Presidential Seal of Turkey
| Presidential Seal of Turkey | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Details | |
| Armiger | President of Turkey |
| Adopted | 1923 |
| Escutcheon | A red circle with a large 16-pointed star (the Sun) in the center, which is surrounded by 16 five-pointed stars. |
The Presidential Seal of Turkey is the official seal of the President of Turkey.
It has a large 16-pointed star (the Sun, symbolizing the Republic of Turkey) in the center, which is surrounded by 16 five-pointed stars, symbolizing the 16 Great Turkish Empires in history.
The roots of the Presidential Seal and Presidential Flag of Turkey go back to September 1922, when a similar flag was used on the automobile that took Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to İzmir during the final days of the Turkish War of Independence. This flag is currently on display at the Anıtkabir Museum in Ankara. The Presidential Flag's characteristics and proportions were legalized with the Sancak Talimatnamesi law on October 22, 1925. According to this law, the Presidential Seal's dimensions were defined as "70cm x 70cm", while the Sun in the center (which looked similar to the current one) was a 20-pointed star containing 10 sharp-edged and 10 oval-edged light rays. The "70cm x 70cm" dimensions of the Presidential Seal were maintained in the Turkish Flag Law of May 29, 1936; but were later reduced to "30cm x 30cm" with a new legal amendment that was made on September 14, 1937. The number of the light rays in the Sun of the Presidential Seal were reduced to 16 (8 long and 8 short light rays, all of them sharp-edged) in order to symbolize the 16 Turkic states in history, with another legal amendment on February 18, 1978. The seal and flag took their current shape and proportions with the final legal amendment on January 25, 1985.
The 16 Great Turkic Empires are a Pan-Turkist concept introduced in 1969 by Akib Özbek. Its association with the seal was introduced in 1985, under president Turgut Özal. Prior to this assertion, the 16 stars had been taken as representing sixteen medieval beyliks which succeeded the Seljuk Empire.
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