anatolia, bitter reflections by a graduate of a Village Institute on his life in Anatolia, and Yasar Kemal's Mehmet My Hawk, which won world recognition in 1961. Other important writers are Fakir Baykurt and Yahya Kemal.

Orhan Veli is generally considered the father of modern Turkish poetry, which has been characterized by a rebellion against rigidly prescribed forms and a preoccupation with immediate perception. Some poets have experimented with obscurantist forms and ideas; many others have expressed concern for social-democratic issues. Among the best-known poets are Oktay Rifat, Ilhan Berk, and Fazil Husnu Daglarca. Nazim Hikmet was Turkey's best-known political poet. A large number of Turks are also amateur poets, and several poetry reviews appear regularly.

Foreign plays outnumber Turkish works on the Turkish theater stage; but theater attendance has grown greatly in the past few years, and many Turkish playwrights have had opportunities to have their works presented.

Both Ankara and Istanbul have well-respected opera companies. The Presidential Symphony Orchestra gives concerts each year both in Ankara and on tour. Ankara and Istanbul each have a music conservatory, including schools of ballet. Several Turkish composers, of whom the best known is Adnan Saygun, have won acclaim in Europe and America as well as in Turkey for their fusing of Turkish folk themes with Western forms.

The Istanbul Music Conservatory has taken steps to preserve authentic folk music by recording it in all parts of the country. Folk arts festivals held each year in Istanbul present a wide variety of Turkish music and dance.

Museums and Libraries. Turkey is rich in museums. Topkapi, formerly the principal palace of the sultans in Istanbul, is now a museum displaying the treasures of the Ottoman dynasty. The Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia, which had been turned into a mosque in 1453, after the Ottoman conquest, was made into a museum in 1933. The Hittite Museum in Ankara has many well-preserved carvings and statues, and the Ethnographic Museum in Istanbul contains many Greek and Roman remains. Virtually every city has a museum of folk art; and many archaeological sites--including the great Greek and Roman cities of Ephesus and Pergamum--have been opened to public view. Libraries are not widespread. The best is the National Library in Ankara, which has about 600,000 volumes.

Publishing and the Popular Arts. In 1991 about 6,400 books were published, including both Turkish works and translations from Western languages. Turkey had about 54 daily newspapers in 1991. The largest is Hürriyet, while the most influential are Milliyet and Cumhuriyet. Many newspapers are owned by political parties. There are several weekly newsmagazines, humor magazines, and a large number of monthly or quarterly journals on many subjects.

The Turkish state radio broadcasts news, Turkish and Western music, and educational programs. In 1991 there were more than 94 million licensed radio sets. The three chief stations, in Ankara, Istanbul, and Hzmir, are supplemented by several local ones, particularly in eastern Turkey. In 1991 there were more than 10 million television sets in use. Turkish companies have made several films, but most films are imported from Europe and the United States.

Sports and Holidays. Soccer and wrestling are the most popular sports. Turkey has won many world and Olympic prizes in wrestling. Major holidays are the Muslim religious feast of Peker Bayram, coming at the close of the holy month of Ramadan, the ninth lunar month, and the Feast of the Sacrifice, Kurban Bayram, during the 12th lunar month; National Sovereignty and Children's Day (April 23); Youth and Sports Day (May 19); Victory Day (August 30); and Republic Day (October 29).

Eventually the kingdom of Phrygia arose in the area of the old Hittite state; related to the Thracians in what is today European Turkey, the Phrygians may have been the ancestors of the Armenians. At about the same time, Mitanni was replaced by the kingdom of Urartu, which had uneasy relations with its powerful neighbor, Assyria.

Phrygia and Urartu were devastated about 700 b.c. by waves of Cimmerian horsemen from north of the Caucasus; of Phrygia's numerous successors, the most powerful was the kingdom of Lydia. Both Phrygia and Lydia were noted for their commerce and wealth; Lydia is reputed to have invented both coinage and dice, and the names of the Phrygian King Midas and the Lydian King Croesus are even today bywords for persons of enormous wealth.

On the Aegean Sea, coastal Turkey was likewise an ancient center of civilization. Homer's Troy is but one of 46 separate cities, one built on the debris of another, dating back to about 3000 b.c. ; and the earliest developments of Greek civilization come not from Greece itself, but from the Greek colonies of Ionia on the Anatolian coast.

Turkey was overrun by the Persians in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., and the area remained in Persian hands until the invasion of Alexander the Great in 334 b.c. Under Alexander's successors, Asia Minor broke down into a number of smaller states, chief of which were Pergamum, Bithynia, Pontus, and Armenia. But the rising power of Rome began to extend over Asia, and by the middle of the first century b.c. Rome had either conquered or been willed all the states of the area. Only Armenia remained as a buffer between the Roman and Persian (Parthian) empires.

For the next thousand years both European and Asian Turkey remained part of the Roman Empire; with the division of the Empire between East and West, it formed part (eventually, the major part) of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. There were frequent attacks from the east by Persia and later by the Arab Caliphate, but the major part of Turkey remained in Byzantine hands until the 11th-century invasions of the Seljuk Turks.

The Seljuks. The Seljuks were a branch of the Turkic peoples who dominated the grasslands of Asia from Mongolia to western Russia. In the tenth century a group of Turks under a chieftain named Seljuk settled in Transoxiana, north of what is today Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and joined the frontier forces of the local rulers. The Seljuk servants soon became masters and moved westward on a career of conquest. By 1050 they controlled Transoxiana, Afghanistan, and central Persia, and were pressing on the frontiers of the Abbasid Caliphate of Bagdad.

Early in the 11th century Turkish tribes and families in ever-increasing numbers had begun to filter into Asia Minor. Pressures in Central Asia and opportunities in the Middle East brought in great Turkish waves toward the middle of the century led by the descendants of Seljuk, especially his grandson Tughrul (Togrul) Beg, who took Baghdad from the feeble Buwayhid Dynasty in 1055. The caliph, the spiritual head of the Muslims, bestowed on Tughrul the title of sultan, "authority," making him in effect the temporal ruler and defender of the Abbasid Empire.

Tughrul's nephew Alp Arslan routed the Byzantine army in 1071 at the Battle of Manzikert near Lake Van in eastern Asia Minor as a move to protect the northern flank of the Seljuks in the Middle East. The victory effectively and permanently broke the Byzantine power over Anatolia; Byzantium never fully recovered from the disaster. Turkish armies, bands, nomads, petty princes, and settlers swarmed into the newly opened land. Another Seljuk prince, Suleiman, was appointed to consolidate and hold these Muslim gains; he broke with the main body of the Seljuks, and thus a distinct Seljuk Turkish state was established in Asia Minor. Eventually, the oasis city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in south-central Anatolia became the main residence of the Seljuk sultan of Rum--meaning the sultan in the Roman Empire.

The Seljuk penetration was so powerful that the Byzantine emperor regarded his position as hopeless without sizable aid from the West, and he sent out a request for assistance that resulted in the First Crusade. The Turkish occupation of Asia Minor proved, however, to be permanent.

Frontier Muslim raiders and warriors called ghazis joined in the exploitation of the new area. The ghazis adhered to a semi-military organization dedicated to advancing the frontier of Islam; they supported themselves by raiding Christendom and by obtaining subsidies from interested rulers. In the Taurus Mountains and all along the frontiers of Byzantium the ghazis enjoyed considerable political freedom, and they resisted every Seljuk move to control or tax their activities. The city of Sivas in eastern Anatolia became an important ghazi stronghold; other centers were Amasya, Kayseri, Ankara, and Malatya.

Toward the middle of the 12th century Suleiman's great-grandson Kilij (modern Turkish, Kilic) Arslan II brought most of the ghazi states of Anatolia under his suzerainty. Upon his death in 1192 the Seljuk Empire of Rum, with its main headquarters at Konya, had firmly established the Turkish-Muslim character of Asia Minor. Well designed and highly embellished mosques were erected from one end of the country to the other, and learned Muslim theologians taught in the schools connected with the mosques. Muslim financial administrators organized the state, trade flourished, caravansaries (inns) were located along the main highways, and poets and artists from older Muslim centers flocked in under the patronage of the Seljuk notables. Until the Mongol invasions of the mid-13th century Seljuk rule was the stabilizing force in Asia Minor.

Seljuk Fragmentation and the Ghazi States. In 1243 the fate of North China, Central Asia, Persia, and Baghdad overtook the Seljuks of Turkey. At the Battle of Kozadagh in 1243 the Mongols defeated the Seljuk ruler Kaikhosrau II, and the Seljuk domains became tributary to the invaders. A few years later the Mongols divided Asia Minor into two Seljuk satellites, leaving them, however, almost to their own devices. Sultan Kaikaus II of the western half proved incompetent and fled to Constantinople. Mongol neglect, and lack of support for the Seljuks, led to political chaos; each Turkish chieftain was on his own. Almost at the same time the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople regained their city from the Latins, who had seized it in the Fourth Crusade, and henceforth devoted their attention to Balkan affairs. Soon all of Anatolia came under Turkish rule, except for a small part in the northwest corner and the splinter Byzantine "empire" of Trebizond on the Black Sea coast. In the absence of a centralizing force such as the Seljuks, Asia Minor was fragmented into more than a score of petty states, each under the leadership of a Turkish family or tribe.

There were three types of these Turkish principalities. One type persisted in following the usual Muslim state rule such as had prevailed at Konya under the Seljuks; such were the late Karaman Turkish state at Konya, one of the most persistent foes of the Ottoman Turks, and its northwestern neighbor the Kermian Turkish state located at Kütahya. The second type was more tribal, and existed principally in the area of the Taurus Mountains. This tribalism is exemplified by the Torgud and Warsak tribes, the Turkish states of Ramazan at Adana and Tarsus, the Dhu-al-Kadr (Dulkadir) at Diyarbakir and Malatya, and the Teke-eli at Antalya. The last type, principally in the west, was the Turkish ghazi state; that of the ghazi Osman eventually became the best known. Many of the non-ghazi states took on ghazi characteristics, so that by the end of the 14th century most of Turkish Asia Minor was ruled by such groups. Some of the ghazis took to the sea, and at one time the ghazis of Menteshe at Milas held the island of Rhodes.

A ghazi belonged to a brotherhood and lived by a knightly and virtuous set of rules. A ghazi brotherhood was a democratic organization, in which the individual ghazi was judged by his valor and his actions rather than by his family, his possessions, or his ancestry. This equality and personal dignity became deeply ingrained in the Turkish society of Anatolia. Each brotherhood had a spiritual leader, and most of the ghazis belonged to one of the mystical Muslim dervish orders. A dedicated objective of the ghazis was the expansion of the Islamic world by militant means. On the other hand, a ghazi band was a citizen's armed group. Although most ghazis were landholders and thus comparable to the contemporary European feudal knight in many ways, some ghazis were townsmen and pursued a trade. The latter were sufficiently prevalent so that Turkish gentlemen and even sultans in the 19th and 20th centuries were always trained in some particular craft, such as cabinet-making, metalworking, or gardening.

In the later years of Ottoman greatness, the legend grew that Ertogrul and his tribe arrived from Central Asia just in time to save the Seljuks in a battle with the Mongols and were rewarded with western lands, but modern research does not bear out the story. Ertogrul held his fief from the Seljuks and had rendered homage and tribute to them and to the Mongol khans, a practice that Osman and his son continued until 1335, when their independence was fully established. It may well have been that Osman and his father were not ghazis until Osman came under the influence of a dervish mystic. Osman's fortunes in the 1280's greatly improved and as a leader of ghazis he acquired a number of towns--Bilecik, Inönü, and Eskioehir. From this small beginning on the edges of Byzantium a great empire was developed.

At the opening of the 14th century Osman and his ghazis conquered the lands to the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara as well as much of the area west of the Sakarya River as far south as Kütahya. When Osman was dying in 1326 his son Orkhan (Orhan) took the walled city of Brusa from Byzantine rule. Bursa, as the Ottomans called the city, became the Ottoman capital in Asia and remained so until the fall of Constantinople more than 100 years later. Within a decade Byzantine control of Asia Minor was practically ended, and the historic cities of Nicaea and Nicomedia became Iznik and Izmit. Also the Karasi prince in Bergama, the ancient Pergamum, succumbed to the Ottomans, and Ghazi Orkhan ruled all of the northwestern corner of Anatolia from the Aegean and the Dardanelles to the Bosporus and the Black Sea.

Expansion into Europe. Under the leadership of Sultan Orkhan the Ottomans crossed into Europe at the Dardanelles and obtained a permanent foothold in the Balkans. Even before the appearance of Osman, Turkish ghazis from Anatolia had become accustomed to raiding the islands of the Aegean as well as Thrace and Macedonia. In 1345 Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzene employed Orkhan and his men to fight against his rival, Emperor John V Palaeologus. As part of the bargain Orkhan received the hand of John VI's daughter Theodora and won the right for his ghazis to plunder in Europe. Thereafter, ghazis visited Thrace and the Balkans every summer, where they collected great fortunes in booty. In 1347 the Black Death swept through Constantinople and the following year devastated the Balkans, virtually paralyzing cities, towns, government, and society. Then in 1354 the walls of Gallipoli (modern Gelibolu) were demolished by an earthquake and the half-populated city was occupied permanently by the Ottomans. Orkhan's men soon conquered and occupied the European land strip between the Dardanelles and the Black Sea, thus shutting off Byzantine communications from Constantinople to the Balkans. For another hundred years the emperors continued to live in their great city, but it remained an impoverished city-state amid a ghostlike grandeur. Politically the emperors were dependent upon the surrounding Ottomans, and the Byzantine Empire was hardly more significant than a half dozen contemporary petty states of the Balkans and Asia Minor.

In 1360 Orkhan was succeeded by his eldest living son, Murad I, a remarkable ruler who insured the permanence of Ottoman forces in Europe by the incorporation of the conquered city of Adrianople into his realm in 1361. As Edirne, the city served as the European capital of the Ottoman state until Constantinople was taken in 1453. For 300 years thereafter it was a favorite residence of the sultans and the usual point of mobilization for European campaigns, as well as an army headquarters until the 20th century. Murad conquered the heart of the Balkans, and in 1389 he defeated the Serbian king at the Battle of Kosovo, although he lost his life at the end of the struggle. Henceforth most of the land south of the Danube was Ottoman, while raiders often made forays on Hungary, Austria, Italy, and Greece.

In Asia Murad I had been equally successful. He took Ankara, and he extended the Ottoman state southward to the Taurus Mountains by marrying his son Bayazid to the daughter of the Kermian prince and taking over that state. Campaigns against the Karaman and Teke rulers were less successsful, as Murad's ghazis were not willing to war against other ghazis.

The Organization of the Ottoman Empire. In the period between the conquest of Bursa and the victory at Kosovo the organization and the administration of the Ottoman state was effected and much of the future character of government and society set. Records are relatively scarce, but it is clear that Orkhan I and Murad I were strong personalities who appreciated the importance of the executive functions of government. Their administrative skill was as important as their military prowess in extending and maintaining their power from the Danube to the Taurus Mountains. A major element in these successes was their utilization of manpower. The Mongols were on the march again, and Turks from the East, as well as Arabs and Iranians in the path of the Mongols, sought refuge in Anatolia, where the Ottomans welcomed them. Carpenters, tile makers and decorators, theologians, scribes, and soldiers became Ottomans. Orkhan and Murad were unconcerned about whether the newcomers were Muslim or Christian or Jew, or whether they were Arab, Greek, Serb, Albanian, Italian, Iranian, or Tartar. Administrative practices were a mélange of Arab, Seljuk, and Byzantine forms. The Ottoman practice in all new conquests was to follow local customs as much as possible, thereby disrupting society to the least degree.

In any new conquest, the field commander assigned on the spot the income from certain tracts of land to valiant and deserving soldiers. Known as timar, the income served as a kind of fief but also carried with it the responsibility for the holder to administer the land and to appear regularly for campaigning and raiding expeditions in distant regions. Holders of timars, called sipahi, formed an effective feudal cavalry. As ghazis, too, the sipahi served as the first Ottoman colonizers in newly won territories. Murad I gave many fiefs in Europe to old and dispossessed Turkish Anatolian families, thus transferring and creating a Turkish land-possessing, military aristocracy in the Balkans.

Another development of this time was the creation of the famed Janizary corps in the army. As the number of prisoners of war increased rapidly in the 14th century, their value decreased until a system was evolved of training them as soldiers and incorporating them into special units around the sultan. These new soldiers (yeni cheri, which foreigners corrupted to Janizary or Janissary) were later augmented by drafting youths from many of the Christian communities, especially in the Balkans. This practice, known as devshirmeh, may have been inaugurated under Murad I, but was not fully developed until the 15th century under Murad II; it was continued into the 16th century and sporadically until the 17th. Technically living as slaves of the sultan, the Janizaries provided the Ottoman rulers with a highly disciplined standing army of trained and well-equipped infantrymen, superior to any similar force in Europe until the advent of the French army under Louis XIV.

Conquests and Fall of Bayazid I. Bayazid (Bajazet) I, who succeeded his father Murad I at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, immediately gave orders that his brother Yakub should be strangled. Yakub had been valiant in the battle, but Bayazid wished to assure the unity of the state and to avoid any chances of losing a fratricidal civil war. This act became customary among the Ottoman rulers until the 17th century, when imprisonment instead of strangling was the fate of the brothers and nephews of a successful sultan.

Bayazid greatly extended and consolidated his state, both in Europe and in Anatolia. His best-known feat in Europe was the annihilation of the crusade of English, French, Flemish, and German nobles--nearly 100,000 men--at Nicopolis on the Danube in 1396. The prisoners from the debacle who were not ransomed found their way to Bayazid's galleys, although a few of the younger became Janizaries. To meet the crusade Bayazid had abandoned his siege of Constantinople, which he had begun in 1393 by constructing the fortress of Anadolu (Anatolia) Hisar on the Bosporus. Much of his warfare was conducted in Asia Minor, where with his Janizaries and his Christian vassal armies of Slavs he acquired many old ghazi and tribal states such as Menteshe, Aydin, Sarukhan, Teke, and Isfendiyar. He pushed his state eastward, seizing the areas of Kayseri, Sivas, Samsun, and Sinope (Sinop). Menteshe and Aydin brought him ghazi sailors, and the first Ottoman navy put to sea in 1390 to harass the Greek islands and mainland. The prince of Karaman attacked him while he was subduing Bulgaria, but Bayazid crossed over to Asia so speedily and won a brilliant battle near Bursa so decisively that he became known thereafter as"Yilderim" or "Lightning." By the end of the 14th century Ottoman possessions under Bayazid I Yilderim stretched from the barren lands of the Euphrates River to the fertile plains of Hungary. Serbian princes and Byzantine emperors rendered him homage at his court, and the Turkish princes served as officers in his army or fled eastward to the protection of the great Central Asian conqueror, Tamerlane.

Bayazid's growing empire, however, suffered from serious internal difficulties as well as external threats. The Sultan's pretentious manners, elaborate court ceremonies, and extensive harem offended many ghazis. He became addicted to wine and sensuality and advocated a kind of eclectic religion, even naming his sons after Moses (Musa), Solomon (Suleiman), Jesus (Isa), and Muhammad (Mehmed). Most distressing of all were his attacks upon other Turkish ghazis and Muslims in Asia Minor. A few of these princes he was able to placate with fiefs in the Balkans, but most fled to the court of Tamerlane. Here they helped to convince Tamerlane to go to war against Bayazid.

