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This article is about the international association football organisation. For the video games, see FIFA (video game series).
Fédération Internationale de Football Association FIFA Logo (2010).svg
World Map FIFA.svg
Map of the members of FIFA according to their confederation Abbreviation     FIFA
Motto     For the Game. For the World.Formation     21 May 1904 (110 years ago)
Type     Federation of national associations Headquarters     Zürich, Switzerland
Coordinates     47°22′53″N 8°34′28″ECoordinates: 47°22′53″N 8°34′28″E Region served
    Worldwide Membership
    209 national associations
Official language
    English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish
President
    Sepp Blatter
Senior Vice-President
    Julio Grondona
Vice-Presidents
    Jim Boyce, Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein
Affiliations     International Olympic Committee
Website     www.fifa.com

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association(FIFA /ˈfiːfə/; English: International Federation of Association Football) is the international governing body of association football, futsal and beach soccer. FIFA is responsible for the organisation of football's major international tournaments, notably the World Cup which commenced in 1930 and the Women's World Cup which commenced in 1991. FIFA was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, membership now comprises 209 national associations. Member countries must each also be members of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided: Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania and South America.

Although FIFA does not control the rules of the game, it is responsible for both the organisation of a number of tournaments and their promotion, which generate revenue from sponsorship. In 2013, FIFA had revenues of over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, for a net profit of 72 million, and had cash reserves over 1.4 billion U.S. dollars

Reports by investigative journalists have linked the FIFA leadership with rapaciousness, corruption, and bribery, and alleged that vote rigging was involved in the election of president Sepp Blatter. FIFA's choice to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively, have been widely criticised, with allegations of vote buying.

History
Main article: History of FIFA

The need for a single body to oversee association football became apparent at the beginning of the 20th century with the increasing popularity of international fixtures. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in the rear of the headquarters of the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques at the Rue Saint Honoré 229 in Paris on 21 May 1904.[4] The French name and acronym persist even outside French-speaking countries. The founding members were the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain (represented by Madrid Football Club; the Spanish federation was not created until 1913), Sweden and Switzerland. Also, that same day, the German Association declared its intention of affiliating through a telegram.

The first president of FIFA was Robert Guérin. Guérin was replaced in 1906 by Daniel Burley Woolfall from England, by then a member of the association. The first tournament FIFA staged, the association football competition for the 1908 Olympics in London was more successful than its Olympic predecessors, despite the presence of professional footballers, contrary to the founding principles of FIFA.

Membership of FIFA expanded beyond Europe with the application of South Africa in 1908, Argentina and Chile in 1912, and Canada and the United States in 1913.

During World War I, with many players sent off to war and the possibility of travel for international fixtures severely limited, the organisation's survival was in doubt. Post-war, following the death of Woolfall, the organisation was run by Dutchman Carl Hirschmann. It was saved from extinction, but at the cost of the withdrawal of the Home Nations (of the United Kingdom), who cited an unwillingness to participate in international competitions with their recent World War enemies. The Home Nations later resumed their membership.

The FIFA collection is held by the National Football Museum in England.
Structure
Main article: List of FIFA Member Associations
Map of the World with the six confederations: membership details below.
Legal and bylaws

FIFA is an association established under the Laws of Switzerland. Its headquarters are in Zurich.

FIFA's supreme body is the FIFA Congress, an assembly made up of representatives from each affiliated member association. The Congress has met 66 times since 1904; it now assembles in ordinary session once every year and, additionally, extraordinary sessions have been held once a year since 1998. At the congress, decisions are made relating to FIFA's governing statutes and their method of implementation and application. Only the Congress can pass changes to FIFA's statutes. The congress approves the annual report, and decides on the acceptance of new national associations and holds elections. Congress elects the President of FIFA, its General Secretary, and the other members of FIFA's Executive Committee on the year following the FIFA World Cup. Each national football association has one vote, regardless of its size or footballing strength.

