Flag of Turkey

What the flag of Turkey looks like

The flag of Turkey has a red field with a ratio of 2:3. A white crescent moon opens toward the fly (the side away from the pole), and a white five-pointed star sits between the horns of the crescent. One point of the star is directed to the upper right, and the pair is placed slightly toward the hoist rather than at the exact center of the flag.

The geometry is defined in detail by the Turkish Flag Law. The crescent is drawn as a larger white circle with a smaller red circle cut out of it, and the law fixes the size of the star and the distance between it and the crescent. These rules keep the flag identical everywhere, from government buildings to schools.

The same design appears in the Turkey flag emoji, and a ready image is on the download page. The country now uses the name Türkiye in international settings, but the flag has not changed.

Turkish flag meaning and symbolism

The Turkish state does not give the crescent and the star an official meaning. The red color is usually said to stand for the blood of the soldiers who died for the country, and the white for purity and peace.

A well-known legend explains the symbols. After a battle, the moon and a star were reflected in a pool of blood left on the field, and the soldiers adopted the image as their emblem. Different versions of the story set it in different battles, such as the Battle of Kosovo of 1389, and it is a folk tale rather than recorded history.

In fact, the crescent and star are very old symbols in the region. The crescent was an emblem of the city of Byzantium long before the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, and the Ottomans adopted it, and later the combination of crescent and star, as an emblem of their state. In later centuries it became associated with Islam and appears on the flags of other majority-Muslim countries, but it is not a religious symbol in the Turkish flag's law.

History of the Turkish flag

Early Ottoman flags came in different colors, including red, green and white, and often featured crescents or other symbols. The Ottoman Empire did not have a single official national flag until the late 18th century. A red flag with a white crescent and star was in use under Sultan Selim III around 1793, and in 1844, during the Tanzimat reforms, the red flag with a crescent and star was set as the official flag. The star's shape varied until the five-pointed form was fixed.

After the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was defeated and occupied. The nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) fought the War of Independence (1919-1923) under the same red flag. It was kept when the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on 29 October 1923, so the national flag is almost the same as the one the Ottomans used.

The exact proportions and geometry were fixed by a law passed in 1936, and a new Turkish Flag Law in 1983 updated the regulations on how and when the flag may be used. The flag is flown on public buildings and on national holidays, such as Republic Day on 29 October and Victory Day on 30 August.

Flags that look like the Turkish flag

The flag most often compared with Turkey's is the flag of Tunisia. It is also red with a crescent and star, but they are red and sit inside a white disk in the center. Azerbaijan, Pakistan and others use a crescent and star too, with different colors and layouts. The flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey, also uses a red crescent and star on a white field between two red stripes.