The two armies met in 1402 at Ankara, and Bayazid was defeated, captured, and held in captivity until his death the following year. From Ankara, Tamerlane marched across Anatolia to H zmir on the Aegean. He restored many of the Turkish princes to their lands, but left to Bayazid's sons the European holdings and those in Anatolia that Osman and Orkhan had won. Bayazid's Muslim empire was shattered but the concept of ghazi principalities remained. Tamerlane assigned the eldest son, Suleiman, to rule Europe from Edirne and divided Asia Minor between Isa in Bursa and Mehmed in Amasya, with Musa on parole in Kütahya at the restored Kermian court. Tamerlane then returned to Central Asia, and upon his death in 1405 the Ottoman princes were free to battle among themselves to try to restore the unity of Bayazid's domain.

Between 1402 and 1413 Bayazid's sons jockeyed for support among the various elements of Ottoman society. Suleiman in Europe obtained the support of the Turkish aristocracy of the Balkans and the machinery of government in Edirne so that Venice and the Byzantine emperor accepted him as sultan. However, Musa and Mehmed in Asia refused to recognize him, and during a battle in 1411 Musa killed Suleiman as he fled toward Constantinople. Much earlier Musa had eliminated Isa from Bursa; after 1411 Musa ruled Turkish Europe and Mehmed was lord of the Ottoman domains in Asia. Two years later, Mehmed forced Musa to leave Edirne after having won over most of the leading Ottoman courtiers. Musa lost his life near Sofia in Bulgaria.

The Restoration of Ottoman Unity. For eight years Mehmed (Muhammad, Mohammed) I reigned supreme. He worked out a compromise between the wealthy established Ottoman families and the newly rising group of skilled professional administrators taken from the personal slaves of the sultan. Individuals in the latter group frequently graduated from the Janizary corps, bringing with them an intense loyalty to the person of the sultan. Throughout the 15th century the rivalry of these two groups remained one of the more significant problems of politics and government.

Although pursuing a policy of peace with the Byzantine emperors, Mehmed I extended his influence over parts of Albania and Wallachia and brought to Europe many wandering Turkish tribes that were keeping Asia Minor in an unsettled state. Many of these settled in Albania, thus serving to aid in the difficult conquest of the mountainous regions in the western Balkans. Upon Mehmed's sudden death in 1421, his eldest son, Murad II, inherited the throne.

For 20 years Murad II ceaselessly tried to reconstitute the Ottoman empire that his grandfather had almost created. By marriage, diplomacy, and force he won over all Asia Minor except for the principality of Karaman, which had moved its headquarters to Konya. Peace between these two Turkish states was always precarious, and whenever the Ottoman sultans were elsewhere engaged, as in the furious attack upon Constantinople in 1422, Karaman princes would launch an attack upon the Ottomans or encourage and abet a rebellion somewhere in Anatolia. In Europe Murad II extended the Ottoman possessions and influence considerably. In 1430 he took Salonika (Thessaloniki), the most important city in the Balkan area after Constantinople and Athens, and at the same time maintained continuous pressure upon Albania, Hungary, Serbia, and Bosnia. However, 1443 was a portentous year. Ladislas, king of Poland and Lithuania, to celebrate his accession to the throne of Hungary sent an army led by the mighty János Hunyadi, with dispossessed Serbian, Bosnian, Wallachian, and Hungarian nobles, against Murad II. At the same time the Karamanians opened hostilities. Murad led the forces in Asia while he sent trusted generals to meet Hunyadi. The European alliance was victorious, even capturing Sofia. Nevertheless, Ladislas proposed peace to Murad upon Hunyadi's advice, for Murad had defeated the Karaman uprising and was proceeding to cross to Europe with his full forces, including the Janizaries and all of his feudal sipahis. Murad II relinquished his hold upon Wallachia and Serbia but retained all of his other conquests in Europe. Peace was concluded at Szeged in Hungary in 1444, to be honored for ten years.

Murad was now 40 years old; he had been sultan for 23 years and desired to retire. His eldest son had died, and on the sudden death of his second son, Murad abdicated in favor of a third son, Mehmed, then 12 years old. A kind of Turkish cultural renaissance was occurring in Anatolia, and Murad himself wished to settle at Manisa and pursue philosophy and the literary arts. Histories of the Seljuk and early Ottoman state were being written, and an ancient past was being created. It was at this time that the legendary history of the Ottoman entry into Asia Minor and an ancestry for Osman dating back to the princely Ocuz Turkish tribe of Central Asia was manufactured. Murad also was greatly interested in education and established in Edirne a palace school where his sons, children of Balkan princes and Turkish aristocrats, and likely youths taken as booty in raids or by devshirmeh (draft) were given an extensive and thorough education. Other notables of the empire soon copied this idea, and many schools of this type came into existence.

The young Mehmed II experienced difficulties with his advisers almost immediately, and King Ladislas decided to break the Treaty of Szeged and to invade the Ottoman lands. Murad II had to return to Edirne. He crushed the "crusade" in 1444 at Varna, where King Ladislas and his Cardinal Julian lost their lives. After overrunning Bosnia and Serbia, where the Ottomans were welcomed as liberators from the Hungarian Catholic persecution, Murad retired again to Manisa, only to hasten back to Edirne to quell a Janizary riot. Further expeditions went into Albania and Serbia, and in Greece Murad conquered Corinth and Patras in the Peloponnesos. When he died in 1451 he was buried in Bursa, and Mehmed II, now a more mature 19, resumed the throne.

Mehmed II and the Conquest of Constantinople. Mehmed II had received the most intense training and education at the palace school and as the governor of Manisa under his father's guidance. Undoubtedly he was better educated for his position than any of his contemporary European monarchs. After ordering the execution of an infant brother in his bath, thus perpetuating the fractricidal custom started by Bayazid I, Mehmed II surveyed and reorganized the inner circle of his government to prepare for the siege of Constantinople. Enormous bronze cannons were cast, and troops were gathered to storm the land walls of the city. In 1452 he built a formidable fortress with three magnificent castles at the narrows of the Bosporus about six miles (10 km) north of Constantinople's harbor, the Golden Horn, so that he could control the shipping from the Black Sea and cut off any succor to Constantinople from Italian trading posts in that direction. Called Rumeli Hisar, these fortifications in conjunction with Anatolia Hisar, built by his great-grandfather, proved effective and assured Mehmed II of easy communications between Asia and Europe. His most spectacular feat was the ingenious transport of part of his navy over the hills from the Bosporus to the Golden Horn, by-passing the chains across its mouth, so that his naval guns could harass the city from the inner harbor. On May 29, 1453, the walls were breached and the Ottoman soldiers poured into Constantinople. On the third day Mehmed II said prayers at Hagia Sophia and turned to the task of making Istanbul (as the Turks renamed Constantinople) the center of his empire.

Although for the West the fall of Constantinople was hardly more than a great psychological shock, for the Ottomans it was an important acquisition; they had lacked the most strategic point of the area, especially with respect to commerce, geography, and history. With this focal city in his state, Mehmed II now had an empire in his grasp. His attack upon Belgrade in 1456 failed, but he soon organized Serbia and Bosnia into regular imperial provinces and before his death Hercegovina and Albania were taken. All of Greece and the Peloponnesos fell, except for a few Venetian ports of call, as did the major islands of the Aegean. In Asia Minor the resistance of the Karaman family was broken, Cilicia was occupied, Trebizond on the Black Sea coast was incorporated into the empire, and a friendly suzerainty was arranged over the Crimea. Mehmed II's empire truly extended from the Danube to the Euphrates. His manpower was sufficient to organize, rule, and hold the newly acquired regions. Furthermore, Mehmed II paid strict attention to the governing of his people and to their welfare. He recognized the authority of the Greek Church and gave full cooperation to the newly elected patriarch. For over two centuries the population of Constantinople had been declining, so that in 1453 it was a mere shadow of its former greatness. Mehmed II settled many people from the various sections of his empire in his new capital and restored to it a vigorous commerce and industry.

In 1481 Bayazid II succeeded to the empire of his father. He was forced to call back from southern Italy the troops that Mehmed II had hoped would conquer that peninsula, for Jem, Mehmed II's younger son, threatened Bayazid in Anatolia. In 1482 Jem again failed in an attempt to unseat his brother. He fled to the island of Rhodes and was there imprisoned by the Knights of St. John, who blackmailed Bayazid yearly until Jem's death in Naples in 1495. After that year Bayazid felt less constrained in his activities and pushed campaigns more vigorously in Asia against Persia, in North Africa against Egypt, and in Europe against Hungary and Venice. A successful naval war from 1499 to 1503 against Venice won the remaining posts in Greece and decisively established the naval supremacy of the Ottomans in the Mediterranean. Bayazid II spent much of his energies in administrative reform of the government and in meeting the financial problems of the new empire. How well he solved these were manifested in the strength of empire and government under his youngest son and successor, Selim I, whose unbridled ambitions and energy forced Bayazid to abdicate in 1512. Bayazid greatly enhanced the prosperity of the Ottoman Empire by welcoming the more than 100,000 Jews driven from Spain in 1492. For his piety he was called Veli, "the Saint."

The Asian Campaigns of Selim I. Selim I spent most of his reign campaigning in Asia. His brother Ahmed, in contesting the throne, had partially allied himself with the Safavid Dynasty of Iran, adherents of the heterodox Shiite sect of Islam. Known as kizilbash, or wearers of the red hat, the Shiites were inundating eastern and southern Asia Minor with their mystics and missionaries. Some 40,000 were wiped out by Selim in his move to destroy Ahmed and to remove all possible defectors in the empire. Shah Ismail of Persia accepted the challenge and met Selim at Chalderan near Lake Van in 1514; here the Ottoman cannon and Janizaries forced Ismail to flee. Selim spent the winter in Tabriz, organizing his new territories, which now comprised northern Iraq, Kurdistan, and Syria east of the Euphrates. This great victory led Selim into further conflict with the Mameluke sultans of Egypt, whom his father had battled unsuccessfully 20 years earlier. Times, however, had changed, for the Portuguese had rounded Africa and the transit spice trade to Europe through Egypt was no longer so lucrative or so remunerative for the Mameluke treasury. By 1517 Selim I had conquered Syria and Egypt; he captured the last puppet Abbasid caliph and took him back to Istanbul in 1518.