The President and General Secretary are the main officeholders of FIFA, and are in charge of its daily administration, carried out by the General Secretariat, with its staff of approximately 280 members. FIFA's Executive Committee, chaired by the President, is the main decision-making body of the organisation in the intervals of Congress. FIFA's worldwide organisational structure also consists of several other bodies, under authority of the Executive Committee or created by Congress as standing committees. Among those bodies are the Finance Committee, the Disciplinary Committee, and the Referees Committee.
Administrative cost

FIFA publishes its results according to IFRS. The total compensation for the management committee in 2011 was 30 million for 35 persons. Blatter, the only full-time person on the committee, earns approximately two million Swiss francs, 1.2 million in salary and the rest in bonuses. A report in London's Sunday Times in June 2014 said the members of the committee had their salaries doubled from $100,000 to $200,000 during the year. The report also said leaked documents had indicated $4.4 million in secret bonuses had been paid to the committee members following the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
6 confederations and 209 national associations
FIFA confederations
AFC
CAF
CONCACAF
CONMEBOL
OFC
UEFA

    v
    t
    e

Besides its worldwide institutions (presidency, Executive Committee, Congress, etc.) there are six confederations recognised by FIFA which oversee the game in the different continents and regions of the world. National associations, and not the continental confederations, are members of FIFA. The continental confederations are provided for in FIFA's statutes, and membership of a confederation is a prerequisite to FIFA membership.

         AFC – Asian Football Confederation

            Australia has been a member of the AFC since 2006

         CAF – Confederation of African Football
         CONCACAF – Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football

            French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname are CONCACAF members although they are in South America. The French Guiana team is a member of CONCACAF but not of FIFA.

         CONMEBOL – Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol
         OFC – Oceania Football Confederation
         UEFA – Union of European Football Associations

            Teams representing the transcontinental nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey are UEFA members, although the majority of their territory is outside of continental Europe. Israel is also member of UEFA. Monaco and the Vatican City are not members of UEFA or FIFA, while Gibraltar is only a member of UEFA.

In total, FIFA recognises 209 national associations and their associated men's national teams as well as 129 women's national teams; see the list of national football teams and their respective country codes. FIFA has more member states than the UN, as FIFA recognises 23 non-sovereign entities as distinct nations, such as the four Home Nations within the United Kingdom and politically disputed territories such as Palestine.

The FIFA Working Committee on Small Nations has categorized potential FIFA members into three categories:

    Independent states not in FIFA (Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Palau, Tuvalu)
    Non-independent territories (Guadeloupe, Greenland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Martinique, Northern Mariana Islands, Réunion, Sint Maarten, Zanzibar)
    Politically sensitive areas (Gibraltar, North Ossetia, Kosovo, Northern Cyprus).

The FIFA World Rankings are updated monthly and rank each team based on their performance in international competitions, qualifiers, and friendly matches. There is also a world ranking for women's football, updated four times a year.
Recognitions and awards

FIFA awards, each year, the title of FIFA Ballon d'Or to the top men's and women's players of the year, as part of its annual awards ceremony which also recognises team and international association football achievements. Until 2009, they awarded the FIFA Player of the Year to the best player, until it and the Ballon d'Or ceased to be awarded. At the Ballon d'Or banquet, the FIFA Puskás Award, the FIFA/FIFPro Best XI, FIFA Fair Play Award, and the FIFA Presidential Award are also awarded.

In 1994 FIFA published the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team. In 2000 FIFA published the results of an Internet poll, declaring Real Madrid to be the FIFA Club of the Century. In 2002 FIFA announced the FIFA Dream Team, an all-time all-star team chosen by fans in a poll.

As part of its centennial celebrations in 2004, FIFA organised a "Match of the Century" between France and Brazil.
Governance and game development
Main article: Laws of the Game (association football)
FIFA headquarters

The laws that govern football, known officially as the Laws of the Game, are not solely the responsibility of FIFA; they are maintained by a body called the International Football Association Board (IFAB). FIFA has members on its board (four representatives); the other four are provided by the football associations of the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, who jointly established IFAB in 1882 and are recognised for the creation and history of the game. Changes to the Laws of the Game must be agreed by at least six of the eight delegates.

