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132-614: The Justice and Development Party ( Turkish : Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi , Turkish pronunciation: [adaːˈlet ve kaɫkɯnˈma paɾtiˈsi] , AK PARTİ ), 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

264-614: A Member of Parliament for Kayseri in 1991 and was re-elected in 1995 , 1999 , 2002 , and 2007 . Initially a member of the Islamist Welfare Party , Gül joined the Virtue Party in 1998 after the former was banned for anti-secular activities. When the party split into hardline Islamist and modernist factions in 2000, Gül joined fellow party member Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in advocating the need for reform and moderation. He ran against serving leader Recai Kutan for

396-557: A presidential system of government and significantly reduced the number of elected local government positions in 2013. Critics have accused the AK Party of having a 'hidden agenda' despite their public endorsement of secularism and the party maintains informal relations and support for the Muslim Brotherhood . Both the party's domestic and foreign policy has been perceived to be Pan-Islamist or Neo-Ottoman , advocating

528-467: A bill restricting alcohol consumption into law despite initially indicating a possible veto, which was seen as a contributing factor to sparking the Gezi Park protests . Other controversies included a law tightening internet regulation in 2013, a law increasing political control over the judiciary in 2014 designed to protect then Prime Minister Erdoğan and others from corruption charges and a law giving

660-553: A boycott of opposition parties in Parliament deadlocked the election process, Gül formally withdrew his candidacy on 6 May 2007. If elected he would be the first president to have been involved with Islamist parties. But a few days later, on 11 May 2007 when he inquired after the alterations to the Turkish constitution which now allowed the people to elect the president directly rather than a parliamentary vote, Gül announced that he

792-503: A constitutional reform package. The reform package was first vetoed by President Sezer . Then he applied to the Turkish constitutional court about the reform package, because the president is unable to veto amendments for the second time. The court did not find any problems in the package and 69% of the voters supported the constitutional changes. The reforms consisted of: The 2009 Turkish local elections took place in March 2009, during

924-475: A form of consonant mutation whereby a voiced obstruent, such as /b d dʒ ɡ/ , is devoiced to [p t tʃ k] at the end of a word or before a consonant, but retains its voicing before a vowel. In loan words, the voiced equivalent of /k/ is /g/; in native words, it is /ğ/. This is analogous to languages such as German and Russian , but in the case of Turkish it only applies, as the above examples demonstrate, to stops and affricates, not to fricatives. The spelling

1056-872: A hundred AK Party MPs joined those of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in parliament to prevent the government from allowing the United States to launch a Northern offensive in Iraq from Turkish territory. Later, Erdoğan's ban was lifted with the help of the CHP and Erdoğan became prime minister by being elected to the parliament after a by-election in Siirt . The AK Party has undertaken structural reforms, and during its rule Turkey has seen rapid growth and an end to its three decade long period of high inflation rates. Inflation had fallen to 8.8% by 2004. Influential business publications such as The Economist consider

1188-579: A large collection of loanwords from Arabic and Persian . Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry , was heavily influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters and a great quantity of imported words. The literary and official language during the Ottoman Empire period ( c.  1299 –1922) is termed Ottoman Turkish , which was a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic that differed considerably and

1320-477: A large number of people joined a political party for the first time, such as Ali Babacan , Nimet Baş , Egemen Bağış and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu . Controversies over whether the party remains committed to secular principles enshrined in the Turkish constitution have dominated Turkish politics since 2002. Turkey's constitution established the country as a secular state and prohibits any political parties that promote Islamism or shariah law . Since coming to power,

1452-469: A leading intellectual, voicing his concern that Turkish language has "already started to take over the national and natural dialects of Azerbaijan". However, the presence of Turkish as foreign language is not as high as Russian. In Uzbekistan, the second most populated Turkic country, a new TV channel Foreign Languages TV was established in 2022. This channel has been broadcasting Turkish lessons along with English, French, German and Russian lessons. Turkish

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1584-584: A multitude of Turkish companies and authorities investing there, while the influence of Turkey in the country is very high. The rising presence of this very similar language in Azerbaijan and the fact that many children use Turkish words instead of Azerbaijani words due to satellite TV has caused concern that the distinctive features of the language will be eroded. Many bookstores sell books in Turkish language along Azerbaijani language ones, with Agalar Mahmadov,

1716-415: A negative suffix -me to the verb (the suffix comes after the stem but before the tense): Necla okula gitmedi ('Necla did not go to school'). In the case of a verbal sentence, an interrogative clitic mi is added after the verb and stands alone, for example Necla okula gitti mi? ('Did Necla go to school?'). In the case of a nominal sentence, then mi comes after the predicate but before

1848-441: A repressive climate for LGBT rights in Turkey under the AK Party. In 2002 before his election, Erdoğan said that "homosexuals must be legally protected within the framework of their rights and freedoms." In 2011, AK Party Minister for Families and Social Policy Fatma Şahin said the AK Party government would be willing to work with LGBT rights groups to advance laws protecting Turkey's gay community. However, commentators have argued

1980-403: A research motion in the parliament of Turkey on having a parliamentary debate regarding LGBT rights. During the latter debate, AK Party MP Türkan Dağoğlu stated "Homosexuality is an abnormality. Same-sex marriages may not be allowed. It would cause social deterioration"; this prompted criticism from some opposition politicians. In 2017, Erdogan stated that the principle of LGBT rights was "against

2112-438: A revival of Ottoman culture often at the expense of secular republican principles, while increasing regional presence in former Ottoman territories . The AK Party has been criticized for supporting a wide-scale purge of thousands of academics after the failed coup attempt in 2016. Primary, lower secondary and secondary school students were forced to spend the first day of school after the failed coup d'état watching videos about

