Elderly Turkish man.jpg

Modern Turkey was founded in 1923 from the Anatolian remnants of the defeated Ottoman Empire by national hero Mustafa KEMAL, who was later honored with the title Ataturk or "Father of the Turks." Under his authoritarian leadership, the country adopted wide-ranging social, legal, and political reforms.

After a period of one-party rule, an experiment with multi-party politics led to the 1950 election victory of the opposition Democratic Party and the peaceful transfer of power. Since then, Turkish political parties have multiplied, but democracy has been fractured by periods of instability and intermittent military coups (1960, 1971, 1980), which in each case eventually resulted in a return of political power to civilians. In 1997, the military again helped engineer the ouster - popularly dubbed a "post-modern coup" - of the then Islamic-oriented government.

Turkey intervened militarily on Cyprus in 1974 to prevent a Greek takeover of the island and has since acted as patron state to the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus," which only Turkey recognizes. A separatist insurgency begun in 1984 by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - now known as the People's Congress of Kurdistan or Kongra-Gel (KGK) - has dominated the Turkish military's attention and claimed more than 30,000 lives. After the capture of the group's leader in 1999, the insurgents largely withdrew from Turkey mainly to northern Iraq.

In 2004, KGK announced an end to its ceasefire and attacks attributed to the KGK increased. Turkey joined the UN in 1945 and in 1952 it became a member of NATO. In 1964, Turkey became an associate member of the European Community; over the past decade, it has undertaken many reforms to strengthen its democracy and economy enabling it to begin accession membership talks with the European Union.

In October 2008, Turkey's parliament voted overwhelmingly to extend by one year its authorization of military operations against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, keeping the door open to future strikes in the region.

The approval, by a vote of 497 to 18, had been largely expected and occurred amid a flurry of attacks in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast.

Turkey, a NATO member, has been fighting Kurdish separatists in its southeast since the 1980s, though the conflict has died down substantially in recent years. An attack on a border post last year set off a political confrontation between Turkey and Iraq, with Turkey conducting air strikes and a brief ground operation into Iraq.

Turkey contends that Iraq does not do enough to curb the rebels, known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or P.K.K., who hide in the mountains along its northern border. Iraq says far more reside in Turkey.

The tension is a delicate matter for the United States, which counts Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds among its closest allies in a troubled region. The Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, in a visit to Finland on Wednesday, said the extension of the mandate would be "used solely against the pinpointed targets of the terror organization," the state-run Anatolian News Agency reported.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the vote that operations against the separatists would continue, but added that solving the problem was "also about diplomacy, politics, sociology and psychology."

Local elections are planned for March and Mr. Erdogan's party is working to win votes in the southeast, a region that has chosen Kurdish parties in the past.

The attack is likely to increase the public pressure on Mr. Erdogan to act against the rebels.