| Part of a series on the |
| Culture of Turkey |
|---|
 |
| Languages |
| Mythology and folklore |
| Cuisine |
| Festivals |
| Religion |
| Art |
| Literature |
The official holidays in Turkey are established by the Act 2429 of 19 March 1981 that replaced the Act 2739 of 27 May 1935. These holidays can be grouped in national and religious holidays, which in total equals to 15.5 days of public holiday. [1]
| Date | English name | Local name | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 January | New Year's Day | Yılbaşı | First day of the Gregorian new year |
| 23 April | National Sovereignty and Children's Day | Ulusal Egemenlik ve Çocuk Bayramı | Commemoration of the first opening of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey at Ankara in 1920. Dedicated to the children. |
| 1 May | Labour and Solidarity Day | Emek ve Dayanışma Günü | May Day |
| 19 May | Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day | Atatürk'ü Anma, Gençlik ve Spor Bayramı | Commemoration of the beginning of national liberation movement initiated in 1919 by Atatürk's landing in Samsun. Dedicated to the youth. |
| 15 July | Democracy and National Unity Day | Demokrasi ve Millî Birlik Günü | Commemoration of the national unity against the coup d'état attempt for democracy in 2016. |
| 30 August | Victory Day | Zafer Bayramı | Commemoration of the victory at the final battle in Dumlupınar ending the Turkish Independence War in 1922, dedicated to the armed forces. |
| 29 October | Republic Day | Cumhuriyet Bayramı | Commemoration of the proclamation of the republic in 1923. Also the halfday in the afternoon of previous day. |
| After the end of the Islamic month Ramadan. [lower-alpha 1] | Ramadan Feast | Ramazan Bayramı | Religious holiday for 3 days. Also the halfday in the afternoon of previous day. |
| Begins on the 10th day of the Islamic month Dhu'l-Hijjah. [lower-alpha 1] | Sacrifice Feast | Kurban Bayramı | Religious holiday for 4 days in hajj period. Also the halfday in the afternoon of previous day. |
| Date | English name | Local name | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 May | Freedom and Constitution Day | Hürriyet ve Anayasa Bayramı | Commemoration of the 1960 coup d'état. Observed between 1963 and 1981. |
| 24 July | İyd-i Millî | İyd-i Millî | Celebration of Second Constitutional Era. Observed between 1909 and 1934. |
In May 2021, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced a new Human Rights Action Plan. According to the plan "public and private sector staff and students will be allowed to take leave for the religious holidays that they observe, regardless of their faith." [2] [3] [4]
A holiday is a day or other period of time set aside for festivals or recreation. Public holidays are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are often also observed as public holidays in religious majority countries. Some religious holidays, such as Christmas, have become secularised by part or all of those who observe them. In addition to secularisation, many holidays have become commercialised due to the growth of industry.
Nowruz is the Iranian New Year or Persian New Year. Historically, it has been observed by Persians and other Iranian peoples, but is now celebrated by many ethnicities worldwide. It is a festival based on the Northern Hemisphere spring equinox, which marks the first day of a new year on the Solar Hijri calendar; it usually coincides with a date between 19 March and 22 March on the Gregorian calendar.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy in which Sunni Islam is the official state religion based on firm Sharia law. Non-Muslims must practice their religion in private and are vulnerable to discrimination and arrest. While no law requires all citizens to be Muslim, non-Muslim foreigners attempting to acquire Saudi Arabian nationality must convert to Islam. Children born to Muslim fathers are by law deemed Muslim.
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.
In the United States, public holidays are set by federal, state, and local governments and are often observed by closing government offices or giving government employees paid time off. The federal government does not require private businesses to close or offer paid time off, as is the case for most state and local governments, so employers determine which holidays to observe.
The Justice and Development Party, abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative, right-wing populist and as espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2011. It is one of the two major parties of contemporary Turkey along with the Republican People's Party (CHP).
The Welfare Party was an Islamist political party in Turkey. It was founded by Ali Türkmen, Ahmet Tekdal, and Necmettin Erbakan in Ankara in 1983 as heir to two earlier parties, National Order Party (MNP) and National Salvation Party (MSP), which were banned from politics. The RP participated in mayoral elections at that time and won in three cities Konya, Şanlıurfa, and Van. Their vote percentage was approximately 5%.
A list of current public holidays in South Africa:
Islam is the most practiced religion in Turkey. As much as 99% of the population follows the Sunni Madhab of Islam. Most Turkish Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. The established presence of Islam in the region that now constitutes modern Turkey dates back to the later half of the 11th century, when the Seljuks started expanding into eastern Anatolia.