2244-427: A series of oppositions and criticism from the opposition parties and their supporters, fearing the measure would give more unchecked power to the current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , who has drawn fierce criticisms both from home and abroad for his active role in the election, abandoning the traditional presidential role of maintaining a more neutral and impartial position in elections by his predecessors in

2376-613: A strong T–V distinction which distinguishes varying levels of politeness, social distance , age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of the Turkic family. Other members include Azerbaijani , spoken in Azerbaijan and north-west Iran , Gagauz of Gagauzia , Qashqai of south Iran and

2508-472: A strong base of support among people from the conservative tradition of Turkey, though the party strongly denies it is Islamist . The party positioned itself as pro-liberal market economy, supporting Turkish membership in the European Union . Orange is the party's main colour. Other colours include white for the logo, blue for the flag, and orange-white-blue-red for the corporate design. The AK Party

2640-493: A sweeping victory in the 2002 elections , which saw every party previously represented in the Grand National Assembly ejected from the chamber. In the process, it won a two-thirds majority of seats, becoming the first Turkish party in 11 years to win an outright majority. Erdoğan, as the leader of the biggest party in parliament, would have been normally given the task to form a cabinet. However, according to

2772-654: A vast geographical region stretching from Siberia all the way to Europe and the Mediterranean . The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks , in particular, brought their language, Oghuz —the direct ancestor of today's Turkish language—into Anatolia during the 11th century. Also during the 11th century, an early linguist of the Turkic languages, Mahmud al-Kashgari from the Kara-Khanid Khanate , published

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2904-407: A verb in the form of the copula ol or y (variants of "be"). Examples of both are given below: The two groups of sentences have different ways of forming negation. A nominal sentence can be negated with the addition of the word değil . For example, the sentence above would become Necla öğretmen değil ('Necla is not a teacher'). However, the verbal sentence requires the addition of

3036-404: A watered down, not a closely integrated EU. The AK Party withdrew from AECR in 2018. From 2002 to 2011 the party passed series of reforms to increase accessibility to healthcare and housing, distribute food subsidies, increased funding for students, improved infrastructure in poorer districts, and improved rights for religious and ethnic minorities. AK Party is also widely accredited for overcoming

3168-655: Is a Turkish politician who served as the 11th president of Turkey from 2007 to 2014. He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002 to 2003, and concurrently served as both Deputy Prime Minister and as Foreign Minister between 2003 and 2007. He is currently a member of the Advisory Panel for the President of the Islamic Development Bank . Advocating staunch Islamist political views during his university years, Gül became

3300-492: Is also accredited for bringing the Turkish military under civilian rule, a paradigm shift for a country that had experienced constant military meddling for almost a century. More recently, nationwide protests broke out against the alleged authoritarianism of the AK Party in 2013, with the party's perceived heavy-handed response receiving western condemnation and stalling the party's once championed EU accession negotiations. In addition to its alleged attempts to promote Islamism,

3432-477: Is based on the dialect of Istanbul . This Istanbul Turkish ( İstanbul Türkçesi ) constitutes the model of written and spoken Turkish, as recommended by Ziya Gökalp , Ömer Seyfettin and others. Dialectal variation persists, in spite of the levelling influence of the standard used in mass media and in the Turkish education system since the 1930s. Academic researchers from Turkey often refer to Turkish dialects as ağız or şive , leading to an ambiguity with

3564-412: Is being used. These characterizations do not reflect the truth, and they sadden us." Çelik added, "The AK Party is a conservative democratic party. The AK Party's conservatism is limited to moral and social issues." Also in a separate speech made in 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated, "We are not an Islamic party, and we also refuse labels such as Muslim-democrat." Erdogan went on to say that

3696-551: 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). Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been chairman of the AK Party since the 2017 Party Congress . The AK Party is the largest party in the Grand National Assembly ,

3828-415: Is now used to mean " script " in computer science . Some examples of modern Turkish words and the old loanwords are: Turkish is natively spoken by the Turkish people in Turkey and by the Turkish diaspora in some 30 other countries. The Turkish language is mutually intelligible with Azerbaijani . In particular, Turkish-speaking minorities exist in countries that formerly (in whole or part) belonged to

3960-645: Is the official language of Turkey and is one of the official languages of Cyprus . Turkish has official status in 38 municipalities in Kosovo , including Mamusha, , two in the Republic of North Macedonia and in Kirkuk Governorate in Iraq. Cyprus has requested the European Union to add Turkish as an official language, as it is one of the two official languages of the country. In Turkey,

4092-626: Is the only party in Turkey with a significant presence in all provinces of Turkey . Since the beginning of Turkey's multiparty democracy in 1946 , AK Party is the only party to win seven consecutive parliamentary elections. The AK Party has headed the national government since 2002 under Abdullah Gül (2002–2003), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2003–2014), Ahmet Davutoğlu (2014–2016), Binali Yıldırım (2016–2018) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2018–present). The AK Party's rule has been marked with increasing authoritarianism , expansionism , censorship and banning of other political parties and dissent. The party

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4224-642: Is usually made to match the sound. However, in a few cases, such as ad 'name' (dative ada ), the underlying form is retained in the spelling (cf. at 'horse', dative ata ). Other exceptions are od 'fire' vs. ot 'herb', sac 'sheet metal', saç 'hair'. Most loanwords, such as kitap above, are spelled as pronounced, but a few such as hac 'hajj', şad 'happy', and yad 'strange' or 'stranger' also show their underlying forms. Native nouns of two or more syllables that end in /k/ in dictionary form are nearly all /ğ/ in underlying form. However, most verbs and monosyllabic nouns are underlyingly /k/. The vowels of

4356-431: Is usually referred to as yumuşak g ("soft g"), written ⟨ğ⟩ in Turkish orthography , represents a vowel sequence or a rather weak bilabial approximant between rounded vowels, a weak palatal approximant between unrounded front vowels, and a vowel sequence elsewhere. It never occurs at the beginning of a word or a syllable, but always follows a vowel. When word-final or preceding another consonant, it lengthens

