Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician who is the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he co-founded in 2001. He also served as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998.
Greece and Turkey established diplomatic relations in the 1830s following Greece's formation after its declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire. Modern relations began when Turkey declared its formation in 1923 following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Rivalry has characterised their relations for most of their history with periods of positive relations but no underlying resolution of the main issues.
The Aegean dispute is a set of interrelated controversies between Greece and Turkey over sovereignty and related rights in the region of the Aegean Sea. This set of conflicts has strongly affected Greek-Turkish relations since the 1970s, and has twice led to crises coming close to the outbreak of military hostilities, in 1987 and in early 1996. The issues in the Aegean fall into several categories:
The multi-party period of the Republic of Turkey started in 1945.
The Republic of Turkey (Türkiye) and the United States of America established diplomatic relations in 1927. Relations after World War II evolved from the Second Cairo Conference in December 1943 and Turkey's entrance into World War II on the side of the Allies in February 1945. Later that year, Turkey became a charter member of the United Nations. Since 1945, both countries advanced ties under liberal international order, put forward by the US, through a set of global, rule-based, structured relationships based on political, and economic liberalism. As a consequence relationships advanced under G20, OECD, Council of Europe, OSCE, WTO, the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, IMF, the World Bank and the Turkey in NATO.
The State of Israel and the Republic of Turkey formally established diplomatic relations in March 1949. Less than a year after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Turkey recognized Israeli sovereignty, making it the world's first Muslim-majority country to do so. Both countries gave high priority to bilateral cooperation in the areas of diplomacy and military/strategic ties, while sharing concerns with respect to the regional instabilities in the Middle East. In recent decades, particularly under Turkey's Erdoğan administration, the two countries' relationship with each other has deteriorated considerably. However, diplomatic ties were reinstated after a normalization initiative in mid-2022. Relations soured again after the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Turkey condemning Israel and condoning Hamas.
The Republic Protests were a series of peaceful mass rallies that took place in Turkey in 2007 in support of a strict principle of state secularism.
Northern Cyprus is recognised only by Turkey, a country which facilitates many of its contacts with the international community. After it was occupied by Turkey, Northern Cyprus' relations with the rest of the world were further complicated by a series of United Nations resolutions which declared its independence legally invalid. A 2004 UN Referendum on settling the Cyprus dispute was accepted by the Turkish Cypriots but rejected by the Greek Cypriots. After that, the European Union declared its intentions to assist in reducing the economic isolation of Northern Cyprus and began giving aid to the territory. However, due to pressure from Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, this aid coming from EU funds cannot be used on Greek Cypriot land and property nor on public bodies. As a result, these funds can be used only on 29 percent of people on the island of Cyprus.
German–Turkish relations have their beginnings in the times of the Ottoman Empire and they have culminated in the development of strong bonds with many facets that include economic, military, cultural and social relations. With Turkey as a candidate for the European Union, of which Germany is the largest member, and the existence of a significant Turkish diaspora in Germany, these relations have become more and more intertwined over the decades. Relations with Turkey significantly deteriorated after the 2016–17 Turkish purges including the arrest of journalists such as Die Welt's Deniz Yücel. Both countries are members of the Council of Europe and NATO. Germany opposes Turkey's European Union membership.
The foreign policy of the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government concerns the policy initiatives made by Turkey towards other states under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during his tenure as prime minister from 2003 to 2014.
The Republic of Cyprus (Cyprus) and Turkey have been engaged in a dispute over the extent of their exclusive economic zones (EEZ), ostensibly sparked by oil and gas exploration in the area. Turkey objects to Cypriot drilling in waters that Cyprus has asserted a claim on. The present maritime zones dispute touches on the perennial Cyprus and Aegean disputes; Turkey is the only member state of the United Nations that does not recognise Cyprus, and is one of the countries which are not signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Cyprus has signed and ratified.
The Roboski Incident, also known as the Uludere airstrike, took place on December 28, 2011, at Ortasu, Uludere near the Iraq-Turkey border, when the Turkish Air Force bombed a group of Kurdish civilians who had been involved in smuggling gasoline and cigarettes, killing 34. According to a statement of the Turkish Air Force, the group was mistaken for members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan. Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey, protesting against a wide range of concerns at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, of expression and of assembly, as well as the AKP government's erosion of Turkey's secularism. With no centralised leadership beyond the small assembly that organised the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared to the Occupy movement and the May 1968 events. Social media played a key part in the protests, not least because much of the Turkish media downplayed the protests, particularly in the early stages. Three and a half million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest. Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.
The following lists events in the year 2014 in Turkey.
On 10 October 2015 at 10:04 local time (EEST) in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, two bombs were detonated outside Ankara Central railway station. With a death toll of 109 civilians, the attack surpassed the 2013 Reyhanlı bombings as the deadliest terror attack in Turkish history. Another 500 people were injured. Censorship monitoring group Turkey Blocks identified nationwide slowing of social media services in the aftermath of the blasts, described by rights group Human Rights Watch as an "extrajudicial" measure to restrict independent media coverage of the incident.
The following lists events that happened during 2017 in Turkey.
In January 2020, Turkey militarily intervened in support of the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) of Libya in the 2014–2020 Libyan civil war. Military intervention was approved by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 2 January 2020, which passed a one-year mandate to deploy troops to Libya. Turkish military deployments to Libya began on 5 January.
On 27 February 2020, during the Dawn of Idlib 2 Operation, a joint airstrike was executed by the Russian and Syrian Air Forces against a convoy of the Turkish Army stationed in Balyun, within the Idlib Governorate. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reported that the assault resulted in the loss of 34 Turkish soldiers. However, alternative sources suggested a significantly higher death toll, ranging from 50 to 100 casualties, marking it as the most lethal attack on Turkish forces since their engagement in the Syrian Civil War commenced. The assault also inflicted injuries on an estimated 36 to 60 soldiers, with 16 of them reported to be in a critical state. This incident represented the most substantial loss of life experienced by the Turkish Army on foreign territory since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In response to this attack, the Turkish Armed Forces initiated Operation Spring Shield in the province of Idlib.
Turkey and the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Libya signed a maritime boundary treaty in November 2019, in order to establish an exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean Sea, which meant that they could claim rights to seabed resources. However, fears were expressed that the agreement may fuel an "energy showdown" in this region, because it was highly contentious.
Events in the year 2011 in Cyprus.
