By 1923, out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal, a general in the Turkish army, had fashioned the Republic of Turkey. For his leadership and reforms, the parliament gave Kemal a new name: Ataturk, which means Father of the Turks . Although most of Turkey is in Asia, it has always had important European ties. In 1952 Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Allied security structure, and provided land for a United States military base. Over the next three decades, the country experienced unstable and ineffective government. In the late 1970s serious economic problems and political upheaval, which nurtured widespread domestic terrorism , so paralyzed the government that the military seized control in 1980. The military restored stability, called elections in 1983, and then withdrew from power. The military commander responsible for these actions, Kenan Evren, was elected president. His prime minister, Turgut Ozal, became the dominant Turkish political figure in the 1980s. In 1989 Ozal was elected by the parliament to the office of president for a seven-year term. He named a loyalist, Yildirim Akbulut, to be his successor as prime minister. Parliamentary elections in 1991 brought Ozal's rival, Suleyman Demirel, to power as prime minister. Demirel had been prime minister before and was twice (in 1971 and 1980) ousted in coups . He opposed Ozal's domestic policies and his close relationship with certain nations. When Ozal died suddenly in 1993, Demirel was elected by parliament to be the new president. Tansu Ciller was chosen to replace Demirel and became the country's first female prime minister. There was no clear winner of the December 1995 general election, but for the first time the Muslim Workers' Party (RP) gained the largest number of votes. Ciller's True Path party and Ozal's Motherland party, led by Mesut Yilmaz, buried their political differences in a coalition in order to prevent the RP from gaining a place in government. Yilmaz became prime minister in 1996 and, under the coalition agreement, Ciller is scheduled to become premier again in 1997. Its position at the edge of Europe bordering Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Armenia gives Turkey considerable strategic importance, as was made clear during the (1990-1991) Persian Gulf War crisis that followed Iraq's occupation of Kuwait . In 1987 the Ozal government applied for membership in the European Community, now the European Union (EU) . Progress towards Turkey's membership continues to be slow because of poor relations with Greece , in particular the 1974 invasion of northern Cyprus , and the treatment of the Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey, where separatists belonging to the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) are seeking the creation of an independent state.