Republic of Turkey in the context of "Bursa"

Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, representing an estimated 25 to 28 percent of the population. Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the official and dominant religion, with Muslims having more rights than non-Muslims, whose rights were restricted. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious groups were legally identified by different millet ("nations").

Following the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, all Ottoman Muslims were made part of the modern citizenry or the Turkish nation as the newly founded Republic of Turkey was constituted as a Muslim nation state. While Turkish nationalist policy viewed all Muslims in Turkey as Turks without exception, non-Muslim minority groups, such as Jews and Christians, were designated as "foreign nations" (dhimmi). Conversely, Turk (term for Muslims) was used to denote all groups in the region who had been Islamized under Ottoman rule, especially Muslim Albanians and Slavic Muslims.

Turkification, Turkization, or Turkicization (Turkish: Türkleştirme) describes a shift whereby populations or places receive or adopt Turkic attributes such as culture, language, history, or ethnicity. However, often this term is more narrowly applied to mean specifically Turkish rather than merely Turkic, meaning that it refers more frequently to the Ottoman Empire's policies or the Turkish nationalist policies of the Republic of Turkey toward ethnic minorities in Turkey. As the Turkic states developed and grew, there were many instances of this cultural shift.

The earliest instance of Turkification took place in Central Asia, when by the 6th century AD migration of Turkic tribes from Inner Asia caused a language shift among the Iranian peoples of the area. By the 8th century AD, the Turkification of Kashgar was completed by Qarluq Turks, who also Islamized the population.

The history of Anatolia (often referred to in historical sources as Asia Minor) can be roughly subdivided into: Prehistory of Anatolia (up to the end of the 3rd millennium BCE), Ancient Anatolia (including Hattian, Hittite and post-Hittite periods), Classical Anatolia (including Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Roman periods), Byzantine Anatolia (later overlapping, since the 11th century, with the gradual Seljuk and Ottoman conquest), Ottoman Anatolia (14th–20th centuries) and the Modern Anatolia, since the creation of the Republic of Turkey.

The expulsion of Istanbul Greeks (Turkish: 1964 Rum Tehciri or 1964 Rum Sürgünü) in 1964–1965 was a series of discriminatory measures by the authorities of the Republic of Turkey, then governed by the CHP party, aimed at the forced expulsion of the Greek population of Istanbul (Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, romanized: Kōnstantinoúpolis). Though the Greeks of Istanbul were initially excluded from the Greek–Turkish population exchange of 1923 and were allowed to remain in their native city, the Turkish government enacted a series of measures that resulted in a dramatic decrease in their numbers, such as the "wealth" tax of 1942 and later the anti-Greek pogrom of September 1955.

Especially during the 1950s and 1960s, the Greek minority was used as an apparatus of pressure for the Cyprus issue as part of the Greek–Turkish relations. The anti-Greek measures of 1964–1965 resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of Greeks in Istanbul. As such, from a population of about 80,000 only about 30,000 remained in 1965. The measures also resulted in the appropriation of minority-owned properties by the Turkish state and were accompanied by restrictions in the fields of religion and education. The expulsion during this period was part of the final phase of state measures aimed at the Turkification of the local economic, social, and cultural life.

The Turkish War of Independence (15 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after the Ottoman Empire was occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern question, ending the Ottoman sultanate and the Ottoman caliphate, and establishing the Republic of Turkey. This resulted in the transfer of sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for nationalist revolutionary reform in Republican Turkey.

While World War I ended for the Ottomans with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allies continued occupying land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman commanders therefore refused orders from the Allies and Ottoman government to disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil, Sultan Mehmed VI dispatched general Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), to restore order; however, he became an enabler and leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance. In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allies. The Allies pressured the Ottoman "Istanbul government" to suspend the Constitution, Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

The border between the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Turkey (Arabic: الحدود السورية التركية, romanized: alhudud alsuwriat alturkia; Turkish: Suriye–Türkiye sınırı) is 909 kilometres (565 mi) long, and runs from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the tripoint with Iraq in the east. It runs across Upper Mesopotamia for some 400 kilometres (250 mi), crossing the Euphrates and reaching as far as the Tigris. Much of the border follows the Southern Turkish stretch of the Baghdad Railway, roughly along the 37th parallel between the 37th and 42nd eastern meridians. In the west, it almost surrounds the Turkish Hatay Province, partly following the course of the Orontes River and reaching the Mediterranean coast at the foot of Jebel Aqra.

The Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire refers to ethnic Turks, who are the descendants of Ottoman-Turkish settlers from Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, living outside of the modern borders of the Republic of Turkey and in the independent states which were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, they are not considered part of Turkey's modern diaspora, rather, due to living for centuries in their respective regions (and for centuries under Turkish rule), they are now considered "natives" or "locals" as they have been living in these countries prior to the independence and establishment of the modern-nation states.

Today, whilst the Turkish people form a majority in the Republic of Turkey and Northern Cyprus, they also form one of the "Two Communities" in the Republic of Cyprus, as well as significant minorities in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Levant, the Middle East and North Africa. Consequently, the Turkish ethnicity and/or language is officially recognised under the constitutional law of several states, particularly in the Balkans.

The Turkish National Movement (Turkish: Türk Ulusal Hareketi), also known as the Anatolian Movement (Turkish: Anadolu Hareketi), the Nationalist Movement (Turkish: Milliyetçi Hareket), and the Kemalists (Turkish: Kemalîler, Kemalciler or Kemalistler), included political and military activities of the Turkish revolutionaries that resulted in the creation and shaping of the modern Republic of Turkey, as a consequence of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the subsequent occupation of Constantinople and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies under the terms of the Armistice of Mudros. The Turkish revolutionaries rebelled against this partitioning and against the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920 by the Ottoman government. Most revolutionaries were former members of the Committee of Union and Progress.

This establishment of an alliance of Turkish revolutionaries during the partitioning resulted in the Turkish War of Independence, the genocides of the Anatolian native nations, the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate on 1 November 1922 and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. The movement organized itself into the Association for the Defence of National Rights of Anatolia and Rumeli, which eventually declared that the only source of governance for the Turkish people would be the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.