Turkey is a country straddling Europe and Asia, with a population of 88m, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003. It is a NATO member with the alliance's largest army in Europe after Ukraine, fielding some 400,000 active troops. Some 15m of its citizens are Kurds.
More than 62m visitors came to Turkey in 2024, and tourism receipts account for 12% of GDP. The all-inclusive resort model is the basis of the sun, sea and sand tourism that forms a major part of the industry. Antalya is the biggest hub for all-inclusive hotels and on its own accounted for more than a quarter of the country's visitor arrivals in 2024. Turks suffering from the cost-of-living crisis have increasingly been choosing to holiday on Greece's Aegean Islands, which opened a visa-on-arrival programme in 2024, where euro-zone prices can be cheaper than those at home.
In 2024 Turkey's total fertility rate fell to 1.48, well below the replacement level of about 2.1. The UN had thought Turkey's fertility rate would not fall so low until at least the year 2100. See global population decline.
Turkey has the lowest female labour-force participation rate in the OECD. Turkey's state religious authority oversees 90,000 mosques across the country.
Turkey spent $24bn on defence in 2024, equivalent to 2.1% of GDP—roughly a quarter of Germany's outlay. Over the past five years Turkish arms exports have shot up from nearly $2bn to over $7bn a year, driven by efforts to achieve strategic autonomy pushed in part by a civilian-run Defence Industry Agency. Turkey is around 11th in the league table of arms exporters, with some analysts saying it could reach fifth.
The breadth of Turkey's range is striking: armoured vehicles (including the K2-based Altay tank), artillery, missiles, air-defence systems, radars, warships (the MILGEM family of frigates and destroyers), the Hurjet light attack/trainer aircraft, the ATAK helicopter, armed drones and electronic-warfare systems. Turkish weapons are battle-proven through its conflict with the Kurds and its interventions in Syria and Libya, are built to NATO standards, are affordable and come with a no-strings-attached sales policy.
Baykar is a leading dronemaker. More than 500 of its TB2 fixed-wing drones have been sold to over 30 countries. Saudi Arabia has a $3bn deal to co-produce the more advanced Bayraktar Akinci. Baykar has a joint venture with Leonardo, an Italian defence firm, which is eyeing the stealthy Kizilelma fighter drone as a "loyal wingman" to fly alongside the planned sixth-generation GCAP fighters being built by Britain, Italy and Japan.
Turkey also has an ambitious fifth-generation fighter programme, the TAI Kaan. As well as replacing Turkish Air Force F-16s, it will compete for export orders as a low-cost F-35 alternative, with potential interest from Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Turkey is still excluded from major Western joint projects such as the F-35.
Recent deals include a $1.6bn co-production agreement with Spain for up to 30 Hurjets, 1,059 Otokar Cobra-II armoured vehicles to Romania worth approximately $930m, and a $134m contract with Portugal for naval-replenishment ships. In 2024 Germany invited Turkey to join the European Sky Shield Initiative, a European plan to jointly procure air-defence and missile-defence systems for which Israel is also an important supplier. Erdogan likes the diplomatic influence that comes with arms sales to Africa and the Middle East, but Turkish firms are increasingly looking to European countries with their bigger budgets. Turkey has become an important defence partner for Pakistan, particularly as a supplier of drones. Turkey has the industrial base to meet at least some of Europe's demand for ammunition.
In 2015 Turkey shot down a stray Russian jet near its border with Syria, an example often cited by advocates of a stronger response to Russian airspace violations in Europe.
Turkey's EU accession talks began in 2005 but stalled almost immediately. In 2016, at the height of Europe's refugee crisis, the EU agreed to pay Turkey billions of euros to keep millions of Syrians and Afghans on its side of the Aegean. Turkey held up Finland's and Sweden's accession to NATO, and blocked NATO defence plans for Poland and the Baltics.
