Celtnet Turkish Recipes and Cookery, Home Page

Turkey, officially Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (the Republic of Turkey) is a Parliamentary Republic and represents an Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in western Asia and Thrace (Rumelia) in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Ankara is the capital (and largest city) and Turkish is the official languages, one of only two Semitic languages that uses the Roman alphabet (Maltese being the other). Though not reckoned as officially part of Europe by the United Nations, Turkey does straddle the continents of Europe and Asia, making it truly transcontinental. Due to its strategic location astride two continents, Turkey's culture has a unique blend of Eastern and Western tradition. A powerful regional presence in the Eurasian landmass with strong historic, cultural and economic influence in the area between the European Union in the west and Central Asia in the east, Russia in the north and the Middle East in the south, Turkey has come to acquire increasing strategic significance. Turkey represents one of the world's oldest continually-inhabited regions and the country has a long and very diverse history. The first major empire in the area was that of the Hittites, from the 18th through the 13th century BCE. Subsequently, the Phrygians (also an Indo-European people), achieved ascendancy until their kingdom was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BCE. Starting around 1200 BC, the west coast of Anatolia was settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. The entire area was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th and 5th centuries and later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BCE. By the mid 1st century BCE, however, the entire region had fallen to Rome. In 324 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome (later Constantinople and Istanbul). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it became the capital of the Byzantine Empire. In the 10th century, the Seljuks started migrating from their ancestral homelands towards the eastern regions of Anatolia and they were to settle and conquer the majority of Turkey by the 13th century. However, in 1243 the Seljuk were defeated by the Mongols and this led to an independent Turksish principality governed by Osman I that eventually evolved into the Ottoman Empire which grew to fill the void left by both the Seljuk and the decaying Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire interacted with both Eastern and Western cultures throughout its 623-year history. In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was among the world's most powerful political entities, often locking horns with the Holy Roman Empire in its steady advance towards Central Europe through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Following years of decline, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I through the Ottoman-German Alliance in 1914, and was ultimately defeated. After the war, the victorious Allied Powers sought the dismemberment of the Ottoman state through the Treaty of Sèvres. This eventually led to the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed 'Republic of Turkey'.

Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic and was a charter member of the United Nations in 1945. Turkey is a memer of the: Council of Europe (1949), NATO (1952), OECD (1961), OSCE (1973) and the G20 industrial nations (1999). Turkey began full membership negotiations with the European Union in 2005, having been an associate member of the EEC since 1963, and having reached a customs union agreement in 1995.

Turkish cuisine is the descendant of its Ottoman inheritance and modern Turkish cookery could be described as the fusion of Turkic, Arabic, Greek, Armenian and Persian cuisines. However, though there are a number of what could be considered as national Turkish dishes, in the main Turkish cuisine is not homogeneous. The various regions have their own traditions and specialities with the Mediterranean regions making use of vegetables, herbs and fish whilst Central Anatolia is famous for its pastries and the Black Sea region chisine bing based on corn and anchovies.