4488-566: The 2001 Turkish economic crisis by following International Monetary Fund guidelines, as well as successfully weathering the 2007–2008 financial crisis . From 2002 to 2011, the Turkish economy grew on average by 7.5 percent annually, thanks to lower inflation and interest rates. The government under AK Party also backed extensive privatization programs. In fact, 88% of the privatizations in Turkey were carried out under AK Party rule. The average income in Turkey rose from $ 2,800 U.S. in 2001 to around $ 10,000 U.S. in 2011, higher than income in some of

4620-526: The 2018 Turkish presidential election , initially supported by the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Felicity Party (SP). However, having failed to gain the support of the third major opposition party, namely the Good Party , Gül announced that he had taken his name out of consideration due to the lack of universal opposition-backing. He has since been involved, though not officially, with

4752-813: The Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi ( Justice and Development Party ), a party which billed itself as a moderate conservative party in the European tradition. He was elected once again to represent Kayseri in 2002. An interview he gave in 2002 summarizes his criticisms of the Refah Partisi under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan and his portrayal of the AKP as a moderate party: In the Welfare Party, there were groups demanding sharia rule. Welfare did not represent

4884-713: The Aegean region, with its usage extending to Antalya . The nomadic Yörüks of the Mediterranean Region of Turkey also have their own dialect of Turkish. This group is not to be confused with the Yuruk nomads of Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, who speak Balkan Gagauz Turkish . The Meskhetian Turks who live in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia as well as in several Central Asian countries, also speak an Eastern Anatolian dialect of Turkish, originating in

5016-525: The Constitutional Court of Turkey to close down the party on charges of violating the separation of religion and state in Turkey. The closure request failed by only one vote, as only six of the 11 judges ruled in favor, with seven required; however, 10 out of 11 judges agreed that the Justice and Development Party had become "a center for anti-secular activities", leading to a loss of 50% of

5148-687: The Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) of fellow former AKP member Ali Babacan . Gül was born in Kayseri , central Anatolia on 29 October 1949, the 26th anniversary of the establishment of the modern Turkish nation, also known as Republic Day in Turkey. His father is Ahmet Hamdi Gül (1926–2017), a retired air force mechanic whilst his mother is Adviye Satoğlu (born 1931). Gül studied Economics at Istanbul University . During his graduate education, he spent two years (1976–1978) in London and studied at

5280-644: The European People's Party (EPP). However, it left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) in 2013. On 14 April 2007, an estimated 300,000 people marched in Ankara to protest the possible candidacy of Erdoğan in the 2007 presidential election , afraid that if elected as president, he would alter the secular nature of the Turkish state. Erdoğan announced on 24 April 2007 that

5412-466: The Great Recession . After the success of the AK Party in the 2007 general elections, the party saw a decline in the 2009 Turkish local elections . In these elections the AK Party received 39% of the vote, 3% less than in the local elections of 2004. Still, the AK Party remained the dominating party in Turkey. The second party CHP received 23% of the vote and the third party MHP received 16% of

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5544-623: The Islamic Gülen movement . On 25 April 2016, the Turkish Parliament Speaker İsmail Kahraman told a conference of Islamic scholars and writers in Istanbul that "secularism would not have a place in a new constitution”, as Turkey is “a Muslim country and so we should have a religious constitution". (One of the duties of Parliament Speaker is to pen a new draft constitution for Turkey). As of 2023, some sources define

5676-623: The Laz language ). Kastamonu is spoken in Kastamonu and its surrounding areas. Karamanli Turkish is spoken in Greece, where it is called Kαραμανλήδικα . It is the literary standard for the Karamanlides . At least one source claims Turkish consonants are laryngeally-specified three-way fortis-lenis (aspirated/neutral/voiced) like Armenian, although only syllable-finally. The phoneme that

5808-481: The MV Mavi Marmara in 2010, when crewmebers attacked an Israeli naval boarding party, he advocated the complete ending of diplomatic relations with Israel, stating that "Israel will turn into a complete apartheid regime in the next 50 years if it does not allow for the establishment of an independent and proud Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. That is why we are exerting efforts to achieve

5940-555: The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) controversial new powers also in 2014. Gül took a mediating approach during the Gezi Park anti-government protests and government corruption scandals . Since leaving office, Gül has progressively become more publicly critical of his successor, Erdoğan, and the democratic backsliding in Turkey. He was mooted as a potential joint opposition candidate in

6072-773: The Ottoman Empire , such as Iraq, Bulgaria, Cyprus , Greece (primarily in Western Thrace ), the Republic of North Macedonia , Romania, and Serbia. More than two million Turkish speakers live in Germany; and there are significant Turkish-speaking communities in the United States, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Due to the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants in host countries, not all ethnic members of

6204-539: The Trabzon region of northeastern Turkey follows the reduced vowel harmony of Old Anatolian Turkish , with the additional complication of two missing vowels (ü and ı), thus there is no palatal harmony . It is likely that elün meant "your hand" in Old Anatolian. While the 2nd person singular possessive would vary between back and front vowel, -ün or -un, as in elün for "your hand" and kitabun for "your book",

6336-591: The Turkish economic crisis , rising authoritarianism as well as alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis . Soon after the elections, the Turkish government ordered a re-election in Istanbul . The decision led to a downfall on AK Party's popularity and it lost the elections again in June with an even greater margin. The result was seen as a huge blow to Erdoğan, who had once said that if his party 'lost Istanbul, we would lose Turkey.' The opposition's landslide

