Official Colors
Design Breakdown
Turkey's flag is a white crescent and a white five-pointed star on a red field. The crescent is slightly offset from centre toward the hoist, with a circle cut from the crescent's concave side creating the characteristic crescent shape.
The crescent and star are ancient symbols of Islam and of the Ottoman Empire. The current proportions and exact positioning were codified by law in 1844 under Sultan Abdülmecid I and refined under the Turkish Republic.
History & Symbolism
The crescent was associated with Constantinople long before Islam — it appeared on Byzantine coins. The Ottoman Empire used a crescent-and-star symbol extensively, and it became widely associated with Islam through Ottoman influence.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Turkish Republic (founded 1923) retained the flag unchanged, representing continuity of territory if not of political system. The current precise specifications were standardised in 1936.