1918: Turkey, headed by Tewifiq Pasha, ends its participation in World War I on Germany’s side. Some 325,000 men were killed under the Ottoman flag, as were 2 million civilians, including Armenians killed in a genocide perpetrated by the Turks.
- Turkey's Genocide Problem--and the U.S. House's
- How Turkey and Armenia Reconciled at a World Cup Qualifying Match
- Turkey: Country Profile
1923: Turkey moves its capital from Istanbul to Ankara, in the center of the country.
1977: Four Palestinians hijacked carrying pistols and grenades hijack a German Lufthansa Boeing 737 airliner with 92 people on board and demand the release of Red Army terrorists from German jails. The plane was on a scheduled flight from the Spanish island of Majorca to Frankfurt. The hijackers belong to a splinter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It’s headed by Zuhair Akkasha, a London-trained aviation engineer born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. His accomplices include Nadia Shehade Doebis, 21, and Nabil Ibrahim Harb, 20. The three are killed in a commando raid by West German soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, on the fourth day of the ordeal, 90 minutes before a threatened massacre of passengers by the hijackers. A fourth hijacker, Suheila Saleh, a Palestinian from Kuwait, is wounded in the raid. Akkasha murdered the plane’s captain, Jurgen Schumann, in cold blood after ordering the captain to kneel down in the center of the aisle and shooting him through the mouth.
1981: Hosni Mubarak is “elected” president of Egypt in a referendum. The ballot carries a picture of Mubarak and reads, “Do you agree with the election of Mohammed Hosni Mubarak as the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt?” Voters are told either to mark a white circle labeled “agree” or a black circle labeled “disagree.” An official Egyptian tally claims 98.63 percent of the electorate, or 9,567,904, “agree,” with 149,650 opposed. Mubarak takes the place of President Anwar Sadat, assassinated a week earlier.
1990: In Lebanon, renegade Gen. Michel Aoun, leader a Christian military force opposed to Syrian occupation in Lebanon, is forced to surrender by taking refuge in the French Embassy, marking the official end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.
