ABSTRACT
Turkey occupies a unique position as it straddles Europe and Asia and is where the Christian world of Europe meets the Islamic world of the Middle East. It has a young population of some 74 million people and Istanbul has a population of over 13 million. Of the population, 99 per cent is registered as Islamic, although Turkey is officially a secular country with no official state religion — a result of Kemal Ataturk's reforms in the 1920s. Turks make up 80 per cent of the population and Kurds the majority of the remaining 20 per cent. Turkey has the world's 17th largest GDP. Its GDP growth rate was 9 per cent until a recent slowdown with only 2.2 per cent growth in 2012. Tourism makes up 26 per cent of Turkey's GDP.
