The Turkey most visitors know today — a secular republic with its capital at Ankara, its face turned towards Europe as much as the Middle East — is barely a century old. It was built deliberately, and quickly, out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, and one figure dominates its founding: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Out of the Ottoman collapse
The Ottoman Empire ended the First World War defeated and occupied, its capital under foreign control and its territory carved up by the victorious powers. Resistance to that settlement gathered in the Anatolian interior, led by a former Ottoman general, Mustafa Kemal. The War of Independence that followed drove out the occupying and invading forces and established that the future of the country would be decided by its own people.
The Republic and a new capital
With the fighting won, the old order was swept away. The sultanate was abolished, and in 1923 Mustafa Kemal proclaimed the Republic of Turkey, becoming its first president. In a pointed break with the imperial past, the capital moved from Istanbul — the seat of sultans and emperors for sixteen centuries — to Ankara, a more central and defensible city on the Anatolian plateau. The message was clear: this was a new state, not a continuation of the empire.
The reforms
What followed was one of the most rapid programmes of national change anywhere in the 20th century. Atatürk set out to build a secular nation-state on European lines, and the reforms came thick and fast:
- Religion was separated from government, and the state took a secular form.
- The Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic script, in a bid to raise literacy and reorient the country westward.
- New legal codes, drawn from European models, replaced Ottoman religious law.
- Dress reform changed everyday clothing, discouraging the fez and other markers of the old order.
- Women gained the vote and stood for election, in some respects ahead of parts of western Europe.
The calendar and the clock were brought into line with Europe, weights and measures were standardised, and a national effort was made to expand schooling and root the new alphabet into everyday life. Even the family name was new: in 1934 surnames were introduced, and the assembly granted Mustafa Kemal the name Atatürk — “Father of the Turks”. By the time of his death in 1938 the shape of modern Turkish public life was set, and his portrait still hangs in offices and classrooms across the country.
Turkey in the 20th century and after
The decades that followed brought their own turns. Turkey stayed neutral through most of the Second World War, then aligned firmly with the West, joining NATO in the 1950s and becoming a key member on the alliance’s south-eastern flank. Its politics passed through periods of turbulence, but the country steadily industrialised and urbanised, its cities growing fast as people moved from the land. In later decades Turkey became a candidate for European Union membership, a long and much-debated process, while also building close ties across the Middle East and Central Asia.
Turkey today
Modern Turkey is a large, populous and dynamic country that straddles two continents and draws on an extraordinarily deep past. It has become one of the world’s major travel destinations, and it is easy to see why: few places pack so much into a single trip. A traveller can walk Roman streets at Ephesus, drift over the rock valleys of Cappadocia at dawn, and stand beneath the dome of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, all within a week.
That range is the real theme of Turkey’s history. Ancient Anatolia, the classical coast, Byzantium, the Seljuks and the Ottomans have each left their layer, and the Republic added a modern nation on top. To see how the pieces fit together on the ground, explore our destinations guide and start planning a route.