Portal:Turkey
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Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), officially the Republic of Turkiye (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ), is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwestern Asia and the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey borders eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest, Greece to the west, Georgia to the northeast, Armenia, Iran and the Nakhichevan exclave of Azerbaijan to the east, and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. In addition, it borders the Black Sea to the north, the Aegean Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Turkey also contains the Sea of Marmara that is used by geographers to mark the border between Europe and Asia, thus making the country transcontinental. The region comprising modern Turkey has seen the birth of major civilisations including the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Owing to its strategic location at the intersect of two continents, Turkey's culture is a unique blend of Eastern and Western tradition, often described as a bridge between the two civilisations. 
Turkish (Türkçe IPA [ˈt̪yɾkt͡ʃe] ) is a language spoken by 65–73 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey, with smaller ranges in Cyprus, Bulgaria, and other parts of Eastern Europe. Turkish is also spoken by several million immigrants in Western Europe, particularly in Germany. The roots of the language can be traced to Central Asia, with the first written records dating back nearly 1,200 years. To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the immediate precursor of today's Turkish—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the new Turkish Republic, the Ottoman script was replaced with a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. Concurrently, the newly-founded Turkish Language Association initiated a drive to reform the language by removing Persian and Arabic loanwords in favor of native variants and coinages from Turkic roots. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is Subject Object Verb. Turkish has a T-V distinction: second-person plural forms can be used for individuals as a sign of respect. Turkish also has no noun classes or grammatical gender. Recently featured: Walls of Constantinople – Raki (alcoholic beverage) – Turkish literature  Recently featured: The Temple of Athena - Sun setting in Istanbul - View from Mardin Featured at Did you know section at the Wikipedia's Main Page
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Admiral Piri Reis (about 1465 – 1554 or 1555), born Hadji Muhiddin Piri Ibn Hadji Mehmed, was a Turkish admiral(Reis) and cartographer who is the most famous for his highly accurate maps of various regions of the world at that time. His service in the Ottoman navy included the First Battle of Lepanto(Zonchio), the Second Battle of Lepanto, and several successful expeditions against various enemies such as Egypt, Spain, Rhodes, and Portugal. He presented his created maps to Suleiman the Magnificent in book form. Living to the age of 90, he was beheaded in Egypt after refusing to lead another expedition against Portugal. Many examples of his works can be found in many of the world's museums.  Göbekli Tepe (Turkish for "Mountain with a navel") is a hilltop sanctuary built on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge about 15km northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa (Urfa) in southeast Turkey. The site, currently undergoing excavation by German and Turkish archaeologists was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 9th millennium BC (ca 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism. It is currently considered the oldest known shrine or temple complex in the world, and the planet's oldest known example of mounumental architecture. Together with the site of Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionised the understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic. Göbekli Tepe had already been located in a survey in 1964, when the American archaeologist Peter Benedict mentioned the site as a possible location of stone age activity, but its importance was not recognised at that time. Excavations have been conducted since 1994 by the German Archaeological Institute (Istanbul branch)and Şanlıurfa Museum, under the direction of the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt (University of Heidelberg). Scholars from the University of Karlsruhe are documenting the architectural remains. Before then, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation; generations of peasants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles. Much archaeological evidence may have been destroyed in that process. The archaeologists recognised that the prominent rise could not represent a natural hill. Later, they discovered T-shaped pillars, some of which had apparently undergone attempts at smashing.
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