The following two years Selim busied himself with refilling the treasury, emptied by the long campaigns in Asia, and preparing for a naval attack upon Rhodes. However, he died in 1520, and his only son, Suleiman, became the tenth sultan of the Ottomans. In a short eight years Selim had almost doubled the size of the empire and had added to it significant parts of the older Muslim and Arab world. Certainly after 1517 Selim I and his Ottoman successors for several centuries were the most powerful Muslim rulers, and as such were the ones most likely to be responsible for the enforcement of Muslim law. Although Selim I and his immediate successors did not adopt the title of caliph, others did address him as caliph and rendered him the respect usual to that position. Henceforth until the demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the sovereign carried the titles of sultan, ghazi, shah, padishah, khan, and caliph.

Zenith of Empire Under Suleiman I. The power of the Ottoman Empire reached its apogee in the mid-16th century. The reign of Suleiman I "the Magnificent" (1520-1566) is usually considered the Golden Age of Ottoman rule. Suleiman I (the previous Suleiman, son of Bayazid, had not ruled a united Turkey) surrounded himself with many talented governing officials, of which there seemed to be an inexhaustible source in the various palace schools. Military officers, governors, treasurers, and bureaucrats did their work efficiently and speedily. Most of these came from the devshirmeh (draft) or from campaigns and piracy, and by 1566, when Suleiman I died, these neo-Turks, or neo-Ottomans, held the authority and control of the Empire strongly in their hands. They made up the controlling body of the Ruling Institution--in contrast to the native-born Turks of the Muslim Institution of the government. The latter was composed of theologians and lawyers who interpreted the law and served as judges. Great wealth poured into Istanbul, enabling the rulers to build splendid mosques and public institutions, and to patronize literature, science, and the arts.

Suleiman I, being an only son, was not faced with fratricidal competition for the throne. He was a cultivated man who enjoyed music, poetry, the beauties of nature, and philosophic discussions. Yet the military apparatus of the Empire forced him to pursue a warlike policy. The feudal sipahi and the Janizaries, as well as the leading land-owning families and the great officers of the government, lived off the great flow of booty from the Empire's distant borders to its center. In 1521 an Ottoman army proceeded up the Danube and captured the city of Belgrade. This victory, which Mehmed II had failed to achieve, opened the plains of Hungary and the upper Danube Basin to the Ottomans. In 1526 Suleiman took Budapest and all of Hungary. He laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take it before winter set in. However, the area between Istanbul and Vienna and the Black Sea and the Adriatic remained an Ottoman domain and Suleiman campaigned on its confines seven times during his reign.

Suleiman also conducted a number of campaigns in the east. His frontier with Persia was uncertain, and satellite princes on the border switched their loyalties as pressures and advantages appeared. In 1534 Suleiman occupied Tabriz and then captured Baghdad, incorporating Iraq into the Ottoman Empire. In 1548 he had to recapture Tabriz, and he spent all of 1549 pursuing and trying to fight a pitched battle with the Persian Shah Tahmasp. While Suleiman was in Europe in 1553, Persian forces invaded Asia Minor and took Erzurum. Suleiman pushed the Persians back and devoted most of 1554 to subjugating more thoroughly the lands east of the Euphrates. A formal peace treaty with the shah also gave Suleiman a port on the Persian Gulf. Ottoman naval units operating around Arabia, in the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Suez, exerted a powerful influence upon Aden and Yemen.

From the beginning of his reign Suleiman was concerned with naval matters and the hegemony of the Ottomans on the Mediterranean. As early as 1522 his second campaign was directed against the island of Rhodes, 12 miles (19 km) off the southwestern coast of Asia Minor. After the island was captured and its knights of St. John had departed for Malta, the Aegean and the complete coast of Asia Minor were fully Ottoman. Shortly thereafter, envoys from Francis I of France requested naval aid in the Mediterranean, as well as land attacks in Hungary, to cripple Emperor Charles V, who was pressing Francis in Italy. The most famous of Suleiman's sea captains, Khair al-Din (Khaireddin) Barbarossa, governor-in-chief of Algiers and North Africa, harried the coasts of Spain and Italy; no ship was safe in the Mediterranean when his fleets were prowling. However, even with 30,000 men Suleiman's admirals were unable to take Malta in 1565.

On a campaign into Hungary in 1566 Suleiman died at Szigetvár. The last of the great Ottoman sultans was carried back to Istanbul, where he was buried in a beautiful mausoleum in the courtyard of the great Imperial Mosque.

Suleiman had had several sons; but his favorite son had died at the age of 21, two others he had had executed on the grounds that they were intriguing against him, and the sole remaining son was Selim II, a drunkard. Part of the intrigue that had devastated Suleiman's family can be attributed to the jealousy of his wife Roxelana, a former slave girl of either Russian or Polish origin. She interfered in matters of state so much that no Ottoman sultan thereafter ever took a wife. Another great mistake of Suleiman's had been the elevation in 1523 of his favorite slave and boon companion, Ibrahim, to the post of chief minister (grand vizier) over many other competent officials and ministers. Although Ibrahim was a capable minister, the appointment disrupted the orderly procedures of the palace service and created great jealousy; eventually Suleiman put him to death for his personal ambitions.

This middle period of the 16th century was an age of outstanding literary activity and architectural triumphs, as well as luxurious living and worldliness. More than a dozen great mosques were built in Istanbul under the supervision and on the designs of the architect Sinan, whose masterpiece was the Imperial Mosque in Edirne, dedicated to Selim II.

Meanwhile, under the new sultan, Selim, the Ottoman navy began to meet reverses. In 1571 a combined Christian fleet under Don Juan of Austria met and defeated the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto. Throughout the winter of 1571-1572 Ottoman shipyards in Gelibolu and Istanbul worked overtime, and by the spring of 1572, a new Ottoman navy had been created and the European naval victory of the previous season was largely nullified. The Venetians were defeated and Cyprus was added to the Empire in 1573. Lepanto, nevertheless, had presaged the decline of the Ottomans as the dominant sea power of the Mediterranean. Selim, also, did not live long to enjoy his limited success, for in 1574, having consumed too much Cypriot wine, he slipped on the floor of a new bath and died from a brain concussion.

Decline of the Empire. For more than 200 years following Selim II's death most of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire were weak, ineffective rulers. Here and there a vigorous one appeared, but he was so surrounded by conspiring corrupt servants and harem intriguers that he soon became powerless. Murad III, Selim's son, ruled from 1574 to 1595. His government was kept in turmoil by palace slaves under Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokolli and two harem factions--one led by Murad's mother, Nur Banu, a converted Jewess, and the other led by Murad's harem favorite, Safiyye Baffo. The latter was the daughter of the Venetian governor of Corfu, captured by pirates and presented as a gift to Suleiman, who had promptly given her to his grandson Murad. However, the force of the Empire was enough to push out eastward to the Caspian Sea, dominate the Caucasus, and maintain the Ottoman position in Europe.

Murad III had over 100 children, with 20 sons surviving him. Of these, Mehmed III ascended the throne, at the time strangling his 19 brothers. Upon his death in 1603, his son Ahmed I tried to reform the abuses of the government. He even refused to have his brother Mustafa put to death. Although this was a humane act, henceforth the sultan's brothers and princes of the Ottoman line were kept incarcerated in a quarter of the palace where they idled away their lives out of touch with the outside world until the reigning sultan died, when the eldest would then be brought forth as the new sultan. Thus, after Ahmed I few of the sultans in the 17th and 18th centuries had any intellectual development or political knowledge or training to fit them to rule an empire. The unity and central strength of the Empire melted away quickly.

Mustafa I, Ahmed I's brother and successor, was insane and ruled only one year, when he was reimprisoned and Ahmed I's son, Osman II, was brought out as sultan (1618). A perceptive ruler, Osman tried to revolutionize the institutions of government, but his enemies murdered him in 1622. Mustafa was briefly restored to the throne; Osman's brother Murad IV then ruled from 1623 until 1640 in a vigorous fashion that reminded many of Selim I. Coming of age in 1632, Murad spent eight years in relentless efforts to restore and reform the Ottoman Empire. He is reputed to have executed 10,000 corrupt and worthless officials in his drive to purge the government. Although he personally led his armies in campaigns to the East, and although he forbade the use of coffee, tobacco, and alcoholic beverages, he was unstable and drank himself to death at the age of 28.

Murad's brother Ibrahim, who succeeded him, was insane and almost destroyed the state. He was overthrown in 1648. The rebels placed Ibrahim's six-year-old son, Mehmed IV, on the throne and controlled him until 1656, when his mother forced the appointment of the able Mehmed Köprülü as grand vizier with absolute power. He served as grand vizier until 1661, and his son Ahmed Köprülü continued after him.

Through these days of misrule, official corruption, and governmental collapse, the Ottoman Empire managed to survive. The Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War had left Western and Central Europe shattered, and Poland and Russia were disorganized. These factors enabled the Köprülüs, after purging the government by 30,000 executions, to take Crete in 1669 and Podolia and the Ukraine in 1676. However, Ahmed Köprülü died and was replaced by an incompetent, venal court favorite. The Ottomans besieged Vienna in 1683 but were defeated by the Polish and allied forces of Jan Sobieski.