FIFA commits itself to constantly improving the sport of football. The FIFA Statutes form the overarching document guiding FIFA's governing system. The governing system is divided into separate bodies that have the appropriate powers to create a system of checks and balances. It consists of four general bodies: the congress, the executive committee, the general secretariat, and standing and ad-hoc committees.

2018 and 2022 World Cup bids
Further information: 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bids
Further information: Garcia Report

FIFA's choice to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, has been widely criticised by media. It has been alleged that some FIFA inside sources insist that the Russian kickbacks of cash and gifts given to FIFA executive members were enough to secure the Russian 2018 bid weeks before the result was announced.[33] Sepp Blatter was widely criticised in the media for giving a warning about the "evils of the media" in a speech to FIFA executive committee members shortly before they voted on the hosting of the 2018 World Cup, a reference to The Sunday Times exposés[34] and the Panorama investigation.

Two members of FIFA's executive committee were banned from all football-related activity in November 2010 for allegedly offering to sell their votes to undercover newspaper reporters. In early May 2011, a British parliamentary inquiry into why England failed to secure the 2018 finals was told by member of parliament, Damian Collins, that there was evidence from the Sunday Times newspaper that Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Jacques Anouma of Côte d'Ivoire were paid by Qatar. Qatar have categorically denied the allegations, as have Hayatou and Anouma.

FIFA President Blatter said, as of 23 May 2011, that British newspaper The Sunday Times has agreed to bring its whistle-blowing source to meet senior FIFA officials, who will decide whether to order a new investigation into alleged World Cup bidding corruption. "[The Sunday Times] are happy, they agreed that they will bring this whistleblower here to Zurich and then we will have a discussion, an investigation of this," Blatter said.

Specifically, the whistleblower claims that FIFA executive committee members Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma were paid $1.5 million to vote for Qatar. The emirate's bid beat the United States in a final round of voting last December. Blatter did not rule out reopening the 2022 vote if corruption could be proved, but urged taking the matter "step by step." The FIFA president said his organization is "anxiously awaiting" more evidence before asking its ethics committee to examine allegations made in Britain's parliament in early May 2011.

Hayatou, who is from Cameroon, leads the Confederation of African Football and is a FIFA vice president. Anouma is president of Ivorian Football Federation. The whistleblower said Qatar agreed to pay a third African voter, Amos Adamu, for his support. The Nigerian was later suspended from voting after a FIFA ethics court ruled he solicited bribes from undercover Sunday Times reporters posing as lobbyists. Blatter said the newspaper and its whistleblower would meet with FIFA secretary general, Jerome Valcke, and legal director, Marco Villiger.

Allegations against FIFA officials have also been made to the UK Parliament by David Triesman, the former head of England's bid and the English Football Association. Triesman told the lawmakers that four long-standing FIFA executive committee members—Jack Warner, Nicolas Leoz, Ricardo Teixeira and Worawi Makudi—engaged in "improper and unethical" conduct in the 2018 bidding, which was won by Russia. All six FIFA voters have denied wrongdoing.
2011 FIFA presidential election

FIFA announced on 25 May 2011 that it had opened the investigation to examine the conduct of four officials—Mohamed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner, along with Caribbean Football Union (CFU) officials Debbie Minguell and Jason Sylvester—in relation to claims made by executive committee member, Chuck Blazer.Blazer, who is the general secretary of the CONCACAF federation, has alleged that violations were committed under the FIFA code of ethics during a meeting organized by Bin Hammam and Warner on 10 and 11 May—the same time Lord Triesman had accused Warner of demanding money for a World Cup 2018 vote—in relation to the 2011 FIFA presidential election, in which Bin Hammam, who also played a key role in the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, allegedly offered financial incentives for votes cast in his favour during the presidential election. As a result of the investigation both Bin Hammam and Warner were suspended. Warner reacted to his suspension by questioning Blatter's conduct and adding that FIFA secretary general, Jerome Valcke, had told him via e-mail that Qatar had bought the 2022 World Cup.Valcke subsequently issued a statement denying he had suggested it was bribery, saying instead that the country had "used its financial muscle to lobby for support." Qatar officials denied any impropriety. Bin Hammam also responded by writing to FIFA, protesting unfair treatment in suspension by the FIFA Ethics Committee and FIFA administration.