6468-478: The Turkmen of Turkmenistan . Historically the Turkic family was seen as a branch of the larger Altaic family, including Japanese , Korean , Mongolian and Tungusic , with various other language families proposed for inclusion by linguists. Altaic theory has fallen out of favour since the 1960s, and a majority of linguists now consider Turkic languages to be unrelated to any other language family, though

6600-595: The University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Returning to Turkey in 1978, he became an instructor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Sakarya University while working on his doctoral research on Turkey's economic relations with other Muslim countries. He received his PhD from Istanbul University in 1983. Between 1983 and 1991, he worked at the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia . He

6732-433: The national elections of 2002 , Turkey's chief prosecutor, Sabih Kanadoğlu, asked the Turkish constitutional court to close the Justice and Development Party, which was leading in the polls at that time. The chief prosecutor charged the Justice and Development Party with abusing the law and justice. He based his case on the fact that the party's leader had been banned from political life for reading an Islamist poem, and thus

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6864-610: The 2007 presidential election was announced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan . In 1999, he kept his seat as a member of the Fazilet Partisi (FP, "the Virtue Party ") which was subsequently outlawed by the Constitutional Court for its violation of the Constitution. Its predecessor, the Refah Partisi , was also outlawed by the Constitutional Court for its violation of the Constitution, especially

6996-527: The 29th session of the COMCEC in Istanbul. he said: Islamophobia remains a critical problem, which instigates unsubstantial prejudices against our region and Muslims. Terror plays a role in the persistence of such problems. We have to combat any form of deviation playing into the hands of people who equate terrorism with Islam, the religion of love, tolerance and conciliation. After the Israeli interdiction on

7128-400: The 550 seat parliament – enough to put the proposals to a referendum. The reform package included a number of issues: such as the right of individuals to appeal to the highest court, the creation of the ombudsman 's office, the possibility to negotiate a nationwide labour contract, positive exceptions for female citizens, the ability of civilian courts to convict members of the military,

7260-494: The AK Party has taken an increasingly hardline stance on LGBT issues since coming to power, which has been characterized variously as part of a general trend towards authoritarianism under the AK Party or as motivated by Islamic and militant nationalist sentiments within the party. In 2012, the AK Party voted against a proposal by the BDP to include legalization of same-sex marriage in the redrafted Turkish constitution and in 2013 blocked

7392-554: The AK Party on trumped up "terrorism charges". These charges have drawn condemnation from many western countries, including from the US State Department, the EU, as well as from international and domestic human rights organisations. The party has also been criticized by Turkish and international LGBT rights groups including KAOS GL for homophobic statements made by some AK Party politicians and for what they argue has become

7524-406: The AK Party's agenda is limited to " conservative democracy ". On the other hand, according to at least one observer ( Mustafa Akyol ), under the AK Party government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , starting in 2007, "hundreds of secularist officers and their civilian allies" were jailed, and by 2012 the "old secularist guard" in positions of authority was replaced by members/supporters of the AK Party and

7656-608: The AK Party's government the most successful in Turkey in decades. In the local elections of 2004, the AK Party won 42% of the votes, making inroads against the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) on the South and West Coasts, and against the Social Democratic People's Party , which is supported by some Kurds in the South-East of Turkey. In January 2005, the AK Party was admitted as an observer member in

7788-550: The AKP won a landslide victory in the 2002 general election while Erdoğan was still banned from office. His government removed Erdoğan's political ban by March 2003, after which Erdoğan became an MP for Siirt in a by-election and took over as prime minister. Gül subsequently served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister until 2007. His subsequent bid for the Presidency drew strong and highly vocal opposition from ardent supporters of secularism in Turkey and

7920-519: The Altaic hypothesis still has a small degree of support from individual linguists. The nineteenth-century Ural-Altaic theory, which grouped Turkish with Finnish , Hungarian and Altaic languages, is considered even less plausible in light of Altaic's rejection. The theory was based mostly on the fact these languages share three features: agglutination , vowel harmony and lack of grammatical gender. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are

8052-558: The Armenian and Turkish parliaments refused to ratify the agreement. In November 2011, President Gül led a state visit to the United Kingdom as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II . The President met political and business leaders, visited the Olympic Park and was guest of honor at a state banquet at Buckingham Palace . In November 2013, Gül called on Muslim countries to fight against what he called Islamophobia during his address at

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8184-527: The Latin alphabet for speakers of eastern dialects. Some immigrants to Turkey from Rumelia speak Rumelian Turkish , which includes the distinct dialects of Ludogorie , Dinler, and Adakale, which show the influence of the theorized Balkan sprachbund . Kıbrıs Türkçesi is the name for Cypriot Turkish and is spoken by the Turkish Cypriots . Edirne is the dialect of Edirne . Ege is spoken in

8316-567: The Latin script, encoded for many of the dialectal variations between Turkish dialects, the modern Latin script fails to do this. Examples of this are the presence of the nasal velar sound [ŋ] in certain eastern dialects of Turkish which was represented by the Ottoman letter /ڭ/ but that was merged into /n/ in the Latin script. Additionally are letters such as /خ/, /ق/, /غ/ which make the sounds [ɣ], [q], and [x], respectively in certain eastern dialects but that are merged into [g], [k], and [h] in western dialects and are therefore defectively represented in

8448-738: The Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Perso-Arabic script -based Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with the Latin script -based Turkish alphabet . Some distinctive characteristics of the Turkish language are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination . The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb . Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender . The language makes usage of honorifics and has

8580-517: The SOV structure has diminished relevance and may vary. The SOV structure may thus be considered a "pragmatic word order" of language, one that does not rely on word order for grammatical purposes. Consider the following simple sentence which demonstrates that the focus in Turkish is on the element that immediately precedes the verb: Ahmet Ahmet yumurta-yı Abdullah G%C3%BCl Abdullah Gül ( / ɡ uː l / ; Turkish: [abduɫˈɫah ˈɟyl] ; born 29 October 1949)