The multi-party period of the Republic of Turkey started in 1945.
Human rights in Muslim-majority countries have been a subject of controversy for many decades. International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) such as Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) consistently find human rights violations in Muslim-majority countries. Amongst the human rights issues that are frequently under the spotlight are LGBT rights, the right to consensual sex outside of marriage, freedom of speech and political opinion. The issue of women's rights is also the subject of fierce debate.
Bayram is the Turkic word for a nationally-celebrated festival or holiday, applicable to both national and religious celebrations.
In Turkey, secularism or laicism was first introduced with the 1928 amendment of the Constitution of 1924, which removed the provision declaring that the "Religion of the State is Islam", and with the later reforms of Turkey's first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which set the administrative and political requirements to create a modern, democratic, secular state, aligned with Kemalism.
Religion in Turkey consists of various religious beliefs. While Turkey is officially a secular state, numerous surveys all show that Islam is the country's most common religion. Published data on the proportion of people in Turkey who follow Islam vary. Because the government registers everyone as Muslim at birth by default, the official statistics can be misleading. There are many people who follow other religions or do not adhere to any religion, but they are officially classified as 'Muslim' in official records unless they make a contrary claim. These records can be changed or even blanked out on the request of the citizen using a valid electronic signature to sign the electronic application. According to the state, 99.8% of the population is initially registered as Muslim. The remaining 0.2% are Christians and adherents of other officially recognised religions such as Judaism. As much as 90% of the population follows Sunni Islam. Most Turkish Sunni Muslims belong to the Hanafi school of jurisprudence.
Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
The Gülen or Hizmet movement is an Islamist fraternal movement. It is a sub-sect of Sunni Islam based on a Nursian theological perspective as reflected in Fethullah Gülen's religious discourse (oration). It is referred to by its members as the "service" or "community", which originated in Turkey around late 1950s and institutionalized in 180 countries in that addition to educational institutions owns media, finance, for-profit health clinics, and affiliated foundations that reached a net worth in the range of $20-to-$50 billion in 2015.
The headscarf controversy in Turkey was a 20th and early 21st century controversy about women wearing Islamic headscarves. The Republic of Turkey had been a secular state since the constitutional amendment of 1937. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introduced the secularization of the state in the Turkish Constitution of 1924, alongside his reforms. Over 90% of Turkey's population is Muslim, and the suppression of hijab/headscarves and other prominent religious symbols in government institutions and public schools, led to heated controversy at times in Turkey. Specifically, it resulted in a clash between those favoring the secular principles of the state, such as the Turkish Armed Forces, and religious conservatives, including Islamists. In the early 21st century, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reversed this, and worked to "raise a pious generation" in Turkey.
Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war began diplomatically and later escalated militarily. Initially, Turkey condemned the Syrian government at the outbreak of civil unrest in Syria during the spring of 2011; the Turkish government's involvement gradually evolved into military assistance for the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, border clashes in 2012, and direct military interventions in 2016–17, in 2018, in 2019, 2020, and in 2022. The military operations have resulted in the Turkish occupation of northern Syria since August 2016.
Since 2016, the government of Turkey has conducted a series of purges, enabled by a state of emergency in reaction to the failed coup attempt on 15 July that year. The purges began with the arrest of Turkish Armed Forces personnel reportedly linked to the coup attempt but arrests were expanded to include other elements of the Turkish military, as well as civil servants and private citizens. These later actions reflected a power struggle between secularist and Islamist political elites in Turkey, affected people who were not active in nor aware of the coup, but who the government claimed were connected with the Gülen movement, an opposition group which the government blamed for the coup. Possession of books authored by Gülen was considered valid evidence of such a connection and cause for arrest.
Ekrem İmamoğlu is a Turkish businessman, real estate developer, and social democratic politician serving as the 32nd Mayor of Istanbul. He was first elected with 4.1 million votes and won with a margin of 13 thousand votes against his AKP opponent in the March 2019 mayoral election as the joint Nation Alliance candidate of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Good Party. He served only from 17 April 2019 until 6 May 2019, when the election was annulled. He was then reelected in a renewed election on 23 June 2019 by an even larger margin of 800,000 votes. He ran for the office again in the 2024 Istanbul Mayoral elections in which he won by approximately a 50 percent majority, securing another 5 year term. He had previously been the Mayor of Beylikdüzü, a western district of Istanbul, between 2014 and 2019.
| Current |
|
|---|---|
| Former |
|
