| About 1500 BC |
The Hittites, early
inhabitants of Anatolia (now the main area of Turkey), ruled the most
powerful civilization in the Middle East. |
| 546 BC |
The Persian Empire
conquered Anatolia. |
| 331 BC |
Alexander the Great
defeated the Persian Empire and gained control of Anatolia. |
| 63 BC |
Pompey the Great
conquered Anatolia and brought it under Roman control. |
| AD 330 |
Constantine the Great
moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, which he renamed
Constantinople. After the empire was divided later that century,
Anatolia and Thrace thrived as part of the Eastern Roman Empire. |
| 1071 |
Seljuk Turks destroyed
Byzantine power in Anatolia at the Battle of Manzikert. |
| 1243 |
Mongol hordes conquered
the Seljuk Empire. |
| 1326 |
Ottomans captured Bursa
and founded the Ottoman Empire. |
| 1453 |
The Ottomans captured
Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire. They renamed the city
İstanbul and made it their capital. |
| 1520-1566 |
The Ottoman Empire
reached its height during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent,
controlling an area that stretched from Algeria to Yemen and almost as
far north as Vienna, Austria. |
| 1566-1918 |
The Ottoman Empire slowly
lost power, influence, and territory during a long period of decline. |
| 1829 |
Greece became the first
Ottoman territory to win its independence. |
| 1894-1923 |
The Ottoman government
persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians. |
| 1908 |
The Young Turks movement
led a revolt against the government. |
| 1914-1923 |
The Ottoman Empire allied
with Germany during World War I and lost much of its territory after the
war. |
| 1922 |
Greek forces seized
Smyrna (now ?zmir) and attempted to control territories on the Aegean
coast, but Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal drove them from the
country. |
| 1923 |
Mustafa Kemal established
the Republic of Turkey and was later granted the surname Atatürk. |
| 1947 |
Turkey began receiving
economic and military aid from the United States to guard against
Communist expansion. |
| 1960 |
The Turkish army seized
power, hanged the prime minister, and revised the constitution. Civilian
rule was reestablished the following year. |
| 1974 |
Turkish troops invaded
northern Cyprus to protect the island's Turkish minority. The rest of
the world condemned the action, but the troops remained. |
| 1990-1991 |
Turkey worked with the
international community to isolate Iraq, its neighbor and one of its
leading trade partners, before and during the Persian Gulf War. |
| 1992 |
Fighting intensified
between the Turkish government and Kurdish separatists based in
southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. |
| 1992-1994 |
Turkey increased ties
with the former Soviet Central Asian republics, offering aid and a model
for secular Islamic government. At the same time Turkey expressed
interest in closer ties with the European Union. |
| 1993 |
Tansu Çiller became
Turkey's first female prime minister. |
| 1997-1998 |
The Constitutional Court
banned the Welfare Party, an Islamic party that had been the largest
party in parliament, on the grounds that it threatened the secular
nature of the Turkish state. |
| 1997-1998 |
Turkish authorities
captured Kurdish nationalist leader Abdullah Ocalan in Nairobi, Kenya,
and brought him to Turkey to face trial on charges of treason. The
arrest triggered protests by Kurds in Turkey and across Europe, as well
as terrorist bombings in Turkey. |
General Knowledge :: HISTORICAL EVENTS BY COUNTRY :: TURKEY