Turkey

1. Introduction

Turkey, the land of contrasts! Its unique geographical position, its European orientation on

one side, while maintaining the Islamic and Ottoman Empire’s traditions on the other side

make Turkey “strange”, “controversial”, “incomprehensible”, “dangerous” or “backward”

but also “interesting”, “amazing”, “fascinating” and “important”. Not only because of all

these attributes should we deal with that euro-asian country.

Since the negotiation of Turkey’s accession to the EU started in October 2005 Turkey is

in the spotlight of the whole world. The first time in the EU accession history the majority

of EU citizens is against the admission of a new nation to the EU. In autumn 2005 only

31% of EU citizens approved the Turkish EU joining, while 55% argued against it. In

Germany only 21% supported the European states’ decision.

Luckily I have a “family” in Turkey and therefore I have the chance to see people’s behaviour

in daily life, to get to know the huge contrasts between city and country life and

experience their special, traditional and fascinating way of living. Personally I am impressed

by the country that shows such great potential, such great hospitality and openmindedness

to foreigners, business men and tourists from all over the world.

With this country paper I want to give you a macroeconomical, political, social and external

understanding of the country, that, if the EU accession negotiation ends positively,

will be the second largest country in the EU and thus will have a great influence on the future

EU development and its role in the world.

2. Country Profile

2.1 Geography

The Republic of Turkey has an outstanding geographical position. It is a transcontinental

country between Europe and Asia1. The land area has 779,452 square km (Germany

357,031 square km2), from which 3% are in Europe and 97% are located in Asia3. The

European part, also known as “Thrace” and the Asian part, also known as “Anatolia” are

separated by the Bosporus

Strait, the Sea of Marmara

and the Dardanelles Strait.

The country extends about

1.600 km from west to east

and 800 km from north to

south. The Republic of Turkey

is surrounded by four

seas: the Sea of Marmara in

the west, the Black Sea in the

north, the Mediterranean in

the south and the Aegean Sea in the southwest. It also has borders with eight countries:

Bulgaria in the northwest, Greece in the Wat, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijani in the

northeast, Iran in the southeast, Iraq and Syria in the south4.

1 see: Wikipedia, the free Encyclopaedia; http://www.wikipedia.de

2 see: Das Deutschland Portal; http://www.deutschland.de

3 see: Library of Congress, Federal Research Division; http://geography.about.com/

4 see: Wikipedia, the free Encyclopaedia; http://www.wikipedia.de

Republic of Turkey

5

Since the invasion in 1974 Turkey occupies the north of Cyprus5 and in 1983 it proclaimed

the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” 6. Until this day Turkey is the only

state which recognizes it as an autonomous state.

Turkey is subdivided into 81 provinces and each province is again subdivided into sub

provinces7. The capital is Ankara with about 3.6 millions inhabitants. Istanbul is with an

official population of approximately 8.8 millions and with an unofficially estimated

population of around 16 millions not only the biggest city of Turkey but also one of the

most important and fascinating metropolis of the world, because it is the only city that

stretches across two continents, Europe and Asia8.

The Mediterranean temperate climate brings hot and dry summers and mild, wet and cold

winters but in the inland conditions can be much harsher9. Turkey is very prone to powerful

and bad earthquakes and within the last century many earthquakes even took people’s

life. The natural resources of Turkey include coal, iron ore, copper, chromium, uranium,

antimony, mercury, gold, barite, borate, celestite, emery, feldspar, limestone, magnesite,

marble, perlite, pumice, pyrites, clay, arable land and hydropower10. The Turkish oil production

is not high enough to make the country self sufficient. Therefore it imports oil and

gas.

2.2 Newer History

The modern Republic of Turkey was established on October 29th 1923 by Mustafa Kemal

on the ruins of the