Retreat in the Balkans. The failure before Vienna marked the beginning of the retreat in the Balkans. Budapest fell, and with the loss of Mohács in 1687 Hungary was taken by the Austrians. Belgrade went in 1688 and Vidin and Niš in 1689, whereupon Suleiman II (r. 1687-1691) appointed Mustafa Köprülü, Ahmed's brother, to be grand vizier. The Turks were able to regain Niš and Belgrade, but were routed at Senta in 1697 by Prince Eugene of Savoy.

Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703) tried to recoup by appointing Husayn Köprülü as grand vizier, but the Ottoman hold on Hungary and the upper Balkans could not be reestablished. The Treaty of Karlowitz was signed in 1699, whereby Venice received the Peloponnesos and Dalmatia, Austria obtained Hungary and Transylvania, Poland acquired Podolia, and Russia kept Azov. Karlowitz was the first of a long list of concessions that the Ottomans had to make in the retreat from Europe.

During the 18th century Ottoman power in the Mediterranean was largely lost. If the European states had not been engaged almost continuously in wars, they could have driven the Ottomans from Europe and taken over the Empire completely. In the 17th century the Ottoman enemies had been Austria and Venice, in the 18th they were Austria and Russia.

The Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 awarded more territory to Austria. However, although defeated in wars in the 1730's, the Ottomans, by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, regained the city, mainly because of the weakness of the Hapsburgs and the maneuvering of the French negotiators. For 35 years after this treaty the Ottoman sultans enjoyed peace.

The Capitulations. As a reward for the fine work of the French in negotiating at Belgrade in 1739, a new treaty between France and the Ottomans was concluded in 1740. Called the Treaty of Capitulations, this document was long regarded as the basis upon which all foreign states enjoyed special privileges within the Ottoman Empire. In truth, such treaties date back at least to 1251 when the Mameluke sultans in Cairo granted special recognition to St. Louis of France. Mehmed II, Bayazid II, Selim I, and Suleiman I reconfirmed that treaty and entered into new ones with Venice and other Italian city-states, Hungary, Austria, and most of the European states--one of the most significant being the treaty of 1536 between Suleiman and Francis I of France. The Treaty of 1740 allowed Frenchmen to travel and trade in the Ottoman Empire under full protection of the sultan, granted their goods freedom from all taxes except import and export duties, recognized the French envoys and consuls as having juridicial authority and rights over Frenchmen, and agreed that no Frenchman could be arrested by an Ottoman officer if a French consular official were not present. The French could freely possess, erect, and use churches of their own, and all Roman Catholics within the Empire were to be as free as Frenchmen. Furthermore, France could enroll under her flag Portuguese, Sicilians, and others who had no ambassador at the Porte. (The Sublime Porte was the principal gateway to the palace area, and through it representatives of foreign powers passed to visit the sultan and other officials. Hence, the "Sublime Porte" was a name given to the Ottoman government.) When the Ottoman Empire was powerful and foreign states were weak, such treaties were regarded as very generous acts but not dangerous to the state. But beginning with 1740, when foreign states obviously were more powerful, the articles of these treaties were wedges and clubs with which to undermine the Empire.

Further Decline and Attempted Reform. The conclusion of the Seven Years' War in 1763 paved the way for excursions into the Ottoman Empire. Though Louis XV of France sent Baron de Tott to Istanbul to modernize the sultan's forces, the Ottomans succumbed to assaults from Russia in the Danubian provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia and were forced to sign the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774. Azov became Russian again, and the Crimea was declared independent. Russia recognized the Bug as the frontier with the Ottomans, and the sultan promised to protect the Christians of his own Empire and to allow the presence of a Russian ambassador who could make representations to the sultan in behalf of the sultan's own Christian subjects. From 1774 until World War I the Russian tsars always referred to Kuchuk Kainarji whenever they wished to intervene in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. In 1779 the Treaty of Ainali Kavak gave full power over the Crimea to Russia, and in 1792 the Peace of Jassy moved the Russian frontier to the Dnestr.

Pressures mounted for reform. Ahmed III (r. 1703-1730) had brought in architects who built palaces and mosques in the style of Versailles, and a printing press was set up in Istanbul. Imperial princes were not kept under such close confinement, and a few of them began to study the scientific and political developments of Western Europe. A conservative reaction, however, led to the assassination of Ahmed III and the accession of Mahmud I, under whom the Caucasus was lost to Persia and further retreat took place in the Balkans. One of the better sultans was Abdul-Hamid I, whose 15-year reign (1774-1789) introduced more advances and brought to Istanbul a number of French teachers and military technicians. France hoped to save the Ottoman Empire and block Russian advances into the Straits and the Mediterranean.

Selim III (r. 1789-1807). Selim III, who became sultan in 1789, organized a cabinet of 12 ministers on the model of a European government, developed a new treasury, and introduced a new military corps on the most modern lines of his day. Schools were founded to train in the ideas of the Enlightenment a band of civil servants, since the old palace school of Murad II had become mired in privilege, nepotism, and scholasticism. Printing presses were set up again, and the works of Western authors were translated into Turkish.

In the first years of the French Revolution the Ottoman Empire was affected only by being left alone by the European powers, busy with their own affairs. When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, Selim III could hardly ignore the attack. The Ottomans had failed to subdue Egypt fully and had never integrated it into the Empire. Mameluke organizations had persisted and had gained such great power by the mid-18th century that the Ottoman governor lived in Cairo only on their sufferance. Napoleon pretended that his attack on Egypt would subdue the Mamelukes and enhance Selim III's authority there; supposedly Selim was his ally. Selim, nevertheless, declared war on France and sent his navy and an army to defend the province. The British navy off Alexandria and the Levantine coast saved the Ottomans, but this involvement brought the Ottoman Empire into the wars and diplomacy of Europe.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, after Napoleon's departure, Mehemet (Muhammad or Mohammed) Ali from the city of Kaválla in Macedonia, serving in the Ottoman contingent, rose to power and in 1806 became the Ottoman governor of Egypt, thereby opening a new chapter in the history of that ancient land.

After the Peace of Amiens in 1802, relations were reestablished with France and Selim III remained at peace until Russia invaded the Danubian provinces in 1806. England aided her ally Russia by sending a fleet through the Dardanelles, but Selim was able to hasten the reconstruction of the fortifications, and the English retired to the Aegean. French victories in Central Europe strengthened the Turkish position, but the capital became embroiled in the deposition of Selim III. Reactionary forces in Istanbul had roused the people by religious fanaticism to object to Western outfits for the new soldiers. In 1807 Selim III was ousted and his cousin raised to the throne as Mustafa IV when his chief military officer, Bayraktar, was absent from the capital. Upon Bayraktar's return in 1808, Mustafa IV was executed, but not before the imprisoned Selim III had been strangled by the opposition. Only one Ottoman male in the ruling line was left alive--Mahmud II.

Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839). In 1809 Turkey entered into the famous Treaty of the Dardanelles that opened the country to British commerce provided that Great Britain would recognize that the Straits would be closed to warships when Turkey was at peace. Because the Ottoman Empire had agreed to adhere to Napoleon's Continental System, this treaty was considered a breach of faith. Russia attacked on the Danube and took a series of towns in Bulgaria and Wallachia. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1812 abandoned much territory to the tsar who, in turn, withdrew his support of the rebels in Serbia. In 1815, the Ottoman Empire was recognized by the Congress of Vienna as one of the European Powers.

National Revolutions Within the Ottoman Empire. During the French Revolution two new problems came to a head in the Ottoman Empire. One had been developing over a long period, for, as the authority of the sultan declined, his power over the distant provinces slipped. In Epirus, there rose at Ioánnina (Janina) the rebel Ali Pasha, who ruled that province as a sovereign, carrying on diplomatic correspondence with Napoleon and other rulers of Europe. Similar pashas arose in Widin, Sidon, Baghdad, and other provinces to weaken the sultan's government and decrease the flow of tax money to the imperial treasury. Eventually, Mehemet Ali in Egypt became the most powerful of the pashas.

The other devastating occurrence was the rise of nationalism, especially among the Christian populations of the Balkans. At the height of the French Revolution, Selim III had experienced a revolt of the Serbs under Karadjordje (Kara George) Petrovi] in 1804. Not a national uprising in origin, as the years passed it took on national characteristics. The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) recognized Serbia as a semiautonomous province, under the leadership of Karadjordje's rival Miloš Obrenovi], within the Ottoman Empire.

Almost as soon as the French Revolution and Napoleon were removed from the scene, Mahmud II was confronted with a nationalistic Greek revolution. The Greek War of Independence was a bloody affair, and in many places it turned into a civil war. Mahmud II might have been successful in ending the struggle, especially after he induced his nominal vassal Mehemet Ali of Egypt to send an army and navy, but intervention by England, France, and Russia crushed Mehemet Ali's forces. With Russian troops invading from the Caucasus and marching toward Istanbul, Mahmud signed the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, recognizing the independence of the Greek kingdom. Within a few years Mehemet Ali's forces under his son Ibrahim Pasha had taken Syria and were dangerously near to the Bosporus in Asia Minor. Mahmud was saved only by Russian marines landing on the Asian side of the Bosporus as a warning to Mehemet Ali. Mahmud could not get rid of the Russians until he had signed in 1833 the humiliating Treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi (Unkiar Skelessi), which gave to the tsar the right to "protect" the sultan and to obtain the opening and closing of the Straits to foreign warships upon his request.

