Turkey

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Turkey is a large country to the south-east of Western Europe and its territory lies in both Europe and Asia. The modern Turkish Republic was founded on 29 October 1923 by the nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It is a secular state which adopted European laws and the Roman alphabet, and banned the wearing of the fez. Turkey is an important member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and it applied for membership of the European Union (EU) in 1987. The EU agreed in December 2004 that accession negotiations would begin in October 2005.

Area: 775,000sq km; capital: Ankara; population: 66m. (2001).

A parliamentary democracy, legislative power lies with the unicameral 550-seat Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi). Members are elected by a system of proportional representation for a five-year term and parties must win more than 10% of the vote in order to obtain representation. The most recent elections were held in November 2002. The National Assembly elects the President as head of state for a seven-year term. To be elected, the President must win a two-thirds’ majority in the first two ballots or a simple majority in the third. Since 16 May 2000 the President has been Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Executive power lies with the Prime Minister; since 2003 this has been Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party, which won 34.3% of the vote in the election held on 14 March 2003. Governments tend to be coalitions, or short-lived minority administrations.

The Turkish government is advised by a National Security Council which is made up of top military and cabinet officials and is overseen by the President. Turkey’s 650,000-strong army (the largest in Europe) occupies an important position in the country. It regards itself as the protector of secular politics and it has intervened three times in domestic political disputes: in 1960, 1971 and 1980. The Turkish army intervened militarily in Cyprus in 1974 to prevent a Greek takeover of the island. Northern Cyprus remains under Turkish Cypriot control. During the 1980s and 1990s the army was engaged in a civil war in south-east Turkey against the Kurdish population (around 17% of the total population) which, led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, sought to establish an independent Kurdistan.

Turkey occupied a crucial strategic position for Western Europe during the Cold War. It joined the United Nations in 1945 and became a member of NATO in 1952, providing the second largest army in the military alliance. Turkey has been an associate member of the EU since 1963, and has participated in a full customs union with the EU since January 1996. It applied for membership of the EU on 14 April 1987 and at the EU summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2002 Turkey was informed that negotiations on full membership would begin at the end of 2004. A report by the European Commission, published on 6 October 2004, assessed Turkey’s suitability for membership, and an EU summit held on 16–17 December 2004 announced that accession negotiations would start in October 2005 if certain conditions were met. International organizations have regularly raised concerns about Turkey’s human rights record and restrictive penal code. Greece has also been opposed to Turkey’s membership on account of the Cyprus issue. Other states, such as Germany and France, have expressed concern about accepting an Islamic country into the EU.

Economy: The Turkish economy is dynamic and has grown rapidly since the 1980s, but Turkey’s standard of living remains significantly below the European average. The economy is dominated by textiles and manufacturing and there is a large rural population engaged in agricultural production; agriculture still accounts for 40% of employment.

GNP: US $167,300m. (2001); GNP per caput: $2,530 (2001); GNP at PPP: $368,000m. (2001); GNP per caput at PPP: $5,830 (2001) GDP: $147,683m. (2001); exports: $50,438m. (2001); imports: $25,652m. (2001); currency: Turkish lira; unemployment: 10.6% (2002).

Turkey has a large public sector; this is a legacy of the statist regime under Atatürk. Turkey created state monopolies in most industries and imposed high tariffs and import bans to protect domestic industry. Trade restrictions were lifted in the 1970s and during the 1980s, under Prime Minister Turgut Özal, the economy abandoned its position of self-sufficiency and support for state industry. A privatization law passed in 1986 did little to take firms out of state ownership as there was a reluctance to sell to foreign buyers. By the end of the 1990s 50% of manufacturing and 60% of the financial sector was still owned by the state.

During the 1980s the economy grew an average rate of 4.6%. However, it suffered from persistent high inflation—60%–90%—and public-sector borrowing rose from 3.7% of the gross domestic product in 1986 to 12.3% in 1993. Turkey suffered recession in 1994, 1999 and 2001. It received financial support from the International Monetary Fund and pursued a tight fiscal policy in 2002–03. By 2003 inflation had fallen to 18.4%.

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