History of the Republic of Turkey of modern Turkey begins with the foundation of the republic on October 29, 1923, with Kemal as its first president. The government was formed from the Ankara-based revolutionary group, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues. The second constitution was ratified by the Grand National Assembly on April 20, 1924. For about the next 10 years, the country saw a steady process of secular Westernization through Atatürk's Reforms, which included the unification of education; the discontinuation of religious and other titles; the closure of Islamic courts and the replacement of Islamic canon law with a secular civil code modeled
Accession of Turkey to the European Union European Parliament, equal to Germany's. If Turkey were to join the European Union, Istanbul would become the most populous metropolis in the EU. Cyprus was divided when, on 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded and occupied a third of the island in response to an Athens-engineered coup aimed at annexing Cyprus to Greece. Since then, Turkey has refused to acknowledge the Republic of Cyprus (an EU member since 2004) as the sole authority on the island, and recognizes the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since its establishment in 1983. The Turkish invasion in 1974 and the resulting movement of refugees