The Ottoman Empire After the Congress of Vienna. The years following the Congress of Vienna seemed disastrous for the Ottoman Empire. Greece was gone; Egypt was virtually independent under Mehemet Ali who, in addition, had conquered Syria and southern Arabia; and Serbia, Wallachia, and Moldavia were semiautonomous. During the Napoleonic Wars Europe had made great advances in military power and in industrial strength, neither of which had touched the Ottoman Empire. The areas that were cutting themselves off from the Empire had been affected to some degree by these 19th century advances and had acquired a power and seemingly a modernization that set them apart from the rest of the Empire. The weakness of the Ottoman Empire has in part been credited to Mahmud II's massacre of the Janizaries in 1826. But their destruction was only the result of their uselessness to Mahmud, for they were no match for Ibrahim Pasha, the Greeks, the Serbs, or the Russians.

By the Treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi Mahmud II hoped to gain time to set the Empire in order. That he was doing precisely that was much in evidence, and travelers to Turkey in the late 1830's constantly remarked that there had been more change there in the previous 20 years than in the two centuries preceding. To replace the Janizaries Mahmud inaugurated a new force that was trained and clothed in the European fashion. Prussian officers were employed to drill the officers in the new techniques. The fez and the frock coat were adopted as official dress for civilian officials. Schools were established, and the finances were reorganized. Mahmud tried to introduce into every branch of his government the latest methods developed in the new states of Europe. Roads were improved, and the courts were regularized. Military and medical colleges were founded and newspapers established in Istanbul and Hzmir.

The last year of Mahmud's life was troubled again by war with his vassal in Egypt, Mehemet Ali. The latter demanded the grant of hereditary title to Egypt, and when the wish was not granted war broke out. Mahmud's army was crushed in North Syria, and his navy deserted and went over to Mehemet Ali in Alexandria. However, Mahmud II was spared this last humiliation, for he died before the news reached him.

Abdul-Medjid (r. 1839-1861). Mahmud's eldest son and successor, Abdul-Medjid, was only 16 years old. Without an army or navy he was helpless before the superior forces of Mehemet Ali. He was saved by the joint diplomacy and forces of Russia, England, Austria, and Prussia. France at first favored the Egyptians but the concerted action of the European powers solved the impasse by allowing Mehemet Ali to have hereditary title to the governorship of Egypt under the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, an arrangement contained in the Treaty of London of 1840 and confirmed by Abdul-Medjid in 1841. In that latter year the London Convention of the powers agreed to the principle that no warship should enter the Dardanelles or the Bosporus while the sultan was at peace, and each power would rise to aid the sultan to defend his sovereignty over the Straits.

The Tanzimat Reforms. At the time of these difficulties with a vigorous vassal, Abdul-Medjid in 1839 publicly, before the leaders of his state and assembled ambassadors, proclaimed the reform of the Empire in a document called Hatt-i Sharif, as read by his chief minister, Rashid Pasha. The document abolished capital punishment without a trial, guaranteed justice to all irrespective of race or creed, established a council of justice to introduce new penal laws, ended tax-farming, and changed the methods of army recruitment and length of service. (Previously, service in the army was for all practical purposes for life, and was so recognized throughout the Empire; a son taken into the army was considered dead by his family. Most recruits into the army were either shanghaied or were enticed into the army by some ruse.)

It had become clear that the Empire was no longer capable of defending itself in case of a possible attack by any of the great European powers; its survival depended on convincing those same powers that the fall of the Empire to any one of them would destroy the balance of power in Europe. Rashid Pasha had served as Ottoman ambassador in Paris and in London and understood that some show had to be made to the European powers that the Ottoman Empire could reform itself and was capable of self-rule--and therefore was worth preserving. The Hatt-i Sharif was his answer to the Europeans' doubts. Rashid was out of office and favor from 1841 to 1845 and during those years the promise of the reforms was allowed to lapse, but he returned in 1845 and again pushed the reforms, with the aid of Sir Stratford Canning, the British ambassador. This period in Ottoman history is called the Tanzimat ("regulations") period, a term which meant the reorganization of the government and of society along lines of old, tolerant Muslim and Ottoman practices. Schools were expanded and the number increased. Many Turks took on Western manners, and sons of prominent families were educated in the West or by Western tutors. Newspapers, books, and magazines multiplied, and the younger generation had new and European ideas--liberalism, romanticism, constitutionalism, and nationalism.

At this same time there was a great increase in foreign trade, and the influx of the products of the European Industrial Revolution had an adverse effect on Ottoman finances and economics. Cloth from English mills ruined local cloth weaving and drained the Ottoman Empire of its gold and silver to pay for these imports. Another blow economically was the signing of the Commercial Convention of Balta Liman in 1838, whereby import duties into the Empire were frozen at five percent, which meant that foreign merchants could operate in the Empire on a par with local merchants. This enactment assured that henceforth most commerce in the Empire was in the hands of foreigners who, under the capitulatory treaties, were immune to many controls of the Ottoman officials.

The Crimean War. The London Convention of 1841 had wiped out the special advantages that Tsar Nicholas I of Russia had obtained from the secret paragraph in the Treaty of Hunkar Iskelesi in 1833, and Russia was anxious to regain her dominant influence with the Sultan. In a famous phrase, Nicholas characterized the Empire as "the sick man of Europe." Evoking the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji of 1774, Nicholas put pressure on the Balkans and demanded special consideration and power for Russian monks at the holy places in Jerusalem and Palestine. When Sultan Abdul-Medjid refused to appease the Russians, the Crimean War resulted. It was more a European war than an Ottoman one, for England, France, and Sardinia came to the rescue of Turkey. But Istanbul served as a forward base, and the presence of European soldiers and civilian officials left an indelible mark upon Turkish society. The Treaty of Paris in 1856, terminating the war, left the Black Sea neutralized and demilitarized. The European powers again recognized Turkish sovereignty over the Straits and admitted the Ottoman Empire to the "concert of European nations." Romania became an independent state.

Ottoman Bankruptcy. After the Crimean War the Sultan started to borrow money from Western bankers at ruinous rates of interest. With practically no foreign debt in 1854, the Ottoman government raced toward bankruptcy, and by 1875 Sultan Abdul-Aziz owed nearly one billion dollars in foreign currency to European bondholders.

In 1875, the grand vizier announced that the Ottoman government could not pay the interest on the debt. Clamor and pressure went up from the European powers, so the Ottoman government began to wring more taxes from the provinces. Revolts broke out in Bosnia, Hercegovina, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Some of these had nationalist overtones, and the Ottomans sent in troops to pacify the towns and villages. Atrocities were committed by the Turks, outraging the European powers; Russia, in view of pan-Slavic feelings at home and in central Europe, sent volunteers to aid the rebellious Balkan Slavs. At this time there was organized the secret revolutionary society, the Young Ottomans, which propagandized for constitutional reforms.

In 1876 Abdul-Aziz, who had succeeded his brother Abdul-Medjid in 1861, was deposed for incompetence by Midhat Pasha and Avni Pasha, the leaders of the liberal Constitutionalist group. The Constitutionalists placed on the throne Murad V, the eldest son of Abdul-Medjid, but he became mentally unbalanced. He remained sultan only a few months and was deposed in favor of another son of Abdul-Medjid, Abdul-Hamid II.

Abdul-Hamid II (1876-1909). Abdul-Hamid II had visited Europe and to many he gave great hope for a liberal constitutional regime. However, at the moment of his accession the Ottoman position in the Balkans was in peril. Ottoman forces had defeated the Bosnian and Serbian rebels. These setbacks had forced Russia to threaten to act openly in the rebels' behalf, a move that Austria and England greatly deplored. A conference of ambassadors was called for Istanbul in December 1876, and in the midst of the meeting Abdul-Hamid II proclaimed a constitution for the Ottoman Empire that would provide for an elected parliament, a responsible cabinet, and all the trappings of European constitutional monarchy. He thereby tried to assure the European powers that the non-Muslim populations, especially in the Balkans, would become first-class subjects. However, the brutal suppression of the uprising in Bulgaria led to war with Russia in 1877. Abdul-Hamid II thereupon suspended the constitution for the duration of the war, a condition that was not changed until the Young Turk revolution of 1908.

Meanwhile, the war proceeded to an eventual Russian victory, with Russian armies camped just outside the walls of Istanbul. England prevented the full occupation of the city only by sending a fleet into the Sea of Marmara and handing the Russians an ultimatum to halt. At first Russia imposed the harsh Treaty of San Stefano upon the Sultan, cutting off most of European Turkey into a new autonomous principality of Bulgaria. Austria and Great Britain objected, so the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, called the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which cut down Bulgaria to a smaller size and recognized the full independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania. England received Cyprus, and Austria was given Bosnia and Hercegovina to administer. Russia obtained Ardahan, Kars, and Batum in the Caucasus; the Danube was to be regulated by a commission composed of states through which the river ran, and the Black Sea and the Straits returned to the provisions of the Treaty of Paris of 1856. Since the Sultan, also, promised to govern his subjects with equal justice, the European powers felt that the Congress of Berlin had settled the troublesome Eastern Question for all time.

In the 32 years of Abdul-Hamid II's personal rule, he held the constitution in abeyance. One of the great problems to solve was that of bankruptcy. In 1881 there was established under foreign auspices the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA), to be responsible to the European bondholders for payment on their bonds. The OPDA was extremely successful and within a few years confidence in the financial stability of the Ottoman Empire was restored, permitting foreign capital to proceed with building such enterprises as the Anatolian Railway to connect Istanbul to Baghdad.

Young Turk Revolution. Nationalist uprisings occurred in these years in Crete and in Macedonia. In Crete bloody battles took place in 1896 and 1897, causing Greece to declare war in 1897. After 30 days of fighting the European powers intervened to save Athens from capture by the German-trained Turkish army. Public opinion in Macedonia became aroused for either independence or union with Bulgaria.

By far the most far-reaching developments were those connected with the Young Turks. In Istanbul military students exposed to liberal European ideas were humiliated by the comparison of European progress with Turkish despotism. Nationalist ideas were put forward by a score of journalists, the most prominent being Namik Kemal. Abdul-Hamid tried to suppress the movement by arrests, exiles, and executions, but without success. Secret societies flourished in army headquarters across the nation and in such distant places as Paris, Geneva, and Cairo. The most effective became the Committee of Union and Progress, the "Young Turks."

