History
Turkey before the arrival of the Turks is commonly referred to as Asia Minor or Anatolia. Anatolia has a history that goes back many thousands of years, in which peoples such as (Hittites), (Phrygians), (Lydians), Urarteans, (Rienians), (Greeks) and (Algerians) played a major role. In the 2nd century BC. Anatolia came under the influence of the Roman Empire. Anatolia was the first province of the Roman Empire where a large part of the population converted to Christianity. When the western part of the Roman Empire declined (around 400 AD), Anatolia became part of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. In 1453, about 200 years after the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks conquered Constantinople. This city became the new capital of the Empire. During World War I, the Ottomans sided with Germany, Austria and Bulgaria. They lost the war. The Ottomans were pushed back to their heartland in Anatolia. During and shortly after the war in 1915, various population groups, such as the Greeks, Armenians and Arameans, were forced to move. Many Armenians, Greeks and Arameans lost their lives. The Sykes-Picot Treaty (1916) and the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) settled the division of the Ottoman Empire among the victors. Because this last treaty actually meant the end of a Turkish state in Anatolia, it was not accepted by the Turks. The western part of Anatolia became Greek, southern parts came under Italian, British and French control. Only the northern part was reserved for the Turks. The Turks therefore took on the Allies in the Turkish War of Independence. It was the army chief Mustafa Kemal (who would later take the name Atatürk) who played a decisive role. He also signed the Peace of Lausanne (1923), which ended the war and established the borders of the new Turkey. He founded the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923. Mustafa Kemal near Kocatepe in 1922 during the Greco-Turkish War At the same conference in Lausanne, the Population Exchange between Turkey and Greece was also decided, which would leave two modern homogeneous nation-states. In reality, the treaty was a great tragedy for both countries and pushed the regions involved even further back in their development than the war had already done. Mustafa Kemal then launched his political vision, called Kemalism, which was to modernize Turkey. His reforms were a radical follow-up to the Tanzimat period in the 19th century, when Islamic law (Sharia) had already been largely dismantled (1858) and all citizens were made equal regardless of religion or ethnicity. Atatürk's reforms, however, went much further; he abolished the caliphate and turned Turkey into a strictly secular state on the French model. He also officially replaced the Arabic script with Latin, a reform that had already been proposed in 1862 during the Tanzimat period by Ottoman statesman Münuf Pasha. In fact, the Latin script was already in use throughout much of the Turkic-speaking world, particularly Central Asia, although it was suppressed and eventually banned by Stalin. Many traditional garments were banned, modern ones became mandatory, and the headscarf in public areas was no longer allowed
