Yenikapı

Yenikapı (Turkish pronunciation: [jenikapɯ]) is a port and a quarter in Istanbul, Turkey, in the metropolitan district of Fatih on the European side of the Bosphorus and along the southern shore of the city's historically central peninsula.

Yenikapı is notable for the ongoing excavations on its Byzantine port discovered in 2004. This has become one of the largest investigations in Europe, because of the size and the number of the shipwrecks found since the initial discovery, and the large number of associated artefacts. The commercial harbor, called the Harbour of Theodosius, in use between the 5th and the 10th centuries, was an alternative to Constantinople's traditional berths situated along the inlet of the Golden Horn.

Transportation

The Yenikapı Transfer Center is also the site of an underground mass rapid transit terminal, construction of which was delayed by the massive excavations necessary for the project. The new Yenikapi terminal provides interchanges between the Hafif Metro (M1) line that connects to the airport, the Istanbul Metro's M2 line, and the new Marmaray railway link connecting the Asian and European sides of the city through a new tunnel under the Bosporus.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkish pronunciation: [ɾeˈd͡ʒep tajˈjip ˈæɾdo.an]; born 26 February 1954) is the 12th and current President of Turkey, in office since 2014. He previously served as the Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as the Mayor of İstanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001 and led it to three general election victories in 2002, 2007 and 2011 before standing down as leader upon his election as President in 2014. Originating from an Islamist political background and as a self-described conservative democrat, his administration has overseen social conservative and liberal economic policies.

Educated in an Imam Hatip school, Erdoğan was a semi-professional footballer playing for Kasımpaşa Spor Kulübü and was involved in Islamist political movements as a student before being elected as the Mayor of İstanbul from the Islamist Welfare Party in 1994. He was banned form office and sentenced to 10 months in prison for religious intolerance in 1998 and later abandoned openly Islamist politics, establishing the moderate conservative AKP in 2001. Winning just short of a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the 2002 general election, the party's co-founder Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister until his government annulled Erdoğan's ban from political office. Erdoğan subsequently became Prime Minister in March 2003 after winning a seat in a by-election held in Siirt.

Turkish language

Turkish ( Türkçe ), also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 10–15 million native speakers in Southeast Europe (mostly in East Thrace) and 60-65 million native speakers in Western Asia (mostly in Anatolia). Outside of Turkey, smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus (although a partially recognized state), Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin script.

The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics. Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect.