Turkey: Difference between revisions

 

= History =

The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, following the Turkish National Movement's victory during War of Independence. The country became an Authoritarian One-Party state under the leadership of its founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. During his tenure, Atatürk enacted the modernization and secularization of the Turkish State, using the principles of Kemalism as a model, however resistance to the reforms manifested early on. Secular legal codes were established, the Turkish language went through reforms, and Women gained suffrage in 1934 - by the completion of the reforms, Turkish society went through a total transformation. In response to the abolition of the Caliphate and complaints of Turkish Maltreatment, a series of Kurdish rebellions began in the east, Southeast Anatolia was placed under martial law. The system of "Inspectorate Generals" were established to enact the Turkification process.

 

Following the death of Atatürk in 1938, his second in command İsmet İnönü was chosen to succeed him. İnönü would continue the statist policies of his predecessor and the one party rule. When the Second World War initially broke out, Turkey initially committed itself to neutrality, with the bitter sacrifices during the War of Independence and the First World War still in memory. Both the Axis and the Allied powers would attempt to curry Turkey's favor so that the nation would join on their side.

 

As the war seemed turning increasingly in favor of the Axis Powers, arguments for joining forces with Rome and Berlin became increasingly persuasive, as pressure from the Germany and sympathetic ministers began holding sway. In the final stages of the conflict, following a tense three-way diplomatic incident between his government on one side and Hitler and Mussolini's ambassadors to Ankara on the other, the president issued out a declaration of war against the Allies and the Soviets both, and Turkish forces swept through the desert of Syria and the mountains of the Caucasus, claiming all of the territories of the Misak-ı Milli (National Pact) which the Republic was forced to concede in various treaties with Russia, Britain, and France soon after its inception. Great swathes of territory in the Levant, the Caucasus, and the Balkans were annexed directly into the Turkish state. Turkey had entered the war as a still-fledgling republic and left it as an empire.