TRADE – TURKEY-AFRICA NETWORK

Violating the European Union’s arms embargo
Oprah Winfrey tells SA youth: ‘Never give up’
Zimbabweans protest against ‘economic crisis’
Cholera outbreak kills 175 in Nigerian camps this month
Eight dead in the wake of Kenya election re-run
Nigeria loses $6bn from ‘corrupt’ oil deal linked to fraud
Cameroon army frees kidnapped students

All posts in: TRADE

AMNESTY WARNS ABOUT CHILD WORKERS AT COBALT MINES

Kinshasa – Leading technology and electric car companies have been accused of failing to ensure minerals used in their products are not mined using child labour, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday. The report found that firms ...

· ECONOMY · NEWS · SOUTH AFRICA

175MW SOLAR PLANT IN DE AAR, SOUTH AFRICA

De Aar, South Africa (CNN)In the sleepy, sun-blasted town of De Aar in central South Africa, a mighty force is stirring. The largest solar plant in Africa, Middle East and the Southern hemisphere was inaugurated here earlier this year, a ...

· COUNTRY · NEWS · NEWS · POLITICS · POLITICS · ZIMBABWE

End of Mugabe Period?

Harare, Zimbabwe (CNN) – The decades-long grip on power of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe appeared to be over on Thursday as his main opposition rival returned to the country amid efforts to form a transitional government. Morgan ...

Turkey (Listeni/ˈtɜːrki/; Turkish: Türkiye [ˈtyɾcije]), officially the Republic of Turkey (Turkish: About this sound Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info); pronounced [ˈtyɾcije d͡ʒumˈhuɾijeti]), is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe.[6] Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a diverse cultural heritage.[7] Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Greece and Bulgaria to the northwest; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran to the east; Iraq and Syria to the south. The country is encircled by seas on three sides: the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south.

The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, which together form the Turkish Straits, divide Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.[8] Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the country's citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks.[9][7] Other ethnic groups include legally recognised[II] (Armenians, Greeks, Jews) and unrecognised (Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, Albanians, Bosniaks, Georgians, etc.) minorities.

Starting around 1200 BC, the coast of Anatolia was heavily settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. Numerous important cities were founded by these colonists, such as Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna (now İzmir) and Byzantium (now Istanbul), the latter founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 657 BC. The first state that was called Armenia by neighbouring peoples was the state of the Armenian Orontid dynasty, which included parts of eastern Turkey beginning in the 6th century BC. In Northwest Turkey, the most significant tribal group in Thrace was the Odyrisians, founded by Teres I.[55] All of modern-day Turkey was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th century BC.[56] The Greco-Persian Wars started when the Greek city states on the coast of Anatolia rebelled against Persian rule in 499 BC. The territory of Turkey later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC,[57] which led to increasing cultural homogeneity and Hellenization in the area.[13]
Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms, all of which became part of the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC.[58] The process of Hellenization that began with Alexander's conquest accelerated under Roman rule, and by the early centuries of the Christian Era the local Anatolian languages and cultures had become extinct, being largely replaced by ancient Greek language and culture.[15][59] From the 1st century BC up to the 3rd century CE, large parts of modern-day Turkey were contested between the Romans and neighbouring Parthians through the frequent Roman-Parthian Wars.
In 324, Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome. Following the death of Theodosius I in 395 and the permanent division of the Roman Empire between his two sons, the city, which would popularly come to be known as Constantinople, became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. This, which would later be branded by historians as the Byzantine Empire, ruled most of the territory of present-day Turkey until the Late Middle Ages;[60] although the eastern regions remained in firm Sasanian hands up to the first half of the seventh century. The frequent Byzantine-Sassanid Wars, as part of the centuries long-lasting Roman-Persian Wars, fought between the neighbouring rivalling Byzantines and Sasanians, took place in various parts of present-day Turkey and decided much of the latter's history from the fourth century up to the first half of the seventh century.