Turkey
Transportation:
As of 2014, the country has a roadway network of 65,623 kilometres (40,776 miles). Turkish State Railways started building high-speed rail lines in 2003. The Ankara-Konya line became operational in 2011, while the Ankara-Istanbul line entered service in 2014.
Opened in 2013, the Marmaray tunnel under the Bosphorus connects the railway and metro lines of Istanbul’s European and Asian sides; while the nearby Eurasia Tunnel (2016) provides an undersea road connection for motor vehicles.
Flag of Turkey:
The flag of Turkey, officially the Turkish flag, is a red flag featuring a white star and crescent. The flag is often called al bayrak (the red flag), and is referred to as al sancak (the red banner) in the Turkish national anthem. The current design of the Turkish flag is directly derived from the late Ottoman flag, which had been adopted in the late 18th century and acquired its final form in 1844. The measures, geometric proportions, and exact tone of red of the flag of Turkey were legally standardized with the Turkish Flag Law on 29 May 1936.
The star and crescent design appears on Ottoman flags beginning in the late 18th or early 19th century. The white star and crescent moon on red as the flag of the Ottoman Empire was introduced 1844.
After the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the new state maintained the last flag of the Ottoman Empire. Proportional standardizations were introduced in the Turkish Flag Law of 1936.
In accounting for the crescent and star symbol, the Ottomans sometimes referred to a legendary dream of the eponymous founder of the Ottoman house, Osman I, in which he is reported to have seen a moon rising from the breast of Sheikh Edebali whose daughter he sought to marry. “When full, it descended into his own breast. Then from his loins there sprang a tree, which as it grew came to cover the whole world with the shadow of its green and beautiful branches.” Beneath it Osman saw the world spread out before him, surmounted by the crescent.