Next year marks the centennial of the Republic of Turkey, which emerged as the successor to the Ottoman Empire with the 1923 signing of the Treaty of Lausanne (the final accord signed at the end of World War I). The country borders Bulgaria and Greece on the European side and Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in Asia, but most of its boundaries are coastline: along the Black Sea to the north and the Aegean Sea to the west and south.

The CIA World Factbook rates Turkey as having an upper middle-income, diversified Middle Eastern economy. At the same time, it notes that an attempted coup in 2016 and a 2018 currency recession resulted in “economic instability” ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic, which sparked an increase in poverty and unemployment.^a