8712-412: The TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka , "political party"—also failed to meet with popular approval ( fırka has been replaced by the French loanword parti ). Some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings; for example betik (originally meaning "book")

8844-418: The Turkish Constitution Article 109 the prime ministers had to be also a representative of the Turkish Parliament. Erdoğan, who was banned from holding any political office after a 1994 incident in which he read a poem deemed pro-Islamist by judges, was therefore not. As a result, Gül became prime minister. It survived the crisis over the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a massive back bench rebellion where over

8976-539: The Turkish language are, in their alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩ , ⟨e⟩ , ⟨ı⟩ , ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨ö⟩ , ⟨u⟩ , ⟨ü⟩ . The Turkish vowel system can be considered as being three-dimensional, where vowels are characterised by how and where they are articulated focusing on three key features: front and back , rounded and unrounded and vowel height . Vowels are classified [±back], [±round] and [±high]. The only diphthongs in

9108-412: The Turkish national legislature, with 267 out of 600 seats, having won 35.6% of votes in the 2023 Turkish parliamentary election . It forms the People's Alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The current parliamentary leader of the AK Party is Abdullah Güler  [ tr ] . Founded in 2001 by members of a number of parties such as FP , ANAP and DYP , the party has

9240-484: The U.S. The AK Party was established by a wide range of politicians of various political parties and a number of new politicians in 2001. The core of the party was formed from the reformist faction of the Islamist Virtue Party , including people such as Abdullah Gül and Bülent Arınç , while a second founding group consisted of members of the social conservative Motherland Party who had been close to Turgut Özal , such as Cemil Çiçek and Abdülkadir Aksu . Historically

9372-421: The US, EU and German authorities while Turkey's prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan made a statement saying "a structure doomed to uncertainty has been overcome". In September 2008 Gül became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia where, in meetings with President Serzh Sarkisian, the two leaders formulated a solution to the tendentious problem of the genocide question, sparking a major debate in Turkey, but both

9504-423: The United States to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice . Prime Minister Erdoğan announced on 24 April 2007 that Gül would be the Justice and Development Party candidate in the 2007 presidential election . Previously, there had been speculation that Erdoğan himself would be the party's candidate, which had provoked substantial opposition from secularists. When

9636-494: The Virtue Party leadership at a time when Erdoğan was banned from holding political office. As the candidate for the modernist camp, he came second with 521 votes while Kutan won 633. He co-founded the moderate Justice and Development Party (AKP) with Erdoğan in 2001 after the Virtue Party was shut down in the same year, while hardline conservative members founded the Felicity Party instead. Gül became prime minister after

9768-493: The adoption of the new Turkish alphabet in 1928, shaped the modern Turkish language spoken today. The TDK became an independent body in 1951, with the lifting of the requirement that it should be presided over by the Minister of Education. This status continued until August 1983, when it was again made into a governmental body in the constitution of 1982 , following the military coup d'état of 1980 . Modern standard Turkish

9900-484: The areas of Kars, Ardahan, and Artvin and sharing similarities with Azerbaijani , the language of Azerbaijan. The Central Anatolia Region speaks Orta Anadolu . Karadeniz , spoken in the Eastern Black Sea Region and represented primarily by the Trabzon dialect, exhibits substratum influence from Greek in phonology and syntax ; it is also known as Laz dialect (not to be confused with

10032-405: The country and its economy would stabilize further "when a prime minister more closely aligned with President Erdoğan takes office". In the general election held on 7 June, the AK Party gained 40.87% of the vote and 258 seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM). Though it still remains the biggest party in Turkey, the AK Party lost its status as

10164-506: The diaspora speak the language with native fluency. In 2005, 93% of the population of Turkey were native speakers of Turkish, about 67 million at the time, with Kurdish languages making up most of the remainder. Azerbaijani language , official in Azerbaijan, is mutually intelligible with Turkish and speakers of both languages can understand them without noticeable difficulty, especially when discussion comes on ordinary, daily language. Turkey has very good relations with Azerbaijan, with

10296-574: The first comprehensive Turkic language dictionary and map of the geographical distribution of Turkic speakers in the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk ( ديوان لغات الترك ). Following the adoption of Islam around the year 950 by the Kara-Khanid Khanate and the Seljuq Turks , who are both regarded as the ethnic and cultural ancestors of the Ottomans , the administrative language of these states acquired

10428-533: The first two rounds, a two-thirds majority of MPs had been required, but in the third round he needed only a simple majority. Gül was sworn in immediately thereafter. The process was a very low-key affair. Gül's swearing-in was not attended by the Chief of the Turkish General Staff and was boycotted by the opposition Republican People's Party ; then the hand-over of power at the presidential palace

10560-412: The formal style of Ottoman Turkish that had been common at the time amongst statesmen and the educated strata of society in the setting of formal speeches and documents. After the language reform, the Turkish education system discontinued the teaching of literary form of Ottoman Turkish and the speaking and writing ability of society atrophied to the point that, in later years, Turkish society would perceive

10692-441: The former territories of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire . However, the party's leadership has also rejected this label. The party's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood has drawn allegations of Islamism . The AK Party favors a strong centralized leadership, having long advocated for a presidential system of government and significantly reduced the number of elected local government positions in 2013. The party

10824-494: The foundation of the modern state of Turkey and the script reform , the Turkish Language Association (TDK) was established in 1932 under the patronage of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk , with the aim of conducting research on Turkish. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a language reform to replace loanwords of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents. By banning

10956-457: The headscarf is a symbol? Even if it were a political symbol, does that give [one the] right to ban it? Could you bring prohibitions to symbols?" These statements led to a joint proposal of the Justice and Development Party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party for changing the constitution and the law to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves at state universities. Soon afterwards, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya , asked

