Turkey a Century After the Republic
A NATO member, an EU candidate still waiting, and a republic still negotiating what Ataturk's secular state means today
Quick facts
- Centennial date
- 29 October 2023
- Centennial event
- Turkish Navy's largest-ever parade
- NATO membership length by 2023
- 71 years (joined 1952)
- EU candidacy length by 2023
- 24 years, negotiations stalled since 2018
What happened
On 29 October 2023, the Republic of Turkey marked one hundred years since the Grand National Assembly's original proclamation, with the Turkish Navy conducting the largest parade in its history alongside Air Force flyovers, and with heads of state and organizations including NATO and King Charles III sending public messages of congratulation. The centennial arrived only months after the devastating February 2023 earthquake and amid a presidential system, adopted in 2017, that concentrates executive power far more than the parliamentary republic Ataturk founded in 1923. A country that began the century occupied and partitioned by Allied powers ended it as a NATO member of more than seventy years, a long-stalled EU candidate, and a regional power straddling Europe and the Middle East, still working out the balance between the secular Kemalist state its founders built and the country's more recent political direction.
Why it matters
The distance between the republic proclaimed in 1923 and the Turkey of its centennial captures the whole arc this timeline has followed: from a defeated, occupied Ottoman remnant to a rebuilt secular nation-state, through repeated military interventions in the name of preserving that secular order, to a 21st-century presidential system that its own founders would likely not recognize. A hundred years on, Turkey remains what it has been since the Hittites and the Byzantines, a land bridge whose position keeps it central to whatever comes next in the region around it.
How we know
The centennial commemorations and the international messages of congratulation are documented in Turkey's own state news agency's contemporaneous coverage of the 29 October 2023 events, and Turkey's NATO membership length is independently confirmed by NATO's own historical record of its 1952 accession.
Sources
- Anadolu Agency. 100th Anniversary of Republic of Turkiye · Reputable sourceaa.com.tr · The domain "aa.com.tr" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Turkiye and NATO · General sourcenato.int · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Part of a timelineHistory of Turkey27 events · A land bridge fought over by Hittites, Greeks, Romans, and Turks, and the republic that Mustafa Kemal built on its ashes in a single decadeView all →