Finally, in 1908, the army in Macedonia rebelled and demanded the restoration of the constitution of 1876. Unable to crush the rebellion, Abdul-Hamid agreed to its demands. Elections were held for a parliament, and a constitutional government with responsible ministers was established. In April 1909 a counterrevolution broke out in Istanbul, which was quickly crushed by the Macedonian army. Abdul-Hamid was deposed and exiled, dying in 1918, and his brother Mehmed V was installed as sultan.

The Balkan Wars. The Young Turk government was soon torn by internal factionalism. It was also troubled by further losses of Turkish territory in Europe. In 1908, encouraged by the Turkish rebellion, Bulgaria declared its independence from Turkey, and Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Hercegovina. The Young Turks were helpless to counter these moves and in 1911 found themselves at war against Italy, which invaded Libya. The war ended in 1912 with the loss of Libya to Italy. Earlier in 1912 Crete united itself with Greece, and later that same year Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria assailed Turkey in the First Balkan War.

Within a few weeks the Turks had lost all their territory in Europe except for Istanbul, Edirne, Ioánnina, and Scutari (Shkodra) in Albania. The disturbed European powers, who saw their neatly arranged balance of power in the Balkans upset, called for a cease-fire and a conference. The Young Turks refused to surrender these cities, and fighting was resumed in February 1913. In a matter of weeks, the Ottoman Empire had lost all of its European possessions except for Istanbul. The Young Turks were forced to accept an armistice and to surrender all that had been lost. However, the Balkan victors immediately began to war among themselves over the spoils, and the Turks re-entered the fray against Bulgaria to regain Edirne and a suitable European hinterland for Istanbul. This Second Balkan War was terminated in August 1913 by the Treaty of Bucharest. Hardly had these wars subsided when World War I broke out.

World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire. Events since 1908 left the Young Turk government feeling politically weak and isolated. It sought to remedy this by forming alliances with the more important European nations, but only Germany proved receptive to its advances. On Aug. 2, 1914, shortly after war had broken out in Europe, Germany and Turkey signed a secret alliance, negotiated on the Turkish side by the pro-German Enver Pasha, the leading member of the Young Turk triumvirate and the minister of war. A few days later, two German warships, the Göben and Breslau, sought shelter in Turkish waters off Istanbul. Turkey bought the German ships, sailed them into the Black Sea in October, and shelled Russian ports, thereby declaring war on the Allies.

World War I ended the Ottoman Empire, but gave birth to Turkey. The war brought hardships to the urban population; conditions declined in the towns and food was scarce. In the winter of 1914-1915 the army suffered huge losses when the Russians overran Armenia. Fearing that the Armenians would collaborate with the Russians, the government allowed the massacre by Turks of about one million Armenians in Anatolia, and it deported thousands of other Armenians to Syria. Turkish rule ended in Arabia in 1916 when Hussein ibn-Ali, the sultan's regent in Mecca, led a revolt assisted by the Allies. Under pressure of events, the Turkish government finally disintegrated. However, the war also boosted Turkish self-confidence. Aided by the Germans, the Turkish army had several important successes: it defeated the Allied attack on the Dardanelles in 1915, captured a British army in Iraq in 1916, and stemmed the Russian advance in the east. During the war, too, the Capitulations were abolished, and tariffs were increased to protect Turkish trade. Turkish people also took over businesses from dispossessed minority groups, thus forming a nucleus of a new Turkish commercial and industrial class. In 1918, when the Germans were called home to bolster the Hindenburg Line, the Turkish military effort collapsed. An armistice was signed by Ottoman and British representatives on Oct. 30, 1918, giving the Allies the right to "occupy any strategic points" in the Ottoman Empire and control of the Straits. The Turkish forces were to be demobilized.

Partition of the Empire. Secret Allied treaties during the war had disposed, several times over, of most of the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Soon after the Armistice, Allies and Turks alike accepted that the non-Turkish parts of the Empire would be cut away. British, French, Italian, and U.S. naval forces occupied Istanbul, each setting up a zone of its authority. Russia had been promised the Straits, including Istanbul, but the Bolshevik Revolution nullified that promise. Mehmed V died in 1918 and was succeeded by his brother Mehmed VI, who maintained a government in Istanbul but was not truly independent of the Allied Occupation Powers. Difficulties arose in the interior, far from Allied forces or the authority of the sultan. Turkish army units roamed at large and lived off the land, refusing to be demobilized. Britain, France, and Italy occupied various sections of the country. Under protection of an Allied fleet Greece landed troops at Hzmir in May 1919 and proceeded to march inland to secure western Anatolia for itself, on the grounds that over a million Greeks lived there. Finally, in August 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed. No part of Turkey was left independent. An international commission was set up to control the Straits and Istanbul even though the sultan and his government remained there. When some disturbances had occurred early in 1920 as the result of growing nationalist sentiment, the British occupied Istanbul; this act set the leading Turks of the city against the Allies and forced them to realize that their sultan was powerless.

Mustafa Kemal and the Treaty of Lausanne. In the spring of 1920, Mustafa Kemal, the most successful Turkish general of the war, set up a national assembly in Ankara. He had been in Anatolia since May 19, 1919 (a date considered the beginning of the Turkish Revolution), rounding up forces to save Turkey from the Greek invasion and from its complete carving up by the Allies. From 1920 to 1922 Kemal and his men defeated armies in the east, south, and west and made peace with Russia, France, and Italy. Late in August 1922, the Greek army fled in disorder to Hzmir and the coast. Kemal turned toward the Straits and the British. Prime Minister Lloyd George called for aid from the British Empire and its allies. When Parliament refused to support such action, he resigned, and fighting was averted by the Armistice of Mudanya, which led to a peace conference. The British government then invited the sultan as well as Kemal to send representatives to Lausanne in Switzerland for a conference to begin on Nov. 21, 1922. However, the Ankara national assembly abolished the sultanate and Mehmed VI, the last Ottoman sultan, departed from Istanbul aboard a British warship on November 17.

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on July 24, 1923, recognizing the complete independence of Turkey. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration and the Capitulations were ended, and all foreign controls were eliminated. Turkey agreed, however, to the demilitarization of the Straits. The province of Mosul and its oil were awarded to Iraq on payment of indemnity, and an exchange of populations with Greece was to be effected, except for Greeks in Istanbul and Turks in Western Thrace. On Oct. 6, 1923, British forces left Istanbul, and on Oct. 29, 1923, Turkey was declared a republic and Mustafa Kemal was elected president.

Presidency of Mustafa Kemal. Elections were held in 1927, 1931, and in 1935, and each time Mustafa Kemal was reelected president. His first prime minister was Ismet Pasha, who served off and on most of the time until 1937, when he was replaced by Celal Bayar. During most of this period the sole political party was the Republican People's Party, operating under the authoritarian grip of Kemal. Two opposition parties were briefly permitted, but political fights prompted Kemal to dissolve these. In his campaigning in 1931, Kemal outlined his program of six points: republicanism, secularism, populism, nationalism, statism, and continuous reform. These six principles were incorporated into the constitution in 1937.

The problem of the separation of religion and state confronted the nationalists from the beginning. When Mehmed VI was deposed the question of the caliphate was solved by naming Mehmed's cousin Abdul-Medjid as caliph. Shortly thereafter, however, the caliphate was abolished. In 1926 much of Muslim law was replaced by the Swiss civil code, and in 1928 Islam was abolished as the state religion. Polygamy was forbidden, the wearing of the fez was outlawed, and religious shrines, mausoleums, and dervish houses were closed. Muslim customs were flouted everywhere; Kemal's picture was posted on every shop and office wall and his statues adorned square after square across Turkey. Sunday instead of Friday became the day of rest, and the Western Gregorian calendar was adopted. All religious education was removed from schools, and the wearing of religious garb in public was proscribed. By 1938 Turkey was a secular state.

Kemal believed that education would eliminate all inequalities among Turks. Schools were built by the thousands, and teacher-training programs were instituted. The difficult Arabic script, ill-suited for the writing of Turkish, was replaced late in 1928 by the Latin alphabet, largely adapted to Turkish by Kemal himself. This made education for the common person easier and reduced the rate of illiteracy. Throughout the towns adult education centers were set up to furnish books and information on health, and much modern Western thought was popularized in the Turkish press.

Associated with these programs was a strong inculcation of a new, dynamic Turkish nationalism. The ancient Turks were glorified; much cited were the writings of Yusuf Akçuraoclu, which showed many connections between the vigorous ancient Central Asian Turkish culture and the modern nationalism of the Turks of Western Asia. It became a matter of pride to be a Turk, and Turks began to adopt Turkish family names. Kemal took the name Atatürk (Father of the Turks), Ismet took Inönü (a Turkish village where he had won two great battles aganst the Greeks), and others took the names of purely Turkish heroes, simple Turkish words, or combinations of these. The use of Arabic words and grammar was deplored in newspapers and ordinary speech. Even Adam in the Koran became a Turk, and the Muslim call to prayer was given in Turkish. "Turkey for the Turks and the Turks for Turkey" was the slogan.

By statism, Kemal meant that the government should take an active role in the nation's economy. Because of past unfortunate experiences with foreign loans, Kemal shied away from borrowing or from granting concessions and privileges to foreign investors. In the fall of 1929, when there was a serious flight from the Turkish lira, the government clamped on a tight control over foreign transactions. By the mid-1930's Turkey had moved both to develop its mineral resources and to build factories under the operations of the Sümer and Eti banks, government corporations operating with public funds. When World War II broke out the Sümer Bank controlled about 60 factories, producing cement, sugar, shoes, and textiles. The Eti Bank was interested in resources--chrome, copper, iron, and coal--and successful advances in their exploitation were made. These economic ventures, however, did not preclude private enterprise from operating similar industries.