11088-473: The lack of ü vowel in the Trabzon dialect means -un would be used in both of these cases — elun and kitabun . With the exceptions stated below, Turkish words are oxytone (accented on the last syllable). Turkish has two groups of sentences: verbal and nominal sentences. In the case of a verbal sentence, the predicate is a finite verb, while the predicate in nominal sentence will have either no overt verb or

11220-466: The language are found in loanwords and may be categorised as falling diphthongs usually analyzed as a sequence of /j/ and a vowel. The principle of vowel harmony, which permeates Turkish word-formation and suffixation, is due to the natural human tendency towards economy of muscular effort. This principle is expressed in Turkish through three rules: The second and third rules minimize muscular effort during speech. More specifically, they are related to

11352-515: The language on the inscriptions was the Old Turkic language written using the Old Turkic alphabet , which has also been referred to as "Turkic runes" or "runiform" due to a superficial similarity to the Germanic runic alphabets . With the Turkic expansion during Early Middle Ages ( c.  6th –11th centuries), peoples speaking Turkic languages spread across Central Asia , covering

11484-525: The linguistic concept of accent , which is also covered with these words. Several universities, as well as a dedicated work-group of the Turkish Language Association, carry out projects investigating Turkish dialects. As of 2002 work continued on the compilation and publication of their research as a comprehensive dialect- atlas of the Turkish language. Although the Ottoman alphabet, being slightly more phonetically ambiguous than

11616-668: The local values we are now cultivating. The ideology of the party was partially shaped by alien imports. [He was referring to the impact of the Islamist ideology of the Iranian Revolution and Arab states on Welfare's ideology.] Our vision was at odds with the rest of the party. The despotic rule of Erbakan Hoca made it impossible for us to realize our vision under the rubric of the National View. We believe that modernization and being Muslim complement each other. We accept

11748-493: The majority party and the power to form a single-party government. Until then it had held this majority without interruption for 13 years since it had come to power in 2002. In this election, the AK Party was pushing to gain 330 seats in the Grand National Assembly so that it could put a series of constitutional changes to a referendum, one of them was to switch Turkey from the current parliamentary government to an American-style executive presidency government. This pursuit met with

11880-551: The modern values of liberalism, human rights, and market economy. After the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the most votes in the November 2002 general election , Gül was appointed Prime Minister , as AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was still banned from participating in politics. After Gül's government secured legislation allowing Erdoğan's return to politics, the latter took over as prime minister on 14 March 2003. Gül

12012-658: The new EU member states. Other reforms included increasing civilian representation over military in areas of national security, education and media, and grant broadcasting and increased cultural rights to Kurds . On Cyprus, AK Party supported unification of Cyprus , something deeply opposed by the Turkish military . Other AK Party reforms included lifting bans on religious and conservative dress, such as headscarves , in universities and public institutions. AK Party also ended discrimination against students from religious high schools, who previously had to meet additional criteria in areas of education and upon entry to universities. AK Party

12144-596: The office. The result of the Kurdish issues-centered Peoples' Democratic Party , HDP, breaking through the 10% threshold to achieve 13.12% out of the total votes cast and gaining 80 seats in the Grand National Assembly in the election, which caused the AK Party to lose its parliamentary majority. In the 2019 local elections , the ruling party AK Party lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in 15 years, as well as five of Turkey's six largest cities. The loss has been widely attributed to AK Party's mismanagement of

12276-472: The only Turkish province where the Alevi form a majority. Abdullah Gül was elected as the President in late August with 339 votes in the third round – the first at which a simple majority is required – after deadlock in the first two rounds, in which a two-thirds majority was needed. After the opposition parties deadlocked the 2007 presidential election by boycotting the parliament, the ruling AK Party proposed

12408-414: The parties in parliament to agree on the next Turkish president. The opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary vote and deadlocked the election process. At the same time, Erdoğan claimed the failure to elect a president was a failure of the Turkish political system and proposed to modify the constitution. The AK Party achieved a significant victory in the rescheduled 22 July 2007 elections with 46.6% of

12540-533: The party as being "rooted in political Islam" and an "Islamist-rooted party". In recent years, the ideology of the party has shifted more towards Turkish nationalism , causing liberals such as Ali Babacan and some conservatives such as Ahmet Davutoğlu and Abdullah Gül to leave the party. Several writers have also labelled the party as being right-wing populist since 2007. The party's foreign policy has also been widely described as Neo-Ottomanist , an ideology that promotes renewed Turkish political engagement in

12672-462: The party had decided to nominate Abdullah Gül as the AK Party candidate in the presidential election. The protests continued over the next several weeks, with over one million reported at an 29 April rally in Istanbul, tens of thousands reported at separate protests on 4 May in Manisa and Çanakkale , and one million in İzmir on 13 May. Early parliamentary elections were called after the failure of

12804-454: The party had no standing in elections. The European Commission had previously criticized Turkey for banning the party's leader from participating in elections. The party again faced a closure trial in 2008 brought about by the lifting of a long-standing university ban on headscarves. At an international press conference in Spain, Erdoğan answered a question of a journalist by saying, "What if

12936-455: The party has brought about tighter regulations on abortion and higher taxes on alcohol consumption , leading to allegations that it is covertly undermining Turkish secularism. Some activists, commentators, opponents and government officials have accused the party of Islamism. The Justice and Development Party has faced two "closure cases" (attempts to officially ban the party, usually for Islamist practices) in 2002 and 2008. Just 10 days before

13068-406: The party is accused by some of restricting some civil liberties and internet use in Turkey, having temporarily blocked access to Twitter and YouTube in March 2014. Especially after the government corruption scandal involving several AKP ministers in 2013, the party has been increasingly accused of crony capitalism . The AK Party favors a strong centralized leadership, having long advocated for

