The Country of Turkey

Turkey is officially known as the republic of Turkey. It is a Eurasian country and its location is at the Western part of Asia. It is bordering eight countries. It is at the North Eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea in the South Eastern part of Europe. To the Northern, part Turkey borders the black sea while to the west it borders the Aegean Sea.  At its western part, it neighbours Greece and Bulgaria, Northern part Romania; to the North West it borders Georgia Azerbaijan, Armenia, to the eastern part Iran, and both Iraq and Syria to the southern part. The country is divisible by the Dardanelles and the Bosporus the Sea of Marmara.

Turkey encompasses an area that is approximately equal to the State of Massachusetts in Europe. On the other hand, in Asia Turkey is about the size of Texas. Its interior encompasses a plateau that has no trees, rimmed by mountains. Turkey is a country considered as more prone to earth quake in the world. The climate is moderate in the coastal areas while the temperatures are harsher in the inland region. The people of turkey speak Turkish, and the population as at July 2010 was an estimate of 76.8 million people. The annual population growth rate is an approximate of1.312 percent. The ethnic groups in this country are the Turkish, Kurdish and small, other ethnic groups. It is an Islamic country in terms of religion with 99 percent Muslim and the rest are Christian, Bahai and the Jewish. The languages include Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian and Greek. In terms of health, turkey has an infant mortality rate of 25.78 per 1000, and a life expectancy rate of 71.96years.

Turkey is an immense, middle-income country with comparatively a small number of natural resources. Its financial system is currently in the shift from a high level of reliance on agriculture and profound industry to a more varied economy. This economy has also an increased, large and globalized services region. Turkey has taken several steps to get better its speculations and assets. These are attainable through administrative reform, end to foreign investment transmission, and reinforce intellectual property rights and legislation. On the other hand, a number of challenges involving foreign investments in the republic of Turkey and certain legislation, such as large taxation and continued intellectual property gaps system, restrain investment. Turkey has an amount of bilateral investments and signed tax treaties. These include treaties with United States, which ensures free repatriation of assets in exchangeable currencies and eradicate double levy.

History

The occupation in Turkey, Asia took place in about 1900 B.C by the Hittites, Indo-European, and after the collapse of the Hittite empire's in 1200 B.C.  Lydians and Phrygians inhabited the area. The Persian Empire occupied Turkey in the 6th century B.C. It then gave way to the Roman Empire, and afterwards the Byzantine Empire occupied it. The Ottoman Turks initially appeared in the near the beginning of the 13th century.  The Subjugating Turkish and Mongol occupied the eastern borders of Byzantium making the Christian Balkan states their vassals. They progressively spread throughout the Near East and Balkans, capture Constantinople in 1453 and storming the gates of Vienna two centuries afterward. The Ottoman Empire extended from the Persian Gulf to western Algeria At its height. Lasting for 600 years, the Ottoman Empire was one of the mainly powerful empires in the record of the Mediterranean region. It produced a significant cultural torrent of the Islamic art and design, architecture, as well as the Islamic literature. After the reign of the Sultan Suleyman the magnificent, in the year btw 1494- 1566, the Ottoman Empire started to decline in its political, administrative and its economic growth. 

The Turkish celebrates Mustafa Kermel as the Turkish, world war hero. He led the founding of the republic of Turkey in the year 1923. This happened after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The rise of the national consciousness compelled the empire to let them lead their own states and become independent countries.  After the proclamation of turkey as a republic, there was the abolishment the temporal ruling as well as the religious ruling of the Ottoman Empire. The leaders of the newly formed republic concentrated all their efforts in modernizing and consolidating the power, as well as westernizing what was the empire core. The social, linguistics, political and the economic reforms that run down the generations referred to as the ideological basis of the modern Turkey. After the military coup, in 1960, this ideology got renamed as Kemalism and the reforms referred to as revolutions. These reforms comprises of secularism, statism as well as the strong nationalism. There was the adoption of a degree of westernize culture. The constant validity, relevance and the applicability of Kemalism reforms are the center of lively discussion in Turkey's political life. The verdict of the AKP comes from a traditional custom that face many of the Kemalist principle and motivation in its reform efforts by a longing to attain European Union (EU) contention.

