Turkey (Türkiye)

Core values & worldview

If you want to understand a Turk, start with how close the country came to not existing. In 1918 the Ottoman Empire was defeated and occupied, and the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 planned to leave the Turks a rump state in the middle of Anatolia. Turks learn at school how Mustafa Kemal and a ragged army turned that around and founded the Republic in 1923.^•

That story produces strong national pride, deep respect for the founder, and what is sometimes called the “Sèvres syndrome”: a wariness that foreign powers still want to divide the country.^•

Family and respect. Family ties are strong and wide. Younger people kiss the hand of an elder and touch it to their forehead, especially at the religious holidays (bayram), and grown children often live near, or with, their parents. Neighbours are part of the extended household.^•

Hospitality. A visitor is treated as Tanrı misafiri, “God’s guest”. You will be offered tea or coffee almost everywhere, from shops to offices, and refusing food at someone’s home is hard. Turkish coffee, UNESCO-listed, comes with a saying: “a cup of coffee is remembered for forty years”.^•

Pride and honour. Many Turks care deeply about the reputation of their family, their town and their nation. Flags hang from balconies; soldiers killed in service are honoured as şehit, martyrs; and slights to the country, its flag or Atatürk are felt personally.^•

Faith, in many shapes. Most Turks are Muslim, mainly Sunni of the Hanafi school, with a large Alevi minority. But the republic’s secular tradition means religion is lived very differently: some pray five times a day and fast at Ramadan, some only go to mosque at bayram, some drink rakı and never pray. Everyday speech is full of religious phrases even among the secular: inşallah (God willing), maşallah (what God has willed, said to ward off envy).^•

Daily life & customs

Tea. Turks are among the biggest tea drinkers in the world. Black tea grown on the Black Sea coast is brewed in a double teapot and served in small tulip-shaped glasses all day long; a çaycı runs glasses round offices and markets.

Food. Breakfast (kahvaltı) at the weekend is a feast. Lunch might be home-style dishes from a lokanta; dinner at home is shared, often with bread on the table at every meal. Each region is proud of its specialities, from Black Sea anchovies to the kebabs of Adana and the baklava of Gaziantep.

Courtesies. Turkish is rich in set phrases for every situation: afiyet olsun (bon appétit), eline sağlık (“health to your hands”, to the cook), kolay gelsin (“may it come easy”, to someone working), geçmiş olsun (“may it pass”, to someone ill or in trouble), and başın sağ olsun to the bereaved.

The calendar. Religious holidays follow the lunar calendar: Ramadan, ending with the three-day Ramazan (or Şeker, “sugar”) Bayramı, when children go door to door for sweets, and Kurban Bayramı, the feast of sacrifice. National days are just as important: 23 April (National Sovereignty and Children’s Day), 19 May (Atatürk and Youth Day), 30 August (Victory Day), 29 October (Republic Day) and the solemn 10 November.^•

Football and television. Football is a passion, and the Istanbul giants Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe and Beşiktaş divide families. Turkish TV series (dizi) are watched obsessively at home and exported across the Middle East, the Balkans and Latin America.

Rites of passage. Weddings are big, loud and long, often with gold pinned on the couple. Boys’ circumcision is celebrated with a party, and military service is compulsory for men, a rite of passage with its own send-off.

Wounds & sensitivities

Being accused, and not heard. Most Turks grew up with an account of 1915 that stresses wartime chaos, Armenian rebellion and the huge losses of Muslims in the same years. Many feel that the world condemns their ancestors while ignoring the millions of Muslims killed or expelled from the Balkans and the Caucasus as the empire shrank. That feeling is real even where it collides with the historical consensus that what happened to the Armenians was genocide.^•

Terrorism and war. Decades of PKK attacks and the army’s war in the south-east, plus bombings by ISIS in 2015–17, killed thousands. For many families the word şehit has a face. For Kurdish families, the burned villages of the 1990s are their own wound.^•

Coups. The coups of 1960, 1980 and 1997, and the night of 15 July 2016, left scars across the political spectrum.^•

The earthquakes. The 6 February 2023 earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey. Almost everyone knows someone affected, and anger at collapsed buildings remains.^•

Europe’s cold shoulder. Turkey has been knocking on Europe’s door since it applied to the EEC in 1987, and membership talks opened in 2005 before stalling. Many Turks feel they are seen as “not European enough”, as Muslims, and resent visa queues and stereotypes.^•

Atatürk. Insulting Atatürk is a crime under a 1951 law, but more importantly it deeply offends many Turks, even those who criticise aspects of his rule.^•

Modern attitudes

A polarised country. For more than twenty years politics has divided around Erdoğan. Roughly half of voters have backed him in election after election, out of gratitude for services, piety and national pride; the other half sees him as a threat to democracy and secular life. In 2024 the opposition CHP won the most votes in local elections, and in 2025 the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu sparked the largest protests in a decade.^•

The cost of living. Since 2018 the lira has lost most of its value and inflation peaked at around 85% in late 2022. Many young, educated Turks talk of emigrating, and a “brain drain” to Europe is a common worry.^•

Religion in public life. The headscarf, once banned in universities and public offices, was allowed again from 2010–13. Religious education and the Diyanet have expanded. Secular Turks fear creeping Islamisation; pious Turks feel they have finally been treated as equals.^•

