# The World Factbook (1990)/Turkey

pages 315–316
​Turkey
See regional map VI
Geography
Total area: 780,580 km²; land area: 770,760 km²
Comparative area: slightly larger than Texas
Land boundaries: 2,715 km total; Bulgaria 240 km, Greece 206 km, Iran 499 km, Iraq 331 km, Syria 822 km, USSR 617 km
Coastline: 7,200 km
Maritime claims:
    Extended economic zone: in Black Sea only to the maritime boundary agreed upon with the USSR
    Territorial sea: 6 nm (12 nm in Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea)
Disputes: complex maritime and air (but not territorial) disputes with Greece in Aegean Sea; Cyprus question; Hatay question with Syria; ongoing dispute with downstream riparians (Syria and Iraq) over water development plans for the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; Kurdish question among Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the USSR
Climate: temperate; hot, dry summers with mild, wet winters; harsher in interior
Terrain: mostly mountains; narrow coastal plain; high central plateau (Anatolia)
Natural resources: antimony, coal, chromium, mercury, copper, borate, sulphur, iron ore
Land use: 30% arable land; 4% permanent crops; 12% meadows and pastures; 26% forest and woodland; 28% other; includes 3% irrigated
Environment: subject to severe earthquakes, especially along major river valleys in west; air pollution; desertification
Note: strategic location controlling the Turkish straits (Bosporus, Sea of Marmara, Dardanelles) that link Black and Aegean Seas; Turkey and Norway only NATO members having a land boundary with the USSR
People
Population: 56,704,327 (July 1990), growth rate 2.2% (1990)
Birth rate: 29 births/1,000 population (1990)
Death rate: 8 deaths/1,000 population (1990)
Net migration rate: 0 migrants/1,000 population (1990)
Infant mortality rate: 74 deaths/1,000 live births (1990)
Life expectancy at birth: 64 years male, 67 years female (1990)
Total fertility rate: 3.6 children born/woman (1990)
Nationality: noun—Turk(s); adjective—Turkish
Ethnic divisions: 85% Turkish, 12% Kurd, 3% other
Religion: 98% Muslim (mostly Sunni), 2% other (mostly Christian and Jewish)
Language: Turkish (official), Kurdish, Arabic
Literacy: 70%
Labor force: 18,800,000; 56% agriculture, 30% services, 14% industry; about 1,000,000 Turks work abroad (1987)
Organized labor: 10-15% of labor force
Government
Long-form name: Republic of Turkey
Type: republican parliamentary democracy
Capital: Ankara
Administrative divisions: 67 provinces (iller, singular—il); Adana, Adiyaman, Afyon, Ağri, Amasya, Ankara, Antalya, Artvin, Aydin, Balikesir, Bilecik, Bingöl, Bitlis, Bolu, Burdur, Bursa, Çanakkale, Çankiri, Çorum, Denizli, Diyarbakir, Edirne, Elaziğ, Erzincan, Erzurum,Eşkisehir, Gaziantep, Giresun, Gümüşhane, Hakkâri, Hatay, I̊çel, Isparta, I̊stanbul, I̊zmir, Kahraman Maraş, Kars, Kastamonu, Kayseri, Kirklareli, Kirşehir, Kocaeli, Konya, Kiitahya, Malatya, Manisa, Mardin, Muğla, Muş, Nevşehir, Niğde, Ordu, Rize, Sakarya, Samsun, Siirt, Sinop, Sivas, Tekirdağ, Tokat, Trabzon, Tunceli, Urfa, Uşak, Van, Yozgat, Zonguldak; note there may be four new provinces named Aksaray, Bayburt, Karaman, and Kirikkale
Independence: 29 October 1923 (successor state to the Ottoman Empire)
Constitution: 7 November 1982
Legal system: derived from various continental legal systems; accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction, with reservations
National holiday: Anniversary of the Declaration of the Republic, 29 October (1923)
​Executive branch: president, Presidential Council, prime minister, deputy prime minister, Cabinet
Legislative branch: unicameral Grand National Assembly (Büyük Millet Meclisi)
Judicial branch: Court of Cassation
Leaders: Chief of State—President Turgut ÖZAL (since 9 November 1989);
Head of Government—Prime Minister Yildirim AKBULUT (since 9 November 1989); Deputy Prime Minister Ali BOZER (since 31 March 1989)
Political parties and leaders: Motherland Party (ANAP), Yildirim Akbulut; Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP), Erdal I̊nönü; Correct Way Party (CWP), Süleyman Demi̊rel; Democratic Left Party (DLP), Bülent Ecevit; Prosperity Party (RP), Necmettin Erbakan; National Work Party (MCP), Alpaslan Türkeş; Reform Democratic Party (IDP), Aykut Edi̊bali̊
Suffrage: universal at age 21
Elections: Grand National Assembly—last held 29 November 1987 (next to be held November 1992); results—ANAP 36%, SHP 25%, CWP 19%, others 20%; seats—(450 total) ANAP 283, SHP 81, CWP 56, independents 26, vacant 4
Communists: strength and support negligible
Member of: ASSIMER, CCC, Council of Europe, EC (associate member), ECOSOC, FAO, GATT, IAEA, IBRD, ICAC, ICAO, IDA, IDB—Islamic Development Bank, IEA, IFAD, IFC, IHO, ILO, IMF, IMO, INTELSAT, INTERPOL, IOOC, IPU, ITC, ITU, NATO, OECD, OIC, UN, UNESCO, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WSG, WTO
Diplomatic representation: Ambassador Nuzhet KANDEMIR; Chancery at 1606 23rd Street NW, Washington DC 20008; telephone (202) 387-3200; there are Turkish Consulates General in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York; US—Ambassador Morton ABRAMOWITZ; Embassy at 110 Ataturk Boulevard, Ankara (mailing address is APO New York 09254-0001); telephone [90](4) 126 54 70; there are US Consulates General in Istanbul and Izmir, and a Consulate in Adana
Flag: red with a vertical white crescent (the closed portion is toward the hoist side) and white five-pointed star centered on the hoist side
Economy
Overview: The economic reforms that Turkey launched in 1980 continue to bring an impressive stream of benefits. The economy has grown steadily since the early 1980s, with real growth in per capita GDP increasing more than 6% annually. Agriculture remains the most important economic sector, employing about 60% of the labor force, accounting for almost 20% of GDP, and contributing about 25% to exports. Impressive growth in recent years has not solved all of the economic problems facing Turkey. Inflation and interest rates remain high, and a large budget deficit will continue to provide difficulties for a country undergoing a substantial transformation from a centrally controlled to a free market economy. The government has launched a multimillion-dollar development program in the southeastern region, which includes the building of a dozen dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to generate electric power and irrigate large tracts of farmland. The planned tapping of huge quantities of Euphrates water has raised serious concern in the downstream riparian nations of Syria and Iraq.
