Georgian is the most pervasive of the Kartvelian languages, a family that also includes Svan and Megrelian ( chiefly spoken in Northwest Georgia ) and Laz ( chiefly spoken along the Black Sea coast of Turkey, from Melyat, Rize to the Georgian frontier ).

All of these languages comprise the Kartvelian language family along with the related language of the Laz people, which has speakers in both Turkey and Georgia.

Inside Turkey, it came to be called as " the United Nations of Turkey " since its inhabitants have very diverse ethnic backgrounds: Turks, Circassians, Abkhazians, Chveneburi, Laz, Roma, immigrants from the Balkans and lately some Kurds and Zazas.

It is estimated that there are around 30, 000 native speakers of Laz in Turkey, in a strip of land extending from Melyat to the Georgian border ( officially called Lazistan until 1925 ), and about 2, 000 in Georgia.

Today most Laz speakers live in Northeast Turkey, in a strip of land along the shore of the Black Sea: in the Pazar ( Atina ), Ardeşen ( Art ' aşeni ), Çamlıhemşin ( Vijadibi ) and Fındıklı ( Vitze ) districts of Rize, and in the Arhavi ( Ark ' abi ), Hopa ( Xopa ) and Borçka districts of Artvin.

Laz are also present in Germany where they have migrated from Turkey since the 1960s.

Laz has no official status in either Turkey or Georgia, and no written standard.

Laz is unique among the South Caucasian languages in that most of its speakers live in Turkey rather than Georgia.

Developed specifically for the South Caucasian languages, the Georgian alphabet is better suited to the sounds of Laz, but the fact that most of the tongue's speakers live in Turkey, where the Latin alphabet is used, has rendered the adoption of the former impossible.

The only languages in which the Laz receive an education are Turkish ( in Turkey ) and Georgian ( in Georgia ).

In 2004, Dr. Mehmet Bekâroğlu, the deputy chairman of Felicity Party in Turkey, sent a notice to the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation ( TRT ) declaring that his mother tongue is Laz and demanding broadcasts in Laz.

Sarpi (, Laz: Sarpi, ) is a border village on the coast of the Black Sea, on the border between Turkey and Georgia.

By-passing the military junta which has ruled Turkey since the overthrow of Premier Adnan Menderes 17 months ago, the army general staff, led by Gen. Cedvet Sunay, had set a deadline for the parties to join in a national coalition government.

This wider definition of Anatolia has gained widespread currency outside of Turkey and has, for instance, been adopted by Encyclopedia Britannica and other encyclopedic and general reference publications.

Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Anatolia has become Turkey, its inhabitants being mainly Turks and Kurds ( see demographics of Turkey and history of Turkey ).

Azerbaijan currently has diplomatic relations with 160 countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, the People's Republic of China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Libya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Republic of India, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

An economic blockade with Turkey and Azerbaijan has cut Armenia's rail link between Gyumri and Kars to Turkey ; the rail link with Iran through the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan ; and a natural gas and oil pipeline line with Azerbaijan.

The Minsk Group is currently co-chaired by Russia, France, and the United States and has representation from Turkey, the U. S., several European nations, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

A second temple has also been located at the archaeological site of Metropolis in what is now Western Turkey.

Founded first as the Bursa University then renamed to Uludağ University in 1982, the university has a student body of 47, 000, one of the largest in Turkey.

By one estimate, it has the fourth highest gross national income at purchasing power parity in Africa, giving it a standard of living around that of Mexico and Turkey.

It is located south of Asia Minor, the Anatolian peninsula of the Asian ( or Eurasian ) mainland ( now part of modern-day Turkey ), so it may be included in Western Asia or the Middle East: At a confluence of Western Asia, Southern Europe, and Northern Africa, Cyprus has had lengthy periods of mainly Greek and intermittent Anatolian, Levantine, Byzantine, and Western European influences.

