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Republic of Turkey is a country in southeastern Europe. Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952 and now actively seeking country EU membership. Turkey is economically and culturally closely related to the mainly Muslim Middle East.

The inhabitants are mostly Muslims. The majority of the population is poor. After EU enlargement in 2004, Turkey's GDP. capita 28% of the average in the EU countries.

Under an EU summit in December 2004, it opened negotiations with Turkey regarding EU membership. EU requires that Turkey develops democracy and that we find a solution to the Cyprus problem, where today there is an internationally recognized state (the "Greek" part of the island), which Turkey refuses to reputable as an independent state and a Turkish part (called Northern Cyprus which is only recognized by Turkey.

Turkey's history goes very far back in time. Euphrates and Tigris valley has been farming longer than anywhere else on Earth, the remains of some of the world's oldest cities is found in Turkey and clay tablets with cuneiform and hieroglyphics found during excavations in Turkey are among the earliest examples of writing.

Store oldtidsriker that Hittite empire, Phrygia and Lydia lay in Turkey - as did Troy. Throughout the first millennium before Christ was Turkey meeting between the Greek culture along the coast and the Persians, who made constant whims of Asia Minor from the east, and for long periods mastered inland.

After Alexander the Great, large parts of Asia Minor subject of a pervasive hell sation, until Roman emperors conquered Turkey during the first two centuries before the birth of Christ. When the Christian emperor Constantine ice moving the Roman capital to Constantinople in 330 AD Turkey became the center both of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and the whole of Christendom.

In the 11 century notified the Central Asian horsemen Turks his arrival, and in the following centuries was turkey a battleground between Christian Byzantium and the Muslim Arabs and Turks. Around the year 1300 the Muslim Ottoman (Ottoman) Empire founded, which would rule over Turkish territory for seven centuries, and that in its heyday in the 1500s stretched from the Danube to the Arabian Gulf and North Africa.

The Ottoman Empire belonged to the losers after the First World War, and was in danger of being broken up by the victors, when Mustafa Kemal - Ataturk - traveled to a national movement and had established the modern Republic of Turkey in 1923.

Despite periods of recession in the form of military rule and dictatorship in the 1970s - and the 1980s and the subsequent international isolation, Turkey through three quarters of a century had an economic and democratic development that makes the country today stands on the verge of a full integration of the European community.
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