As you will realize as soon as you arrive, the flag of Turkey is everywhere in the country, as its population stands out for its nationalist and patriotic sentiment. So, as you will have to quickly familiarize yourself with it, in the following lines we explain its possible meaning and in what places you can see the largest in the country, converted into authentic symbols for the population.
What the Flag of Turkey is Like
The flag of Turkey is very easy to recognize. On a red background, a crescent moon (which is actually a waning moon) and a five-pointed star are displayed. As we told you on the page with General Information about the country, the explanations about the flag of Turkey are not unanimously accepted.
In fact, some institutions such as the Encyclopedia Britannica connect its main symbols with ancient Byzantium and later Constantinople (previous names of the city of Istanbul): in Byzantium, the moon and the star would be a reference to the goddess Diana Artemis, and in Christian Constantinople, a reference to the Virgin as queen of Heaven.
But, coincidences of life, also the peoples of Central Asia who conquered Anatolia carried the crescent-waning moon as a symbol, and were later assimilated by all of Islam in general.
As for the color red, it was imposed on the green that the Ottoman Empire had been using for a practical and simple reason: red looked better on the ships of its naval armada. The sum of all these symbols was finally confirmed with the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
Where the Large Flags of Turkey Are
Of the thousands and thousands of flags that fly in Turkey, it is worth stopping at several, for their pharaonic dimensions. The one that is usually considered the highest in the country flies on a mast of 116 meters altitude and is located in the town of Kavak, in the province of Samsun, near the Black Sea coast.
However, much more famous and photographed is the one that was inaugurated in 2021 on the Çamlica hill, in Istanbul, on the Asian side of the city, thus joining two other great symbols of the neighborhood: the Grand Mosque and the Çamlica Tower. Its elevated location makes it visible from many points of the city, to which are added the 111 meters of the mast on which it has been mounted. Its inauguration coincided with Sovereignty Day and is a tribute to the creation of the Turkish Parliament in 1920 by Kemal Mustafa Ataturk.
However, as far as dimensions are concerned, the flag located in Kahramanmaras, a city in the Southeastern Anatolia region, is larger. But the curious thing is that this large Turkish flag, of 40,000 square meters, does not wave, since it is a painting made directly on the side of a mountain. For this, special pigments are used that allow greater durability.
Its location, by the way, is also very high, as it is on Mount Ahir at about 1,800 meters of altitude, and it has been chosen because it has played a key role in the Turkish War of Independence against the Greeks.
And since this mountain is visible from the city itself, the flag will thus crown a panoramic view of nationalist sentiment for its citizens because, in fact, it recalls a similar initiative in the Nicosia area of the North, on the Turkish-speaking side of the island of Cyprus (its flag shows similar symbolism, but with the colors white and red inverted with respect to the flag of Turkey).