Women’s rights. Turkish women won the vote in 1934 and many hold senior professional jobs, but violence against women is a major public concern, and Turkey’s 2021 withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on violence against women prompted large protests.^•

Refugees and neighbours. Turkey has hosted more refugees than any other country, mostly Syrians, and resentment of them grew sharply during the economic crisis. Relations with Greece, Cyprus, the EU and the US swing between partnership and anger.^•

Peace with the Kurds? The PKK’s announced dissolution in 2025 and the 2026 reintegration law opened a cautious new chapter.^•

Not all Turks are the same

Turks and citizens of Turkey. Turkey has about 85.7 million people.^•

Not all citizens identify as ethnically Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority, often estimated at 15–20% of the population; many are fully at home in Turkish society, others feel their identity is still not accepted.^• There are also Zazas, Laz on the Black Sea coast, Arabs in the south-east and Hatay, and the descendants of Muslim refugees from the Caucasus (Circassians, Abkhaz, Chechens) and the Balkans (Bosniaks, Albanians, Pomaks), who often keep strong memories of their roots.^•

Alevis. Alevis, perhaps 10–20% of the population by most estimates, follow a heterodox tradition linked to Shia veneration of Ali, with their own prayer houses (cemevi), music and rituals, and generally secular politics. They have suffered massacres, notably the 1993 arson attack in Sivas in which 33 intellectuals and artists and two hotel workers died, and many feel the state’s Sunni-based religious establishment ignores them.^•

Non-Muslims. Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Assyrians were once a large part of the population. After 1915, the population exchange of 1923, a discriminatory wealth tax in 1942 and the anti-Greek riots in Istanbul in September 1955, only small communities remain, mostly in Istanbul.^•

Coast and interior, secular and pious. The Aegean and Mediterranean coasts and big-city districts tend to be more secular and opposition-voting; central Anatolia and the Black Sea are more conservative. Turks used to talk of “White Turks” (an urban, Westernised elite) and “Black Turks” (the pious, provincial majority); Erdoğan proudly counts himself among the latter.^•

The diaspora. About 2.8 million people in Germany had a Turkish migration background in 2018, with large communities in the Netherlands, Austria, France and Belgium as well.^•

At home they are sometimes teased as Almancı, “the Germans”; in Germany they are often seen as Turks. Many feel at home in both and fully accepted in neither.

Meeting someone

Conversation starters

• Food and tea. Ask about their hometown’s speciality, or who makes the best baklava. Accepting a glass of tea is the start of most friendships.
• Football. Ask which team they support, Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş or a local side, and expect strong opinions.
• Their city. Istanbul, the coast, Cappadocia, the Black Sea highlands: Turks love to recommend places.
• TV series and music. Turkish dizi, Sezen Aksu, Tarkan or folk music are easy, warm topics.
• Language. Learning a few phrases, merhaba (hello), teşekkürler (thank you), afiyet olsun, earns real goodwill.

Topics to approach carefully

• 1915. Many Turks will be defensive, and some will be curious or quietly agree it was genocide. Don’t open with it. If it comes up, listen first, be factual and kind, and don’t treat a person as responsible for the state’s position.^•
  • A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility — Taner Akçam, Metropolitan Books (2006)
  • Message of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the events of 1915 (23 April 2014) — Republic of Turkey, Prime Ministry (2014)
• Erdoğan. Don’t assume an educated or Westernised Turk opposes him, or that a religious one supports him. In Turkey, criticising the president has led to prosecutions, so people may be cautious.^•
  • The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey — Soner Cagaptay, I.B. Tauris (2017)
  • Türkiye: Leading Opponent of Erdoğan on Trial — Human Rights Watch (2026)
• Kurds and the PKK. For a Turk who lost a son in the army, or a Kurd whose village was burned, this is personal. Don’t assume which side someone is on.^•
  • The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance — Cengiz Gunes, Routledge (2012)
• Atatürk. Be respectful; jokes about him are not taken lightly.^•
  • Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey — Andrew Mango, John Murray (1999)
• Greece and Cyprus. Old rivalries run deep on both sides, even as Turks and Greeks share food, music and much history.^•
  • Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey — Bruce Clark, Granta (2006)

Common misconceptions

• “Turks are Arabs.” They are not. Turkish is a Turkic language, unrelated to Arabic, written in the Latin alphabet since 1928.^•
  • The Turks in World History — Carter Vaughn Findley, Oxford University Press (2005)
  • Turkey — Encyclopaedia Britannica
• “Turkey is a religious state.” It has been constitutionally secular since 1937, though the role of religion in public life is fiercely debated.^•
  • Turkey: A Modern History (4th edition) — Erik J. Zürcher, I.B. Tauris (2017)
• “All Turkish women wear headscarves,” or “none do.” Both are common sights; many families include women who cover and women who don’t.^•
  • The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey — Soner Cagaptay, I.B. Tauris (2017)
• “The Ottomans were just Turks.” The empire was multi-ethnic and multi-faith, ruled by an elite drawn from many peoples, many of them converts from the Balkans and the Caucasus.^•
  • Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 — Caroline Finkel, John Murray (2005)
  • The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 — Halil İnalcık, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1973)
• “Turkey or Türkiye?” In 2022 the government asked the UN and other countries to use “Türkiye”. Most Turks are relaxed either way, though some appreciate the effort.