GDP: $75 billion, per capita $1,350; real growth rate 1.8% (1989 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 68.8% (1989)
Unemployment rate: 15.8% (1988)
Budget: revenues $12.1 billion; expenditures $14.5 billion, including capital expenditures of $2.08 billion (FY88 est.)
Exports: $11.7 billion (f.o.b., 1988); commodities—industrial products 70%, crops and livestock products 25%; partners—FRG 18.4%, Iraq 8.5%, Italy 8.2%, US 6.5%, UK 4.9%, Iran 4.7%
Imports: $14.3 billion (c.i.f., 1988); commodities—crude oil, machinery, transport equipment, metals, pharmaceuticals, dyes, plastics, rubber, mineral fuels, fertilizers, chemicals; partners—FRG 14.3%, US 10.6%, Iraq 10.0%, Italy 7.0%, France 5.8%, UK 5.2%
External debt: $36.3 billion (November 1989)
Industrial production: growth rate 7.4% (1988)
Electricity: 14,064,000 kW capacity; 40,000 million kWh produced, 720 kWh per capita (1989)
Industries: textiles, food processing, mining (coal, chromite, copper, boron minerals), steel, petroleum, construction, lumber, paper
Agriculture: accounts for 20% of GDP and employs majority of population; products—tobacco, cotton, grain, olives, sugar beets, pulses, citrus fruit, variety of animal products; self-sufficient in food most years
Illicit drugs: one of the world's major suppliers of licit opiate products; government maintains strict controls over areas of opium poppy cultivation and output of poppy straw concentrate
Aid: US commitments, including Ex-Im (FY70-88), $2.2 billion; Western (non-US) countries, ODA and OOF bilateral commitments (1970-87), $7.9 billion; OPEC bilateral aid (1979-89), $665 million; Communist countries (1970-88), $4.5 billion
Currency: Turkish lira (plural—liras); 1 Turkish lira (TL) = 100 kuruş
Exchange rates: Turkish liras (TL) per US$1—2,314.7 (November 1989), 1,422.3 (1988), 857.2 (1987), 674.5 (1986), 522.0 (1985)
Fiscal year: calendar year
Communications
Railroads: 8,401 km 1.435-meter standard gauge; 479 km electrified
Highways: 49,615 km total; 26,915 km bituminous; 16,500 km gravel or crushed stone; 4,000 km improved earth; 2,200 km unimproved earth (1985)
Inland waterways: about 1,200 km
Pipelines: 1,738 km crude oil; 2,321 km refined products; 708 km natural gas
Ports: I̊skenderun, I̊stanbul, Mersin, I̊zmir
Merchant marine: 327 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 2,972,465 GRT/5,087,620 DWT; includes 6 short-sea passenger, 1 passenger, 1 passenger-cargo, 193 cargo, 1 container, 4 roll-on/roll-off cargo, 3 refrigerated cargo, 1 livestock carrier, 35 petroleum, oils, and lubricants (POL) tanker, 15 chemical tanker, 2 liquefied gas, 4 combination ore/oil, 1 specialized tanker, 55 bulk, 4 combination bulk, 1 specialized liquid cargo
Civil air: 30 major transport aircraft (1985)
Airports: 119 total, 112 usable; 69 with permanent-surface runways; 3 with runways over 3,659 m; 30 with runways 2,440-3,659 m; 28 with runways 1,220-2,439 m
Telecommunications: fair domestic and international systems; trunk radio relay network; 3,100,000 telephones; stations—15 AM; 45 (60 repeaters) FM; 61 (476 repeaters) TV; communications satellite earth stations operating in the INTELSAT (1 Atlantic Ocean) and EUTELSAT systems; 1 submarine telephone cable
Defense Forces
Branches: Land Forces, Navy, Air Force, Gendarmerie, Coast Guard
Military manpower: males 15-49, 14,413,944; 8,813,430 fit for military service; 597,547 reach military age (20) annually
Defense expenditures: 3.9% of GDP, or $2.9 billion (1989 est.)