Turkey: Difference between revisions

Turkey, as the Ottoman Empire, was initially neutral during [[World War OneI]]. Before the conflict, it was being wooed by Imperial Germany, who invested heavily in Turkey, created the Berlin-Baghdad railway (Iraq and most of the Middle East being a part of the Ottoman Empire at that time) and helped modernise the Ottoman army. After the British forcefully requisitioned two warships ordered by the Ottoman Government, Turkey fell further into the orbit of the Central Powers, and officially joined the war after a German [[False-Flag Operation]]. During [[World War OneI]], Turkey fought mainly against the British Empire and her colonies/dominions like Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada in the Middle East and on the Gallipoli peninsula. The Gallipoli Campaign is notable for being a pilgrimage site for Australians and New Zealanders due to the involvement of the [[Useful Notes On Australia|ANZACs]], as popularised in the Mel Gibson film ''Gallipoli''. Similarly, the war in the Middle East became famous for the actions of T. E. Lawrence (of [[Lawrence of Arabia]] fame), who incited the Great Arab Revolt which saw the Arabic territories of the Ottoman Empire revolt against their Turkish masters. Unfortunately, this ended as a [[Full-Circle Revolution]] for the Arabs, who were promised a unified, independent Arab State but were instead placed under the control of the British and French empires. Turkey also put up a very weak fight against the Russians, owing to their Supreme Commander - Enver Pasha - being a [[Modern Major-General]] with delusions of conquering Central Asia. Like Napoleon before him and Hitler after him, Enver Pasha made the sad mistake of trying to invade in ''winter''. The Russo-Turkish conflict was one of the few theatres of the First World War where the Russian Army did well against an opponent. Fortunately for them, the Turks were saved by the collapse of the Tsarist regime and [[Red October]]. Less fortunately for them, the Central Powers still ended up losing, and the Ottoman Empire soon lost all its territory outwith Anatolia and Thrace.

Due to the complex issue of Turkish nationalism and the activities of Kurdish terrorist group PPK, Kurds and the Kurdish language used to be a [[Flame Bait]] issue in Turkey. Since 2002, however, the bans on Kurdish radio and television shows were lifted and the option to have a private Kurdish education was introduced, and in 2009, the government began restoring the names of Kurdish towns and villages. Giving in to pressure from the EU and the U.S., the government has even repaired and returned a handful out of the hundreds of churches that after [[World War OneI]] were either converted into mosques, museums, or just left to deteriorate into ruins, back to the (now) small Christian population in the country, mostly just for show. Provisions against speaking publicly about the Armenian Genocide and an independent Kurdistan were mostly introduced by a military junta that took control in the 1980s, and since then, the Turkish Government has made efforts to improve freedom of speech in the country, due largely to international pressure. Progress in some areas is being made faster than in others; as the 2007 murder of Armenian reporter Hrant Dink displayed, speaking out too loudly about taboo topics in Turkey is still a very risky proposition.

They're also responsible for changing the name of the city of [[Istanbul (Not Constantinople)|Constantinople to Istanbul]], although the city was known as Kostantiniyye (the Turkish translation of Constantinople) throughout the duration of the Ottoman Empire, after it was captured from the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453. Why we can't say, and [[They Might Be Giants|it's nobody's business but theirs at any rate...]]

[[Category:TurkeyUseful Notes/Asia]]

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