13200-526: The party is described as an Islamist party in some media, party officials reject those claims. According to former minister Hüseyin Çelik , "In the Western press, when the AK Party administration – the ruling party of the Turkish Republic – is being named, most of the time 'Islamic,' 'Islamist,' 'mildly Islamist,' 'Islamic-oriented,' 'Islamic-based' or 'with an Islamic agenda,' and similar language

13332-419: The party outpolling the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in traditional Kurdish strongholds such as Van and Mardin , as well as outpolling the secular-left CHP in traditionally secular areas such as Antalya and Artvin . Overall, the AK Party secured a plurality of votes in 68 of Turkey's 81 provinces, with its strongest vote of 71% coming from Bingöl . Its weakest vote, a mere 12%, came from Tunceli ,

13464-550: The party was described as liberal conservative , conservative liberal , economically liberal , pro-European , and center-right . Some members of the True Path Party , such as Hüseyin Çelik and Köksal Toptan , joined the AK Party. Some members, such as Kürşad Tüzmen or Ertuğrul Günay , had nationalist or center-left backgrounds respectively, while representatives of the nascent, more clearly anti-capitalist 'Muslim left' current were largely excluded. In addition,

13596-489: The personal ending, so for example Necla, siz öğretmen misiniz ? ('Necla, are you [formal, plural] a teacher?'). Word order in simple Turkish sentences is generally subject–object–verb , as in Korean and Latin , but unlike English, for verbal sentences and subject-predicate for nominal sentences. However, as Turkish possesses a case-marking system, and most grammatical relations are shown using morphological markers, often

13728-435: The phenomenon of labial assimilation: if the lips are rounded (a process that requires muscular effort) for the first vowel they may stay rounded for subsequent vowels. If they are unrounded for the first vowel, the speaker does not make the additional muscular effort to round them subsequently. Grammatical affixes have "a chameleon-like quality", and obey one of the following patterns of vowel harmony: Practically,

13860-638: The preceding vowel. In native Turkic words, the sounds [c] , [ɟ] , and [l] are mainly in complementary distribution with [k] , [ɡ] , and [ɫ] ; the former set occurs adjacent to front vowels and the latter adjacent to back vowels. The distribution of these phonemes is often unpredictable, however, in foreign borrowings and proper nouns. In such words, [c] , [ɟ] , and [l] often occur with back vowels: some examples are given below. However, there are minimal pairs that distinguish between these sounds, such as kar [kɑɾ] "snow" vs kâr [cɑɾ] "profit". Turkish orthography reflects final-obstruent devoicing ,

13992-421: The principle of Turkey's policy of secularism. Political scientist Mine Eder has argued that Turkey has experienced a backslide on acceptance and government anti-discrimination support for homosexuals under Erdogan. Turkish language To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish —the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire —spread as

14124-578: The principle of secularism. By this time, Gül had apparently moderated his views and was reportedly considered to be part of the Virtue Party's reformist faction. Since 1993 in Ankara, he had been organizing an informal think-tank involving a group of Refah politicians who were discontented with the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan: these included Melih Gökçek, Bülent Arınç, Abdüllatif Şener, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Beşir Atalay. In August 2001, this group founded

14256-440: The principles of i-type vowel harmony in practice: Türkiye' dir ("it is Turkey"), kapı dır ("it is the door"), but gün dür ("it is the day"), palto dur ("it is the coat"). These are four word-classes that are exceptions to the rules of vowel harmony: The road sign in the photograph above illustrates several of these features: The rules of vowel harmony may vary by regional dialect. The dialect of Turkish spoken in

14388-543: The regulatory body for Turkish is the Turkish Language Association ( Türk Dil Kurumu or TDK), which was founded in 1932 under the name Türk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti ("Society for Research on the Turkish Language"). The Turkish Language Association was influenced by the ideology of linguistic purism : indeed one of its primary tasks was the replacement of loanwords and of foreign grammatical constructions with equivalents of Turkish origin. These changes, together with

14520-428: The results of the language reform. Owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the older terms of Arabic or Persian origin, the younger generations favor new expressions. It is considered particularly ironic that Atatürk himself, in his lengthy speech to the new Parliament in 1927, used

14652-626: The right of civil servants to go on strike, a privacy law, and the structure of the Constitutional Court. The referendum was agreed by a majority of 58%. In the presidential election of 2014 , the AK Party's long time leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected president. In the party's first extraordinary congress , former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was unanimously elected unopposed as party leader and took over as prime minister on 28 August 2014. Davutoğlu stepped down as prime minister on 4 May 2016 following policy disagreements with President Erdoğan. Presidential aide Cemil Ertem said to Turkish TV that

14784-503: The speech to be so alien to listeners that it had to be "translated" three times into modern Turkish: first in 1963, again in 1986, and most recently in 1995. The past few decades have seen the continuing work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language, mostly from English. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance. However,

14916-405: The state funding for the party. The party has won pluralities in the seven most recent legislative elections, those of 2002 , 2007 , 2011 , June 2015 , November 2015 , 2018 and 2023 . The party held a majority of seats for 13 years, but lost it in June 2015, only to regain it in the snap election of November 2015 but then lose it again in 2018. Its past electoral success has been mirrored in

15048-419: The three local elections held since the party's establishment, coming first in 2004 , 2009 and 2014 respectively. However, the party lost most of Turkey's biggest cities including Istanbul and Ankara in 2019 local elections , which has been attributed to the Turkish economic crisis , accusations of authoritarianism, as well as alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis . The AK Party won

15180-568: The three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia . Erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan , these date back to the Second Turkic Khaganate (dated 682–744 CE). After the discovery and excavation of these monuments and associated stone slabs by Russian archaeologists in the wider area surrounding the Orkhon Valley between 1889 and 1893, it became established that