Further evidence emerged of alleged corruption. On 30 May 2011, Fred Lunn, vice-president of the Bahamas Football Association, said that he was given $40,000 in cash[49] as an incitement to vote for FIFA presidential candidate, Mohamed bin Hammam. In addition, on 11 June 2011 Louis Giskus, president of the Surinamese Football Association, alleged that he was given $40,000 in cash for "development projects" as an incentive to vote for Bin Hammam.
Response to allegation

After being re-elected as President of FIFA Sepp Blatter responded to the allegations by promising to reform FIFA in wake of the bribery scandal, Danny Jordaan, CEO of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, saying there is great expectation for reform. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is being tipped for a role on the newly proposed 'Solutions Committee, and former Netherlands national football team player Johan Cruyff is also being linked with a role.

UEFA secretary general Gianni Infantino said he hopes for "concrete" measures to be taken by the world game's authority. Saying that "the UEFA executive committee has taken note of the will of FIFA to take concrete and effective measures for good governance ... [and is] following the situation closely."
IOC president Jacques Rogge commented on the situation by saying that he believes FIFA "can emerge stronger" from its worst ever crisis, stating that "I will not point a finger and lecture ... I am sure FIFA can emerge stronger and from within".

Several of FIFA's partners and sponsors have raised concerns about the allegations of corruption, including Coca-Cola, Adidas, Emirates and Visa.Coca-Cola raised concerns by saying "the current allegations being raised are distressing and bad for the sport"; with Adidas saying "the negative tenor of the public debate around Fifa at the moment is neither good for football nor for Fifa and its partners"; moreover Emirates raised its concerns by saying "we hope that these issues will be resolved as soon as possible"; and Visa adding "the current situation is clearly not good for the game and we ask that Fifa take all necessary steps to resolve the concerns that have been raised."

Australian Sports Minister Mark Arbib said it was clear FIFA needed to change, saying "there is no doubt there needs to be reform of FIFA. This is something that we're hearing worldwide", with Australian Senator Nick Xenophon accusing FIFA of "scamming" the country out of the A$46 million (US$49 million) it spent on the Australia 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, saying that "until the investigation into FIFA has been completed, Australia must hold off spending any more taxpayers' money on any future World Cup bids."

Theo Zwanziger, President of the German Football Association, also called on FIFA to re-examine the awarding of the 2022 FIFA World Cup to Qatar.
Transparency International, which had called on FIFA to postpone the election pending a full independent investigation, renewed its call on FIFA to change its governance structure.

Moreover, former Argentine football player Diego Maradona was critical of FIFA in light of the corruption scandal, comparing members of the board to dinosaurs. He said "Fifa is a big museum. They are dinosaurs who do not want to relinquish power. It's always going to be the same." In October 2011, Dick Pound criticized the organization, saying, "FIFA has fallen far short of a credible demonstration that it recognizes the many problems it faces, that it has the will to solve them, that it is willing to be transparent about what it is doing and what it finds, and that its conduct in the future will be such that the public can be confident in the governance of the sport.

The Pakistan Cricket Team (Urdu: پاکستان کرکٹ ٹیم‎) also known as The Green Shirts or Shaheen, is the national cricket team of Pakistan. Represented by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), the team is a full member of the International Cricket Council, and participates in Test, ODI and Twenty20 International cricket matches. Currently Pakistan is ranked third as per the ICC Test rankings. Pakistan have played 823 ODIs, winning 438 (54.83%), losing 360, tying 8 and with 17 ending in no-result. Pakistan were the 1992 World Cup champions, and also came runners-up in the 1999 tournament. Pakistan, in conjunction with other countries in South Asia, have hosted the 1987 and 1996 World Cups, with the 1996 final being hosted at Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. The team has also played 83 Twenty20 Internationals, the most of any team, winning 49 losing 32 and tying 2.Pakistan won the 2009 ICC World Twenty20 and came runners-up in the inaugural tournament in 2007. They are the sole winners of the Asian Test Championship of 1999.

