Topic summary
Turkish Army
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Turkish Land Forces.
History
The Turkish Army traces its origin to the Ottoman Army. A theory accepted officially was that the Ottoman Armed Forces had been founded in 1363, when the Pençik corps (the predecessor of the Janissary Corps, the first full time professional military force established in Europe after the Roman legions) had been formed and, in this context, on 28 June 1963, it celebrated the 600th anniversary of its foundation. In the same year, one of the prominent Pan-Turkists, Nihal Atsız, asserted that the Turkish Army had been founded in 209 BC, when Modu Chanyu of the Xiongnu is thought to have formed an army based on the decimal system. In 1968, Yılmaz Öztuna proposed this theory to Cemal Tural, who was the Chief of the General Staff of the Republic of Turkey at the time. In 1973, when the Turkish Army celebrated the 610th anniversary of its foundation, Nihal Atsız published his claim again. After the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, the Turkish Army formally adopted the date 209 BC as its year of foundation.