Turkey has also fostered close cultural, political, economic and industrial relations with the Middle East, the Turkic states of Central Asia and the African countries through membership in organizations such as the Turkic Council, Joint Administration of Turkic Arts and Culture, Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Economic Cooperation Organization. Given its strategic location, large economy and military strength, Turkey is a major regional power.
Etymology
Main article: Name of Turkey
The name of Turkey, Türkiye in the Turkish language, can be divided into two components: the ethnonym Türk and the abstract suffix –iye meaning "owner", "land of" or "related to" (derived from the Arabic suffix –iyya, which is similar to the Greek and Latin suffixes –ia). The first recorded use of the term "Türk" or "Türük" as an autonym is contained in the Orkhon inscriptions of the Göktürks (Celestial Turks) of Central Asia (c. 8th century CE). Tu–kin has been attested as early as 177 BCE as a name given by the Chinese to the people living south of the Altay Mountains of Central Asia. The English word "Turkey" is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia (c. 1369).[17] The Greek cognate of this name, Tourkia, was originally used by the Byzantines to describe medieval Hungary[18][19][20] (as the Hungarians and Turks have ancestral links) but they later began using this name to define the Seljuk-controlled parts of Anatolia in the centuries that followed the Battle of Manzikert in 1071