On key democratic indicators—civil liberties, the rule of law and press freedoms—Turkey has been moving further from European norms. Germany held up the sale of Eurofighter Typhoon jets to Turkey in protest at the crackdown but backtracked in late July 2025. In March 2025 Turkey arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition's leading presidential candidate, and dozens of his associates. Hundreds of thousands of young Turks took to the streets, in the biggest protests Turkey had seen for more than a decade; many were detained. The CHP came ahead of AK in the 2024 local elections for the first time in two decades. The CHP, Turkey's oldest party, is led by Ozgur Ozel and has drawn energy from Gen Z protesters. On October 24th 2025 a court in Ankara threw out a lawsuit that could have ousted Mr Ozel and replaced him with a trustee—widely seen as a government-backed ploy—but the crackdown continued. On October 27th the authorities issued new espionage warrants against Imamoglu and arrested the editor of a pro-opposition television network; a state trustee was appointed as the station's new boss. Mansur Yavas, the mayor of Ankara and presumed CHP back-up presidential candidate, is also under investigation. Istanbul, which Imamoglu had run since 2019, accounts for some $400bn in annual GDP—almost a third of Turkey's economy. General elections are scheduled for 2028 but expected to take place earlier. Dozens of mayors from the HDP (now the DEM Party) have been dismissed and replaced with state-appointed figures. Rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, including an order to release two former HDP co-chairs, Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas, remain unheeded. Besides Imamoglu, the former CHP mayor of Izmir and the CHP mayors of Adana and Antalya—three more of the country's six biggest cities—have been detained. Those aged 18-29 make up almost a quarter of the electorate, and polls show only about 11% are willing to vote for Erdogan's AK party.
In September 2025 the government seized control of Can Holding, a conglomerate that includes television stations, accusing it of tax evasion and money-laundering. See press freedom.
For more than four decades Turkey fought the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), a conflict that claimed 40,000 lives and cost Turkey some $1.8trn, according to the country's finance minister. In February 2025 Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's jailed leader, called for the group to disband after months of secret negotiations with Turkey. On May 12th 2025 the PKK said it would comply. Turkish drones had battered the PKK in northern Iraq in recent years, weakening it militarily. Erdogan wants to expand Turkey's influence in post-Assad Syria, and a dialogue with the PKK could win him favour with Syrian Kurds and woo them away from Israel, which has tried to court the Kurds and other minority groups. Hakan Fidan, Turkey's foreign minister, warned that the alternative in Syria is "internal strife that would threaten Turkey's stability". Erdogan also wants the support of Kurdish MPs in Turkey, amid talk that he may seek to change the constitution and allow himself to run again in the next presidential election, set for 2028. Short of the votes he needs to bring elections forward or to approve a new constitution that would reset his term limits, he may offer the Kurds concessions in order to win over DEM while dismantling the rest of the opposition.
The most recent previous peace process, which included a two-year truce, collapsed in 2015 partly because Erdogan's party lost its majority in a general election. Since 2016 hundreds of members of Turkey's biggest Kurdish party, the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), have been arrested or removed from office. Sceptics worry the latest effort could be similarly short-lived. But this time Erdogan's nationalist coalition partners urged the negotiations with Ocalan in the first place, and Syria is no longer a point of disagreement. On July 11th 2025 PKK fighters began burning their weapons in northern Iraq; a parliamentary commission in Turkey, established at the CHP's urging, is overseeing the disarmament. It convened for the first time on August 5th 2025.
Israel's hostility to Turkey's growing military presence in Syria, including air raids on Syrian bases slated to come under Turkish control, has helped push the peace process forward. Many Turkish policymakers fear Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, will try to use the PKK and its offshoots as proxies against Turkey. In a Pew survey a plurality of Turks (43%) identified Israel as the biggest threat to their country; America came in at 30%, Russia at 2%.
Turkey remains one of the world's top textile suppliers, but the sector is in deep trouble. Its share of the global market has dwindled below 3%, the lowest in more than three decades. Exports have fallen for three consecutive years, from a peak of $22bn in 2022 to a projected $17bn in 2025, a drop of 23%. More than 310,000 textile and apparel workers have been laid off; some 6,000 businesses have closed. Hundreds more have relocated, mostly to Egypt.
High borrowing rates and an overvalued currency have pushed up labour and production costs. Between the start of 2022 and late 2025, Turkey's minimum wage rose from $383 to $620 in dollar terms, an increase of more than 60%. Turkish garments were traditionally pricier than those from China or India but made up for it with superior quality. That formula no longer fits when the price difference is 50% rather than the 15-20% European customers once tolerated. Exports to the EU from China surged by 20% in the first half of 2025, partly owing to trade diversion from higher American tariffs.
