Flag of Turkey

What the flag means

The star and crescent come from Ottoman flags and have a pre-Islamic past in Asia Minor. The flag historian Whitney Smith records several legends about the design. In one, Sultan Murad II saw a crescent moon and a star reflected in pools of blood after the Battle of Kosovo in 1448.

History

The Ottoman Empire introduced a red flag with a white crescent and five-pointed star around 1844. After the Republic of Türkiye was proclaimed in 1923, it kept the last Ottoman flag. A flag law of 29 May 1936 fixed its proportions and the exact shapes. Law No. 2893 of 22 September 1983 replaced it without changing the design, and a 1985 regulation set the shade of red.

Turks call it Ay Yıldız ('moon star') or Al Bayrak ('red flag'). The national anthem calls it al sancak, the 'red banner'.

Earlier flags of Turkey

1. 1793–1844Ottoman naval flag: red with a white crescent and a many-pointed star

Flags that look like this one

TurkeyTunisia

White crescent and star on red. On Tunisia's flag they sit inside a white disc; on Turkey's they sit directly on the red.

Flags of Turkey's neighbours

• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Bulgaria
• Georgia
• Greece
• Iran
• Iraq
• Syria