Flag of Turkey

Turkey

Use	National flag and ensign
Proportion	2:3
Adopted	1844
Design	A red field with a white crescent moon and five-pointed star slightly left of centre.

The flag of Turkey (Turkish: Türk bayrağı) is a red flag with a white crescent moon and a star in its centre. The flag is called Ay Yıldız (literally, moon star.) or Albayrak (Red flag). The Turkish flag is referred to as Alsancak (Red banner) in the Turkish National Anthem.

The flag has a complex origin since it is an ancient design, and uses the same symbols of the late flag of the Ottoman Empire which were adopted in 1844 with the Tanzimat reforms; though the shape, placement and shade of the colour vary. The geometric proportions of the flag were legally standardised with the Turkish Flag Law in 1936. The shade of red used in the flag is approximated by RGB (227, 10, 23).

History

Presidential Standard

Turkish flag made of flowers

Main article: Ottoman flag

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

Ottomans used several different designs, most of them featuring one or more crescents, for different purposes, such as the flag with green background signifying the caliphate. During the late imperial period, the distinctive use of the color red for secular and green for religious institutions became 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; Red was the colour of Umar I, the Caliph who ruled from AD 634 to 644 and was known as a great consolidator of the Islamic Empire. In the 14th century red became the colour of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Flag's crescent moon was thicker than its current design.

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

Possible origins

File:Gokturks coin.png

A bronze Gokturk coin, late 7th or early 8th Century AD Catalogue of the Coins of the Turkic Qaghanate by Gaybullah Babayarov

The star and crescent motif appears on a Gokturk coin of the second Turkic Kaghanate, from the first half of the 8th century AD found at Chach (Tashkent oasis). This suggests that the symbol was in use among the Turks (or at least known to them from Sogdian examples) prior to their arrival in Anatolia.

Moon (Moonstar) is illustrated in a lot of flags of the world countries. The moonstar is the main symbol of the Flag of Turkey

The crescent moon and star were mistakenly attributed to the Islamic faith. However, Islam has historically had no symbol or symbols - in fact there is a disdain within Islam for the use of iconic symbols - and many Muslims find its use blasphemous, even to this day. After all, the moon and star used in conjunction were originally pagan icons. Though the Crescent Moon and a Star appear on the flags of several Muslim countries, it should be seen more as a historical symbol of the land, the territory or the empire, rather than of a state religion. It was adopted by reformists who changed the Islamic Constitution.

Star and Crescent with the points of the crescent facing left and the star on the left represents the moon goddess Dianna and the "son of the morning", the name of Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12. Witchcraft uses it this way and Satanism turns it in the opposite direction i.e. the points towards the right, and the pentagram on its right.

Historically, in accounting for the crescent and star symbol, Ottomans sometimes referred to a legendary dream of the eponymous founder of the Ottoman house, Osman I, in which he is reported to have seen a moon rising from the breast of a Muslim judge whose daughter he sought to marry. "When full, it descended into his own breast. Then from his loins there sprang a tree, which as it grew came to cover the whole world with the shadow of its green and beautiful branches." Beneath it Osman saw the world spread out before him, surmounted by the crescent. The absence of any mention of a star in this dream does, however, seem to make it a rather unlikely explanation for the specific star and crescent symbol.

Victory of the Mongols (left) over the Turkic Mamluks (right) at the 1299 Battle of Homs. After conquering Egypt from the Mamluks in 1517, the Ottoman dynasty, starting from Sultan Selim I, took over the title of Caliph, which was previously carried by the Mamluk sultans.

The crescent moon and star were holy symbols for pre-Islamic Turkic tribes, while red was the cardinal color for west in ancient Turkic culture. In Turkish tradition, red also represents hegemony, while white represents power, justice, exaltation and purity. Göktürks, a pre-Islamic Turkic people who lived in Central Asia, used crescent and star on their coins. A 1500 years old Göktürk coin includes three figures of a crescent moon and a star around the possible figure of a leader.

Legends

The most accepted legend of the flag in Turkey is that in a pool of blood of Turkish warriors, there was a reflection of the crescent moon and a star. The most popular version of this legend is that 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.

Other Turkish legends include:

File:Nanobayrak.jpg

Scientists created the smallest flag in the world (700 nanometers wide and about 2 nanometers high), produced at the Bilkent University Nanophysics Department.

• A dream of the first leader of Xiong-nu Alliance, Mete Khan in which a crescent and star appeared from his chest and expanded.

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

Legal basis

Fundamentals of the Turkish flag were laid down by Turkish Flag Law No. 2994 on 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.

Construction

Letter	Measure	Length
G	Width
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	2/5 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 white hem at the hoist	1/30 G

The above specification is what is given by Turkish Flag Law. Note that this implies that the distance between (the left edge of) the inner circle of the crescent and a vertical line connecting the two pointed ends of the crescent is 279/800 G = 0.34875 G; thus, the left point of the star protrudes with about 0.0154 G beyond that line.

A common mistake in rendering the flag is to omit the white hem at the hoist (the left side).

Similarity with the Aceh Independentist Flag

Aceh independentist flag

The flag used by the independence-seeking rebels in the Indonesian province of Aceh, who have conducted a decades-long struggle against both 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 16th century Aceh who declared allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan and Caliph Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566 and asked for his support against the encroaching Portuguese and Dutch, upon which the Ottoman Indian Ocean Fleet under Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis arrived at Aceh in 1569.

Similarity with the Uyghur Independentist Flag

The "Kokbayraq" (Blue Banner) flag

The Uyghurs use a blue version of the flag. This flag is used by Uyghurs as a symbol of the East Turkestan independence movement. It is almost identical to the flag of Turkey except with a blue background.

Similarity with Other Flags

Northern Cyprus or Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus flag

Iraqi Turkmeneli flag

Flag of Northern Cyprus or Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, flag of former Republic of Hatay, Turkmeneli flag or Iraqi Turkmens, etc. Flag of the State of Kelantan, Malaysia

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