Parts of the sector had come to rely on migrant and refugee labour. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Syrians, many underpaid, are thought to have found work in Turkish workshops and factories. Since the end of Syria's civil war and the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, as many as 20% have returned home. Young Turks increasingly prefer desk jobs to factory work, making labour both expensive and scarce. Turkish brands LC Waikiki and Eroglu have moved some production abroad to Egypt. Bursa, the former Ottoman capital and a key stop on the Silk Road, remains the industry's historic hub; Koza Han, a caravanserai for silk merchants built by Sultan Bayezid II in the late 15th century, survives to this day.
Turkey's Super Lig has been luring high-profile European footballers, aided by a tax exemption under which foreign players pay a flat 20% rather than the normal progressive rates. The weak lira—which fell from ten to the euro in 2021 to almost 40 in 2024—helped Istanbul's biggest clubs (Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş) inflate away domestic debt and costs. In euro terms, Turkish clubs' debts fell by 19% between 2019 and 2023, while those of European teams rose by 40% on average. Euro revenues from European competitions (Galatasaray earned an estimated €32m from the Champions League in 2023-24) gave the clubs hard currency to spend on talent. In 2025 Galatasaray signed Victor Osimhen from Napoli for €75m, the biggest transfer in Turkish football history.
In November 2025 an audit by TFF, the country's football federation, revealed evidence of widespread sports gambling by referees. At least 371 of the 571 referees in Turkey's professional leagues had accounts with betting websites; one had placed more than 18,000 bets. The TFF banned 149 referees and 1,024 players suspected of betting on matches. Police detained at least 19 people, including the chairman of Eyupspor, a top-league team. The TFF's president, Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu, led the crackdown—though he has his own history of dust-ups: a decade ago he had referees locked in a room in a club stadium during a game; they were released only after a phone call from Erdogan. José Mourinho, who coached Fenerbahçe during the 2024-25 season, said he would not have taken the job had he known the state of officiating.
High fuel prices and an extortionate consumption tax of up to 220% on conventional vehicles have driven up demand for EVs. Over 100,000 fully electric cars were sold in Turkey in the seven months to July 2025, an increase of 147% on the same period in 2024. EV sales more than tripled in the past year, and EVs now account for 27% of all cars sold, making Turkey the fourth-largest European EV market. Purchasers of EVs typically pay a tax of only 10%, compared with between 45% and 220% for petrol-powered vehicles. Turkey's domestic EV maker, TOGG, one of Erdogan's flagship projects, has outsold every other EV brand at home since its launch in 2023, partly thanks to government support. A wave of cheap Chinese-made EVs has also flooded in. Part of the recent surge reflected buyers getting ahead of a planned reduction in the generosity of the tax policy.
To protect TOGG while still attracting investment, Turkey raised tariffs on Chinese cars to 50% in 2024, but exempted BYD and other Chinese carmakers that pledged to invest in Turkey. Chinese EV makers are attracted by Turkey's customs-union agreement with the EU, which allows cars built in Turkey to be exported to the bloc tariff-free. Chinese investments in Turkey amount to only some $5bn in total—lower than in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Iraq. Turkey's rule-of-law record is the biggest brake: regulations and tariff decisions are made overnight without consultations.
Turkey is viewed as the rising star of the south Caucasus. It arms Azerbaijan and has supported its military campaigns. Turkey's border with Armenia has been closed since 1993, but Erdogan ceremoniously received Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan in Istanbul in 2025 as part of normalisation talks. Reopening the border would cement Turkey's role as guarantor of the region's security, but Turkey has been reluctant to do so without Azerbaijan's consent.
On August 8th 2025 Donald Trump brokered a peace declaration between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House, paving the way for Turkey and Armenia to normalise relations. Turkey had made such normalisation conditional on a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia; that obstacle now appears to be gone.