In 1983, the Turkish Cypriots declared an independent " Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus ", which has never been recognized by any country except Turkey and Pakistan.

The division of Cyprus has remained an intractable political problem plaguing relations between Greece and Turkey, and drawing in NATO, of which both Greece and Turkey are members, and latterly the European Union, which has admitted Greece and Cyprus and which Turkey has been seeking to join for over twenty years.

Thus far the only people who have been attested with a high level of genetic, historical, linguistic and cultural research to be the descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians are the Assyrian Christians of Iraq and its surrounding areas in north west Iran, north east Syria and south eastern Turkey.

On 15 November 1983 the Turkish Cypriot North declared independence and the formation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus ( TRNC ), which has been recognized only by Turkey.

The economic achievements of Cyprus during the preceding decades have been significant, bearing in mind the severe economic and social dislocation created by the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the continuing occupation of the northern part of the island by Turkey.

To compensate for the economy's weakness, Turkey has been known to provide significant financial aid.

The site, located near the modern town of Honaz in Turkey, has never been excavated.

Electrum coins were not standardized in weight and are considered by opponents as badges, medals or ceremonial objects issued by priests, rather than coins ( actually the oldest of them have been discovered not in Lydia, but in an ancient Greek temple of Ephesos, a city colony built by the ancient Greeks in what is now Turkey ).

Such a pattern was observed in the sequence of about a dozen earthquakes that struck the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey in the 20th century and has been inferred for older anomalous clusters of large earthquakes in the Middle East.

Yet in nations or regions where traditional folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of traditional music can be slowed ; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Bangladesh, Hungary, India, Ireland, Scotland, Latvia, Turkey, Portugal, Brittany, and Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree, in some such areas the decline of traditional music and loss of traditions has been reversed.

* The flag of Turkey, which is very similar to last flag of the old Ottoman Empire, has been an inspiration for the flag designs of many other Muslim nations.

Since the 1960s, West and later reunified Germany has been attracting migrants primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as Turkey, many of whom ( or their children ) over time acquired German citizenship.

After making the comments in Turkish daily newspaper BirGün, Yilmaz said that his words had been distorted and that he was referring to Greek agents causing fires in Turkey.

In 1985, it was briefly claimed that an early Syriac copy of this gospel had been found near Hakkâri in eastern Turkey.

The coup pre-empted King Idris ' instrument of abdication dated 4 August 1969 to take effect 2 September 1969 in favour of the Crown Prince, who had been appointed regent following the king's departure for Turkey.

A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated to 10000 BC has been seen as the beginning of the " Neolithic 1 " culture.

Environment-current issues: government water control projects have drained most of the inhabited marsh areas east of An Nasiriyah by drying up or diverting the feeder streams and rivers ; a once sizable population of Shi ' a Muslims, who have inhabited these areas for thousands of years, has been displaced ; furthermore, the destruction of the natural habitat poses serious threats to the area's wildlife populations ; inadequate supplies of potable water ; development of Tigris-Euphrates Rivers system contingent upon agreements with upstream riparian Turkey ; air and water pollution ; soil degradation ( salination ) and erosion ; and desertification.

Historically the Arvand Roud / Shatt-al-Arab waterway ( called Arvand Roud in Iran and Shatt-al-Arab in Iraq ) and Khuzestan Province was all that remained of their prior holdings in Mesopotamia, which had been lost to Turkey centuries earlier.

Moderate strains of Islamism have been described as " competing in the democratic public square in places like Turkey and Indonesia.

Irenaeus was born during the first half of the 2nd century ( the exact date is disputed: between the years 115 and 125 according to some, or 130 and 142 according to others ), Irenaeus is thought to have been a Greek from Polycarp's hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor, now İzmir, Turkey.

In some Muslim-majority nations, such as Albania, Turkey, Jordan, Indonesia or Mali, same-sex intercourse is not forbidden by law, and in Albania there has been discussions of legalizing same-sex marriage.