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Turkey: Countries
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In 1923, the present-day republic of Turkey was fashioned out of the Turkish remainder of the Ottoman Empire. Shortly after its birth, the fledgling state instituted secular laws in place of traditional religious decrees. Turkey became a member of the UN in 1945, and in 1952 it joined NATO. A 2004 population estimate suggests there are nearly 69,000,000 people living in Turkey. Their ethnic breakdown is 80 percent Turkish and 20 percent Kurdish. The country is overwhelmingly Muslim, with less than one percent being Christian and Jewish citizens.
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In Turkey, higher education is defined as all post-secondary programs with duration of at least two years. There are 68 state and 26 private universities throughout the country. According to the HEC, post-secondary programs aim to train students in line with their interests, skills and abilities, and according to the national science policy and the requirements of the society for qualified workers and for labor at all levels, to perform scientific research, to produce publications that indicate research and investigation results and facilitate the advancement of science and technology, to finalize the examinations and research required by the government and comment on them, to announce in oral and written form scientific data that shall improve the general level of Turkish society and enlighten the public, and to provide non-formal education services (HEC, 2004).
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In addition to increasing domestically generated electricity through construction of new power plants, Turkey is looking outside its borders to help meet the country's growing power demand. In December 2003, for instance, Turkey began importing 300 million kilowatthours (kwh) per year of power from Turkmenistan (via Iran), with plans to double this to 600 million kwh. Turkey reportedly is paying 3.35 cents per kwh for the power, a lower price than it pays for power imports from Bulgaria. In April 2003, Turkey announced that it was unilaterally terminating power deliveries from Bulgaria, after declaring that Bulgaria had not met its obligations under a 1998 bilateral, 10-year energy agreement. In February 2004, Turkey again stated that it would stop purchases of power from Bulgaria, this time, reportedly, due to Bulgaria's failure to grant highway and dam contracts to Turkish contractors as provided for in a bilateral power trade agreement. Besides Bulgaria and Turkmenistan, Turkey ... imports power from Russia (via Georgia) and Iran. In July 2004, Turkey and Greece agreed on a 16-mile-long power line linking the two countries, which will help to further integrate Turkey's power grid with Europe's.
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Turkey is a small country with a large population of about 74 million people. It was founded by two young Turks that led the Turkish army to victory in the First World War. They went to Turkey to complete their military service. From there on, they worked hard over 7 years and were finally promoted to lead the Turkish army. They wrote their names into the history books for being the first country to be led by two leaders.
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In 2001, Turkey passed an Natural Gas Market Law which will significantly reform the country's gas sector. Among other things, the Law will abolish the Botas monopoly, separating the company into units for natural gas import, transport, storage, and distribution by 2009. At that point, the various components (except for transport) are to be privatized. In the meantime, Botas is supposed to sell off at least 10 percent of its market share every year, eventually getting it down from 100 percent to 20 percent by 2009. To date... progress in these areas has lagged, with -- among other things -- parliamentary delays in approving an amendment easing restrictions on foreign players in Turkey's gas sector. In March 2004, Turkey's energy market regulatory agency threatened Botas with fines over the company's failure to meet the target of reducing its market share by 10 percent per year.
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The independence of the Turkic states of the Soviet Union, with whom Turkey shares a common cultural and linguistic heritage, allowed Turkey to extend its economic and political relations deep into Central Asia. [41]. The most salient of these relations saw the completion of a multi billion dollar oil and gas pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, as it is called, has formed part of Turkey's foreign policy strategy to become an energy conduit to the West. However, Turkey's border with Armenia, a state in the Caucaus, remains closed following its occupation of Azeri territory during the Nagorno-Karabakh War[42]. Relations with Armenia have been further strained by the controversy surrounding the forced deportations and related deaths of hundrends of thousands of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, recognised by a number of countries and historians as the Armenian Genocide.
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