In 2010 Turkey signed a deal for Rosatom, Russia's state-owned nuclear firm, to build and operate four nuclear reactors. The deal deepened Turkey's ties to Russia and may have contributed to Turkey's decision to buy S-400 anti-aircraft missile batteries from Russia, which in turn soured relations with NATO: America halted the sale of F-35 fighters and kicked Turkey out of a programme to help build them. The $25bn nuclear project has been beset by delays and financing problems, partly because of financial sanctions on Russia; Rosatom was reportedly in talks to sell a 49% stake in the plant.
Turkey shares a 534km border with Iran. It opposes any American military intervention there, fearing a war next door that could cause a wave of refugees. In early February 2026 Turkey said it was considering setting up a buffer zone to guard against an influx of Iranian refugees. NATO defences have shot down two Iranian missiles headed for Turkish airspace; Iranian drones have also struck Azerbaijan, with which Turkey has a mutual defence pact. Surging energy prices from the war make it harder for the central bank to bring down inflation, which stood at 31.5% in early 2026. Hakan Fidan, Turkey's foreign minister, pushed the Americans to continue talks with Iran, advising them to "close the files one by one with Iran. Start with nuclear." Erdogan embarked on a tour of the region, meeting the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Turkey's clout has grown steadily since the revolution in Syria at the end of 2024; Donald Trump credits Erdogan with the downfall of the Assad regime. Turkey, along with Qatar, is trying to broker a disarmament agreement for Hamas in Gaza. If America follows the diplomatic route with Iran, Turkey will almost certainly be its main partner; if America attacks, Israel will almost certainly be involved instead.
In the fortnight to March 20th 2026 Turkey sold $8bn-worth of gold to prop up the lira, which had come under pressure from the economic fallout of the Iran war.
Turkey's relations with America have undergone a reboot under Donald Trump's second term. At the NATO summit in The Hague on June 24th 2025, Erdogan announced that Trump was warming to unblocking the sale of F-35 stealth fighters to Turkey, stalled years ago after Erdogan's purchase of an S-400 air-defence system from Russia. Turkish and American officials suggest a solution is only a matter of time.
On March 9th 2026 America reached a settlement with Halkbank, a Turkish bank that American prosecutors had accused of helping Iran dodge sanctions in the 2010s; the bank could have faced fines of billions of dollars, but got away with a slap on the wrist. Days earlier, reportedly at Turkey's urging, Trump shelved a plan to foment an armed Kurdish uprising inside Iran.
In Syria, Trump has largely acceded to Turkey's long-standing demand that American troops withdraw from the north-east. On June 2nd 2025 Tom Barrack, the American ambassador to Turkey, announced that America would close seven of its eight army bases in Syria, leaving just one. America eased sanctions against Syria at Turkey's request and shepherded a $7bn energy deal between Syria and a consortium of American, Qatari and Turkish companies.
Erdogan has also served as a back-channel between America and Iran. In mid-June 2025, as Israeli missiles pounded Iran, Trump was reportedly prepared to send senior officials to Istanbul for talks with the Iranians.
Turkey has said it would participate in a peacekeeping force in Gaza as part of Donald Trump's peace plan. Israel considers Turkey's inclusion a red line because of Turkey's hosting of Hamas leaders and its trade embargo on Israel. Trump, however, has grown closer to Erdogan and is eager to take advantage of his aspirations to be a power in Gaza.
Erdogan has revived a pet project: digging a new canal, known as Kanal Istanbul, to reduce congestion in the Bosporus. A big question is whether it would be subject to the Montreux Convention of 1936, which regulates commercial and military shipping in the Turkish straits. Turkey's closure of its straits to military vessels during the Ukraine war prevented Russia from reinforcing its Black Sea fleet, which Ukraine battered. Some 20% of Russia's crude exports pass through the Turkish straits.
Turkey has provided Ukraine with drones and corvettes, but has refused to apply Western sanctions on Russia, boosting trade with Moscow instead. Turkey is a leading investor in Ukraine. Baykar, Turkey's pioneering drone firm, is building a factory in Kyiv, and other Turkish defence firms are rumoured to be considering joint ventures. In April 2025 Turkey hosted talks with Ukraine, France and Britain about deploying a peacekeeping force in the Black Sea after any ceasefire. Turkey has offered to send troops to Ukraine as part of a broader peacekeeping force.
Presidency: The greased pig in the field game of American politics.