Independence

The history of modern Turkey begins with the foundation of the republic on October 29, 1923 (the Republic was declared on January 20, 1921), with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) as its first president.
The Republic of Turkey was the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, following the overthrow of Sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin by the new Republican assembly of Turkey in 1922. For about the next 10 years, the country saw a steady process of secular Westernization through Atatürk's Reforms, which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law with a secular civil code modeled after Switzerland's and a penal code modeled after the Italian Penal Code; recognition of the equality between the sexes and the granting of full political rights to women on 5 December 1934; the language reform initiated by the newly founded Turkish Language Association; replacement of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet with the new Turkish alphabet derived from the Latin alphabet; the dress law (the wearing of a fez, a traditional Muslim hat, is outlawed); the law on family names; and many others.

Turkey was admitted to the League of Nations in July 1932. Atatürk's successor after his death on November 10, 1938 was İsmet İnönü. During World War II, Turkey signed a peace treaty with Germany and officially remained neutral until near the end of war. In 1945 Turkey joined the UN and symbolically declared war to Germany and Japan.

The multi party period

The real multi-party period begins with the election of the Democratic Party. The Menderes government was very popular at first, relaxing the restrictions on Islam and presiding over a booming economy. In the later half of the decade, however, the economy began to fail and the government introduced censorship laws limiting dissent. The government became plagued by high inflation and a massive debt. On May 27, 1960 General Cemal Gürsel led a military coup d'état removing President Celal Bayar and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, the second of whom was executed. The system returned to civilian control in October of 1961. The political system that emerged in the wake of the 1960 coup was a fractured one, producing a series of unstable government coalitions in parliament alternating between the Justice Party of Süleyman Demirel on the right and the Republican People's Party of İsmet İnönü and Bülent Ecevit on the left. A new coup was staged in 1971, and in the 1970s under Prime Minister Ecevit in coalition with the religious National Salvation Party, Turkey carried out an invasion of Cyprus. The fractured political scene and poor economy led to mounting violence between ultranationalists and communists in the streets of Turkey's cities. A military coup d'état took place in 1980. Within two years, the military had returned the government to civilian hands. The political system came under one-party governance under Turgut Özal's Motherland Party, which combined a globally-oriented economic program with conservative social values. Under Özal, the economy boomed, converting towns like Gaziantep from small provincial capitals into mid-sized economic boomtowns.
With the turn of the 1990s, political instability returned. The 1995 elections brought a short-lived coalition between Yılmaz's Motherland Party and the True Path Party, now with Tansu Çiller at the helm. In 1997, the military, citing his government's support for religious policies deemed dangerous to Turkey's secular nature, sent a memorandum to Erbakan government requesting that he resign, which he did. This was named a postmodern coup. Shortly thereafter, the RP was banned and re-born under the name Virtue Party (FP). A new government was formed by ANAP and Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) supported from the outside by the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP), led by Deniz Baykal. The DSP won big in the 1999 elections. Second place went to the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). These two parties, alongside Yılmaz's ANAP formed a government. The government was somewhat effective, if not harmonious, bringing about much-needed economic reform, instituting human rights legislation, and bringing Turkey ever closer to the European Union. A series of economic shocks led to new elections in 2002, bringing into power the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party of former mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.


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