Foreign Policy. Immediately following Lausanne, the Turkish-Greek population exchange was the most important problem: over one million Greeks left Turkey and only 100,000 Turks entered. There were many hardships accompanying these moves, but when they were over relations with Greece were greatly improved. Turkey became a member of the League of Nations in 1932 and took a leading role in the Balkan Entente (Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia) after 1934. When Mussolini began empire-building in Ethiopia, Kemal requested from the signatories of the Lausanne Treaty a conference to modify the Straits regulations. At a meeting at Montreux in the summer of 1936 a new convention was drawn giving Turkey the right to fortify the Straits and to close them to warships of belligerents.

In a manner similar to the Balkan Entente, Turkey entered into agreement in 1937 with Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the Saadabad Pact. Turkey's border relations with Syria were troublesome, for pastoral tribes continued their seasonal movements across the border as they had done for centuries. Questions had been raised at Lausanne about the province of Alexandretta (Iskenderun), but it had been awarded to Syria, which was under French mandate. In 1938 it was arranged that Alexandretta be established as a joint Turkish-French responsibility, and later the same year the independent republic of Hatay was established there. Shortly thereafter Hatay asked to be annexed to Turkey; this was accomplished in 1939 over the protests of Syrians who claimed the whole maneuver was illegal under the terms of the mandate.

World War II. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died Nov. 10, 1938, and Ismet Inönü was elected president. During World War II, Turkey was neutral until February 1945, when it declared war on Germany and Japan as the price for entering the United Nations as a charter member.

During the war years there were many dislocations. For several years, Great Britain and the United States bought such items as chrome, mohair, filberts, and valonia to keep them from German hands. These measures maintained Turkish nominal exports at a high level, but imports were sharply restricted. The result was a marked inflation: the cost-of-living index rose from about 100 in 1939 to 800 in 1944. Goods were scarce, corruption became widespread in government and business, and criticism of Inönü and other leaders was curtailed only by strict control of the press. A capital levy in 1942 grossly discriminated against foreigners and non-Muslim Turks.

The Formation of Opposition Parties. In 1945, after the creation of the United Nations and Turkey's avowal of its democratic principles, Inönü was induced to relax press control, allow public discussion, and permit the formation of opposition political parties. Dissident members of the Republican People's Party formed a potent Democrat (Demokrat) Party. Celal Bayar, who had been prime minister at Atatürk's death; Adnan Menderes, a member of parliament; Refik Koraltan, a former provincial governor; and Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, scion of the family of illustrious grand viziers of the 17th century, were the leaders.

The Democrat Party charged the Republicans with corruption; mismanagement of government enterprises, which the Democrats declared should be sold to private investors; and unimaginative policies in general. It did not oppose the nationalist reforms of the Republican Party, but expressed the dissatisfaction of business, intellectual, and other newly emerging groups with the Republican administration. It appealed also to the peasants, whose interests had been neglected in favor of industry. The party became so popular with the young that Inönü feared defeat. By advancing the elections to midsummer 1946, the Republicans won. Inönü was reelected president, but the Democrats in the legislature demanded electoral changes to ensure a fair vote for the next election. In 1950 the Democrats won a sweeping legislative majority. Bayar was elected president, Menderes became prime minister, and Köprülü took charge of foreign affairs.

The Menderes Regime. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 and U.S. Marshall Plan aid began to show results by 1950, and Turkish participation in the Korean War accelerated modernization of the army and of Turkey's roads. Industry grew. Many factories were built, including branches of some foreign companies; and the standard of living rose, despite growing inflation. Farms also prospered. In the elections of May 1954, 58 percent of the popular vote went to the Democrats and only 35 percent to the Republicans.

After the election, however, changes appeared. Drought forced Turkey to import grain. The Democrats undertook more new government projects than the economy could finance. Extensive aid came from the United States, which wished to maintain Turkey as a strong bastion on the Soviet flank and as a base for U.S. military installations, but by 1956 cities were experiencing many serious shortages.

Criticism mounted against Bayar and Menderes. Köprülü resigned from the Democrat Party, and Republicans under Inönü toured the country to rebuild the party for the 1957 election. Menderes, however, clamped down on criticism and political activities. Newspapers were censored or closed and their editors jailed. Power had, in fact, made the Democrat Party even more autocratic than its Republican predecessors. Shortly after the election, which the Democrats won with a sharply reduced majority, Menderes jailed 20 members of the Freedom Party for holding a meeting. To gain support from conservative villagers he furthered the building of mosques and supported religious ideas that Atatürk had deprecated. The Arabic call to prayer was restored, and fasting and feasting were popularized.

Feeling in Istanbul, Ankara, and Hzmir against the Democrat Party regime increased steadily. In the spring of 1960, after Menderes began to interfere with the affairs of Istanbul and Ankara universities, the students organized demonstrations. Menderes tried to order the army to suppress these demonstrations and to police the country. The response was a move early on the morning of May 27, 1960, by a small group of army officers to overthrow the government.

Second Republic of Turkey. The leaders of the 1960 army coup were determined to restore Atatürk's social reforms. Many were also ardent pan-Turks who followed the ideology of Yusuf Akçuraoclu and deplored the spread of Western influences. All, however, were strongly anti-Communist. General Cemal Gürsel was placed at the head of the successful military junta, and Bayar, Menderes, cabinet ministers, and most Democrat members of the legislature were jailed. Freedom of the press was restored, and political activity resumed in January 1961. Menderes and his foreign and finance ministers were later executed.

Later in 1961 elections were held under a new constitution. General Gürsel became president of Turkey's second republic, and former president Ismet Inönü, the Republican Party leader, headed three coalition cabinets in turn until his defeat in the assembly in February 1965. He was succeeded by Suat Ürgüplü in a coalition government dominated by the Justice Party. The Justice Party, although regarded as the heir to the Democrat Party, pledged itself to support the goals of the 1960 revolution. By October 1965 the Justice Party was strong enough to form its own government, with Süleyman Demirel as prime minister.

Demirel faced severe economic problems, including high unemployment, heavy foreign debts, and stagnating production. Conditions improved in the later 1960's, but the oil price increases of 1973-1974 hit Turkey hard; at the same time job opportunities for Turkish workers in Western Europe were shrinking. In the 1970's, moreover, Turkey entered a period of political crisis. The Justice Party was returned to office in the 1969 elections, but the Demirel government was soon plagued by student agitation, labor unrest, and terrorism by left- and right-wing groups. In March 1971 the military threatened to intervene, and the government resigned. Martial law was imposed and a series of "above-party" coalition governments ruled Turkey for the next 30 months.

In April 1973 Senator Fahri Korutürk was elected president. Martial law was lifted in time for general elections in October, in which the Republican People's Party won a plurality. Its leader, Bulent Ecevit, formed a coalition government after lengthy negotiations.

In 1974 the centuries-old Turkish-Greek conflict flared anew because of an upheaval on Cyprus, where the minority Turkish-Cypriot and majority Greek-Cypriot communities had long been at odds. Following the overthrow of the independent Greek Cypriot government by the pro- enosis (union with Greece) Greek Cypriot national guard, the Ecevit government invaded the island to prevent its annexation by Greece. Turkey then sought to impose by force a division of the island between autonomous Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot governments.

Despite the popularity of his forceful actions during the Cyprus crisis, Ecevit's precarious coalition fell apart in September 1974. For the next six years he and Demirel alternated at the head of a series of coalition and minority governments. Neither was able to deal effectively with mounting terrorism from both left and right, continuing tensions over Cyprus, and the stagnation of the economy.

By the spring of 1980 parliament was paralyzed; lacking a majority party, it was unable to legislate or to agree on a new president. On September 12 the chiefs of the armed forces carried out a bloodless coup. They formed a national security council with General Kenan Evren, the army chief of staff, at its head. The council abrogated the constitution, dissolved parliament, put all Turkey under martial law, and imprisoned many intellectuals, trade unionists, politicians, and members of extremist groups. A civilian cabinet was named to carry on regular governmental functions. In November 1982 a new constitution, providing for a strong presidency and making General Evren president for a seven-year term, was put into effect. Parliamentary elections, from which pre-1980 parties were banned, were held in November 1983. The elections were won by the Motherland Party, formed by followers of Turgut Özal, the conservative economist who had been deputy prime minister for economic affairs during the first 21 months of military rule. Özal became prime minister in December 1983. Upon the expiration of Evren's term in November 1989, Özal was elected president.

After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Turkey took part in the UN embargo of Iraq, shutting down the pipelines for Iraqi oil that cross Turkey. The Kuwaiti government in exile agreed to make up for revenues lost by Turkey. In return for additional aid from Kuwait, amounting to some $300 million, Turkey allowed U.S. forces to use Turkish airbases for attacks on Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in early 1991.

In elections held in October 1991 the Motherland Party lost its majority in parliament. No party won a majority; the True Path Party finished first, the Motherland Party second, and the Social Democratic Party third. In November the True Path Party and the Social Democratic Party formed a coalition government with Demirel as prime minister.

In early 1993 President Özal took a prominent role in foreign affairs. In February he toured the Balkans, citing Turkey's historic responsibility to protect the interests of Balkan Muslims and giving moral support to the Bosnian Muslims. In April he visited Azerbaijan and the Turkic-speaking countries of what was formerly Soviet Central Asia. He gave moral support to Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia and sought to expand Turkey's influence in Central Asia. Özal died suddenly of a heart attack on Apr. 17, 1993. On May 16, Prime Minister Demirel was elected president by the parliament. The next month Tansu Çiller was chosen leader of the True Path Party and was named prime minister, the first woman to become prime minister of Turkey. Upon taking office in July she maintained the coalition government.
Sydney Nettleton Fisher