15312-432: The twofold pattern (also referred to as the e-type vowel harmony) means that in the environment where the vowel in the word stem is formed in the front of the mouth, the suffix will take the e-form, while if it is formed in the back it will take the a-form. The fourfold pattern (also called the i-type) accounts for rounding as well as for front/back. The following examples, based on the copula -dir ("[it] is"), illustrate

15444-410: The usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred foreign words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, it also opted for reviving Old Turkish words which had not been used for centuries. In 1935, the TDK published a bilingual Ottoman-Turkish /Pure Turkish dictionary that documents

15576-514: The values of our nation" and in 2020 endorsed controversial anti-gay statements made by Muslim scholar Ali Erbaş which had received condemnation from some Turkish lawyers and human rights groups. In 2021, AK Party vice chairman and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu declared LGBT people to be "perverts." Turkish constitutional law experts Sule Ozsoy Boyunsuz and Serkan Koybasi have described public statements on gay people made by AK Party politicians as both constituting as hate speech and contradicting

15708-406: The vote, translating into control of 341 of the 550 available parliamentary seats. Although the AK Party received significantly more votes in 2007 than in 2002, the number of parliamentary seats they controlled decreased due to the rules of the Turkish electoral system . However, they retained a comfortable ruling majority. Nationally, the elections of 2007 saw a major advance for the AK Party, with

15840-474: The vote. The AK Party won in Turkey's largest cities: Ankara and Istanbul . Reforming the Constitution was one of the main pledges of the AK Party during the 2007 election campaign. The main opposition party CHP was not interested in altering the Constitution on a big scale, making it impossible to form a Constitutional Commission ( Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu ). The amendments lacked the two-thirds majority needed to instantly become law, but secured 336 votes in

15972-451: The ‘triumph of democracy’ over the plotters, and listening to speeches equating the civilian counter-coup that aborted the takeover with historic Ottoman victories going back 1000 years. Campaigns have been organised to release higher education personnel and to drop charges against them for peaceful exercise of academic freedom. Imprisonment of political activists continues, while the chair of Amnesty Turkey has been jailed for standing up to

16104-465: Was an observer in the European People's Party between 2005 and 2013. After not being granted full membership in the EPP, the party became a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) from 2013 to 2018. AK Party has dominated Turkish politics since 2002. It is the sixth largest political party in the world by membership and the biggest in the world outside India, China and

16236-536: Was an observer in the centre-right European People's Party between 2005 and 2013 and a member of the Eurosceptic Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) from 2013 to 2018. In 2005, the party was granted observer membership in the European People's Party (EPP). In November 2013, the party left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (now European Conservatives and Reformists Party) instead. This move

16368-460: Was appointed deputy prime minister and foreign minister. After becoming foreign minister in March 2003, Gül became the key player in Turkey's attempts to receive an accession date for the European Union and in its attempts to improve relations with Syria and maintaining its relationship with the Turkic -speaking countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus . On 8 January 2008, Gül flew to

16500-494: Was attributed to the AK Party's disappointment to not to be granted full membership in the EPP, while it was admitted as a full member of the AECR. It drew criticism in both national and European discourses, as the driving force of Turkey's aspirations to become a member of the European Union decided to join a largely eurosceptic alliance, abandoning the more influential pro-European EPP, feeding suspicions that AK Party wants to join

16632-406: Was characterized as the 'beginning of the end' for Erdoğan, with international commentators calling the re-run a huge government miscalculation that can lead to a potential İmamoğlu candidacy in the next scheduled presidential election . It is suspected that the scale of the government's defeat could provoke a cabinet reshuffle and early general elections, currently scheduled for June 2023. Although

16764-505: Was conferred an honorary PhD degree from Amity University, Noida on 8 February 2009, and a LL.D from the University of Dhaka on 13 February 2010. Gül became acquainted with politics early during his high school years. During his university education, he became a member of the Islamist - nationalist Millî Türk Talebe Birliği (National Turkish Students' Union) in the line of Necip Fazıl 's Büyük Doğu ( Grand Orient ) current. He

16896-645: Was elected a member of the Turkish parliament for the Refah Partisi (RP, "the Welfare Party ") from the Kayseri electoral district in 1991 and 1995. During these years, he made statements about the political system of Turkey that was designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish National Movement , which included "This is the end of the republican period" and "The secular system has failed and we definitely want to change it". These statements caused controversy when his candidacy for

17028-501: Was held behind closed doors. Gül's wife was not present. The traditional evening reception hosted by the new president at the presidential palace for the country's highest authorities was announced for 11:30 in the morning and wives were not invited. His presidency was described as a "new era in Turkish politics", for being the first president of Turkey with a background in Islamic politics. Gül received messages of congratulation from

17160-424: Was initially blocked by the Constitutional Court due to concerns over his Islamist political background. He was eventually elected Turkey's first president with a background in Islamic politics after the 2007 snap general election . As president, Gül came under criticism for giving assent to controversial laws which have been regarded by the political opposition as unconstitutional . In June 2013, he signed

17292-483: Was largely unintelligible to the period's everyday Turkish. The everyday Turkish, known as kaba Türkçe or "vulgar Turkish", spoken by the less-educated lower and also rural members of society, contained a higher percentage of native vocabulary and served as basis for the modern Turkish language. While visiting the region between Adıyaman and Adana , Evliya Çelebi recorded the "Turkman language" and compared it with his own Turkish: Reforms Kemalism After

17424-466: Was still intending to run. Following the July 2007 parliamentary election , the AKP renominated Gül as its presidential candidate on 13 August; the election was again held as a vote of parliament. On 14 August, Gül submitted his candidacy application to parliament and expressed his commitment to secularism at a news conference. On 28 August 2007, he was elected president in the third round of voting; in

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