The 1982 constitution that was drafted by the military proclaims that the turkeys system of governance is a democratic, parliamentary and secular. The president’s powers are not defined by his practical actions but by his political support as well as his personality. The executive powers distributed equally among the council members, the prime misters and the president. The current president election was by the parliament in the year 2007 and was to serve a 7-year term. The prime ministers are the ones supposed to administer the government.  The prime minister and the council of ministers are the ones who run the parliament. The parliament that constitute of 550 members and this parliament are responsible to carry out legislative functions.

Major problems the country is facing, which can be women rights and poverty.

In spite of the gradual expansion of the Turkish economy, there is growing poverty in the country. In 2003, the number of people living below the poverty line has exceeded 20 million. This close to a third of the population and it is an increase of 5 percent from the previous years. Poverty rate in the households has reached a percentage of 23, with increase percentage of 4.3. Though the rural poverty has substantially declined in the past few years, there are disparities of income and the poverty levels in the country. In the rural areas, the family sizes are enormous, and the adult literacy level is also low. There are few medical facilities, and the agricultural production per capita is lower in this region. Fewer women work compared to men. In Turkey, there are currently more people living in poverty than those living in urban. There is an average of 35 percent of poverty rate of the household in the rural compared to the 22 percent of households living in the urban areas.

Poverty is highly felt in the remote, mountainous areas. This is where most of the poor live and they are economically, socially, intellectually isolated from the other groups of people. This place includes the eastern areas and the southern areas of Anatolia, as well as the other parts of the coastal regions on the black sea. The total income in these areas is lower than 40 percent of the total income of the nation. The poorest people in turkey are self-employed, and they include unpaid family workers. They include small-scale family workers and other disadvantaged young people. The characteristic of the poor people living in these remote areas is that they have immense families and small income. They experience long-term environmental problems that are associated with over grazing and soil erosion.  They lack proper infrastructure for instance roads and means for accessing the market. Their cash flow is exceedingly limited. They lack effective safety and health equipments, as well as the best welfare safety systems.

The challenges facing the Kurdish women that come from southeastern region of Turkey are highly different. First, traditional Kurdish culture is patriarchal, with a woman’s strengths within the family set up secured firmly underneath that of a man. This devaluation  and depreciation of women, and a conventional, Islamic way of life, results in tribulations such as domestic aggression, honor killings and a lack of enlightening opportunities accorded to the women in  society. Second because of poverty in the region, women face a paramount economic constrains. The southeastern area of Turkey is the poorest region in the country. Women in Turkey face massive economic constraints, exaggerated by their lack of financial independence from their men. Thirdly, as a result of the war that engrafted the region from 1984 to 1999 and with irregular outbursts of disagreement ever since, the area engulfed in a war. This war has imposed countless costs on the women of the region. For instance, this war has caused the damage of their homes, death of husbands and sons leaving the women without income.

Others include direct violence by the PKK or Turkish army. Majority of the women of Turkey were enforced to leave their homes and relocate to large cities such as Diyarbakir, without the family ties upon which conventional Kurdish villages are set. The restriction of the Kurdish language and the means of communication have profoundly affected the women. The women unlike the men were not allowed to learn Turkish yet the rules of the country stipulate that one have to know Turkish to be employed. Unlike Kurdish men learn Turkish during their service training, Kurdish women of rural areas do not speak Turkish, barring them from knowledge, employment and access to public service. In short, the necessary change in the area requires reforms of paradigm regard on women’s rights from the female Kurdish society itself. The background of women’s rights in the West has established the primacy of such internal transformation to achieving gender equality.