Flag of Turkey

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The flag of Turkey consists of a white crescent moon and a star on a red background. The flag is called Ay Yıldız (literally, "moon star") or al sancak ("red banner") in Turkish. The flag has a complex origin since it is an ancient design, and is practically identical to the last flag of the Ottoman Empire which was adopted in 1844, apart from a few proportional standardizations which were made with the Turkish Flag Law of 1936.

The shade of red used in the flag is approximated by Pantone 186, or RGB (227, 10, 23).

Contents 1 History 2 Origin of the flag 2.1 Legends 3 Legal Basis 4 Construction 5 Similarity with the Aceh Independist Flag 6 See also 7 Notes and references 8 External links

[edit] History

Main article: Ottoman flag

The crescent and star, while generally regarded as Islamic symbols today, have for long been used in Asia Minor and by the old Turks, quite before the advent of Islam. According to one theory, the figure of crescent has its roots in tamghas, markings used as livestock brand or stamp, used by nomadic Turkic clans of Central Asia.

The current design of the Turkish flag is directly derived from the late Ottoman flag, which had acquired its final form around the year 1844. It is known that Ottomans used red flags of triangular shape at least since 1383, which became to be rectangular during the course of history.

Ottomans used several different designs, most of them featuring one or more crescents, for different purposes, like flag with green background signifying the caliphate. During the late imperial period, the distinctive use of the color of red for secular and green for religious institutions was an established practice. In 1844, the eight-pointed star was replaced with a five-pointed star and the flag reached the form of the present Turkish flag.

[edit] Origin of the flag

The origin of the crescent and star as a symbol dates back to the times of ancient Sumerians and ancient Egypt ^{[1] [2]}.

[edit] Legends

The origin of the flag is the subject of various legends in the country, some contradicting the historical knowledge about the Ottoman Flag. The most popular of these legends include:

• Crescent moon and star are holy symbols for pre-Islamic Turkish tribes, red is the cardinal colour for south.

• A dream of the first Ottoman Emperor in which a crescent and star appeared from his chest and expanded, presaging the dynasty's seizure of Constantinople.^[3]

• A crescent and star were spotted on the night of the fall of Constantinople to Mehmet II in 1453.

• Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, walking on a battlefield one night after a victorious battle in the Turkish War of Independence, saw the reflection of the star and crescent formation in a large pool of blood on the rocky hill terrain of Sakarya.

• Another theory regarding the flag dates it back to the Byzantine Empire. It states that a crescent and star were used as the symbol of the Greek city of Byzantion for centuries^{[citation needed]}, and when the Ottomans took Constantinople, it was adopted as the symbol of the Ottoman Empire (the moon refers to the Greek goddess Artemis, while the star refers to the Blessed Virgin Mary). The star and crescent moon, however, were the symbols of the Egyptian goddess Isis much earlier ^[4].

• The most accepted legends of the flag in Turkey is that in a pool of blood of Turkish warriors there was a reflection of the crescent the moon and a star. Two theories are:

1. In the year 1071, after the Battle of Manzikert and the defeat of the Byzantine army, the Seljuk Khan, Alp Arslan was roaming the battlefield where he saw the reflection of the crescent moon and the star on a pool of blood of Turkish warriors. After he saw this image he decided that this would be the flag representing the Turks.
2. After the Battle of Kosovo in 28 July 1389, Murad I was assassinated and on that night (provable by a planetarium program such as Stellarium from the coordinates of Kosovo on that midnight) there was a unique moment of Jupiter and the Moon next to each other. If one considers this sight on a pool of blood, the current structure of the Turkish flag can be seen easily.

[edit] Legal Basis

The fundamentals of the Turkish flag were laid down by Turkish Flag Law No. 2994 of May 29, 1936. Turkish Flag Regulation No. 2/7175 dated July 28, 1937, and Supplementary Regulation No. 11604/2 dated July 29, 1939, were enacted to describe how the flag law would be implemented. The Turkish Flag Law No. 2893 dated September 22, 1983, and Published in the Official Gazette on September 24, 1983, was promulgated six months after its publication. According to Article 9 of Law No. 2893, a statute including the fundamentals of the implementation was also published.

[edit] Construction

Letter	Measure	Length
G	Width	1
A	Distance between the centre of the outer crescent and the seam of the white band	1/2 G
B	Diameter of the outer circle of the crescent	1/2 G
C	Distance between the centres of the inner and outer circles of the crescent	1/16 G
D	Diameter of the inner circle of the crescent	0.4 G
E	Distance between the inner circle of the crescent and the circle around the star	1/3 G
F	Diameter of the circle around the star	1/4 G
L	Length	1 ½ G
M	Width of the seam band	1/30 G

Note that the above specification is what is given by Turkey's flag law, according to Flags of the World. The number 1/3 appears to be inaccurate; the other figures imply that distance E is really 0.34875 G.

[edit] Similarity with the Aceh Independist Flag

The flag used by Independence-seeking rebels in the Indonesian province of Aceh, conducting a decades-long struggle against both the Dutch colonial rule and the post-1949 Indonesian Government, bears an obvious resemblance to the Flag of Turkey - presumably dating from the devoutly Muslim inhabitants of Aceh looking to the Ottoman Empire for at least moral support against the encroaching Dutch.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] See also

• Flags inspired by the flag of Turkey

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• Türk Bayrağı Kanunu, the Turkish text of the Turkish Flag Law No. 2893 dated September 22, 1983, establishing the proportions, production and rules of usage of the flag of Turkey
• Turkey at Flags of the World

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