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Aug 2008: Turkey is described as a "genuine liberal democracy" and an open society, with 400 TV channels and youths on the internet.
Mar 2008: Turkey's Justice Ministry claims that people released from prison have a recidivism rate of five percent, much lower than in Europe. This low rate is ascribed to "traditional family structures."
East of Greece and Bulgaria. North of Syria and Iraq. West of Armenia and Iran. In the north, coastline along the Black Sea. In the west and south, coastline along the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Slightly larger than Texas. Capital: Ankara.
The Republic of Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952.
CIA Factbook: "Turkey's dynamic economy is a complex mix of modern industry and commerce along with a traditional agriculture sector that still accounts for about 30% of employment. It has a strong and rapidly growing private sector, yet the state remains a major participant in basic industry, banking, transport, and communication. The largest industrial sector is textiles and clothing, which accounts for one-third of industrial employment; it faces stiff competition in international markets with the end of the global quota system. However, other sectors, notably the automotive and electronics industries, are rising in importance within Turkey's export mix."
Estimated per capita GDP:
2008 $12,000
2007 $11,900
2006 $11,600
GDP annual growth rate:
2008: 1.5%
2007: 4.6%
2006: 6.9%
Unemployment rate estimated for 2008: 7.9%
Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP: 5.3 (estimated for 2005).
Deaths 6.02. Births 16.15, down from 16.83 in 2005.
Estimated in July 2008: 71.892 million, up from 69.66 million in 2005. Growth rate estimated for 2008: 1.013 percent per year. Density for 2005: 90.4 persons per square kilometer.
Infant mortality for 2008: 36.98, down from 41.04 in 2005 (deaths before the age of one year, per 1,000 live births).
Average life expectancy at birth estimated for 2008: 73.14, up from 72.36 in 2005
Living with HIV/AIDS, ages 15 to 49: less than 0.1 percent (2001 estimate).
As of 2003, Switzerland's per capita GDP is almost 5 times as large as Turkey's but it spends 25 times per person on health care.
Males 94.3 percent
Females 78.7 percent
Turkish 80 percent. Kurdish 20 percent.
Turkey is 99.8 percent Muslim -- mostly Sunni.
Turkey has been seeking membership in the Economic Union, but the European Parliament has declared that to do so Turkey must admit responsibility for the "genocide" of Armenians early in the 20th century.
Turkey has a law against insulting Turkishness or the republic, something open to interpretation by prosecutors. It has relaxed its intimidation of writers and publishers lately in the interest of entering the European Union. But a writer of international standing, Orpha Pamuk, is now indicted for speaking to a Swiss magazine about the deaths of “thirty-thousand Kurds and one million Armenians." The more advanced and politically mature countries, Finland, Norway, the United States, Britain, et cetera, have no such law.
SOURCES:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Copyright © 2008 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.