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Turkey

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Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!

Turkey is either a European country in the Middle East, or a Middle Eastern country in Europe, or a large bird native to North America that has been domesticated and tastes yummy when stuffed and slowly roasted (for this reason, domesticated turkeys are bred to be larger and thus meatier than their wild brethren).

Turkey is a modern democracy (though the military does get involved from time to time) in a region that is usually home to despotic theocracies, kingdoms, or one-party states. There is a high level of support for its secular constitution.

In Turkey (the country), turkey (the bird) is known as "hindi" (which refers to Hindistan, or India), as it was initially confused with an Indian wildfowl that reached Europe from the Ottoman Empire.

Perhaps this oasis of democracy will infect other Middle Eastern nations. However, it seems that due to the identification of secularism with military coups, stratocracy (a government headed by the armed forces, typically military chiefs) and elitism (the so-called "deep state theory"), Turkey is one of few completely secular countries where fundies actually have a shot at power.

Areas in what is now Turkey are almost as central to Christianity as Jerusalem. Several early Christians set up shop in Anatolia, occasionally going underground in the sandstone formations of Cappadocia. Constantinople (now Istanbul) was the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and center of the eastern Christian world, up to when the Crusaders sacked it in the Fourth Crusade. Several major cathedrals are located there, such as the Hagia Sophia, which got converted into a mosque and later into a museum. Despite being so important to Christianity, Greek Orthodox was the main denomination there, so the West just kind of ignored it and today the Church is probably in crisis there as its archbishop (Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew) only has a small office compound, which is under constant threat from Islamic extremists and an inability to get more leaders for the spot.

Although Internet censorship was not generally considered a concern in Turkey, it became widespread after a new law was passed in May 2008. In one incident, Richard Dawkins' website was blocked after a complaint by Harun Yahya, a pseudoscience promoter who campaigns for the Islamic version of creationism. Harun Yahya claimed Dawkins' site contained "insulting" remarks about his works.[1] Fortunately this law was repealed in 2010, largely because they forgot to also ban vTunnel.com and hence the original law had no effect. In 2014, social networking site Twitter was blocked following claims of corruption against the prime minister being published there.[2]

Turkey has its own currency, the Turkish Lira (Türk lirası; sign: Turkish lira symbol 8x10px.png, code: TRY). Before Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, the Turkish lira was the butt of all the "look, I'm a billionaire!" jokes, as one U.S. dollar was worth 1,650,000 Turkish lira in 2001. However, in 2005 they replaced it with the "New Turkish lira", valued at a more respectable 1.29 lira to the U.S. dollar. As of 2013, it's the 15th most traded international currency in the world.[3]

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For those who eschew the consumption of meat, Tofurkey® is a viable option.

Benjamin Franklin is widely (but incorrectly) believed to have proposed that the wild turkey be the national bird of the United States, supposedly mentioning it sarcastically while was voicing his disapproval of the bald eagle. While he did describe the eagle as having "bad moral character," he said nothing of any potential alternative for the national bird. This was also far from a public opinion at the time, as this whole story is derived from a letter to his daughter. He does mention turkeys and bald eagles later in the letter, but the matter is unrelated.[4]

Turkey is a candidate for membership in the European Union, although significant roadblocks, including the Cyprus dispute, denial of the Armenian Genocide, geographic pedantry from some quarters, and various other minor issues, still stand in its way.

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[edit] Footnotes

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