Pakistan have played 386 Test matches, with winning 121, losing 109 and drawing 156. The team has the fourth best win/loss ratio in Test cricket of 1.11, and the 5th-best overall win percentage of 31.42%. Pakistan was given Test status on 28 July 1952, following a recommendation by India,[citation needed] and made its Test debut against India at Feroz Shah Kotla Ground, Delhi, in October 1952, with India winning by an innings and 70 runs the 1950s, several Pakistani Test players had played Test cricket for the Indian cricket team before the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

History
Main article: History of the Pakistani cricket team
See also: Cricket in Pakistan, History of cricket in Pakistan from 1947 to 1970, History of cricket in Pakistan from 1971 to 1985, History of cricket in Pakistan from 1986 to 2000 and History of cricket in Pakistan from 2001
The match held between Sindh & Australia in Karachi on 22 November 1935 was reported by The Sydney Morning Herald

Cricket in Pakistan has a history of even before the creation of the country in 1947. The first ever international cricket match in Karachi was held on 22 November 1935 between Sindh and Australian cricket teams. The match was seen by 5,000 Karachiites. Following the independence of Pakistan in 1947, cricket in the country developed steadily and Pakistan was given Test match status at a meeting of the Imperial Cricket Conference at Lord's Cricket Ground in England on 28 July 1952 following recommendation by India,[8] which, being the successor state of the British Raj, did not have to go through such a process. The first captain of the Pakistan national cricket team was Abdul Hafeez Kardar.

Pakistan's first Test match was played in Delhi in October 1952 as part of a five Test series which India won 2–1. Pakistan made their first tour of England in 1954 and drew the series 1–1 after a memorable victory at The Oval in which fast bowler Fazal Mahmood took 12 wickets. Pakistan's first home Test match was in Bangabandhu National Stadium, Dacca, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). in January 1955 against India, after which four more Test matches were played in Bahawalpur, Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi (all five matches in the series were drawn, the first such occurrence in test history).

The team is considered a strong but unpredictable team. Traditionally Pakistani cricket has been filled with players of great talent but limited discipline, making them a team which could play inspirational cricket one day and then perform less than ordinarily another day. Over the years, competitions between India and Pakistan have always been emotionally charged and provide for intriguing contests, as talented teams and players from both sides of the border elevate their game to new levels to produce high-quality cricket. Pakistani contests with India in the Cricket World Cup have seen packed stadiums and elevated atmospheres no matter where the World Cup has been held. However the fans love their team.
1986 Austral-Asia Cup
Main article: Austral-Asia Cup

The 1986 Austral-Asia Cup, played in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, is remembered as a famous last-ball victory for Pakistan against arch-rivals India, with Javed Miandad emerging as a national hero.India batted first and set a target of 245 runs, leaving Pakistan with a required run rate of 4.92 runs per over. Javed Miandad came in to bat at number 3 and Pakistan lost wickets at regular intervals. Later recalling the match, Miandad stated that his main focus was to lose with dignity. With 31 runs needed in the last three overs, Miandad hit a string of boundaries while batting with his team's lower order, until four runs were required from the last delivery of the match. Miandad received a leg side full toss from Chetan Sharma, which he hit for six over the midwicket boundary.
1992 Cricket World Cup
Main article: 1992 Cricket World Cup
Pakistani opener Yasir Hameed playing against Australia at Lord's in England.

At the 1992 World Cup Semi-final, having won the toss, New Zealand chose to bat first and ended with a total of 262 runs. Pakistan batted conservatively yet lost wickets at regular intervals. With the departure of Imran Khan and Saleem Malik shortly thereafter, Pakistan still required 115 runs at a rate of 7.67 runs per over with veteran Javed Miandad being the only known batsman remaining at the crease. A young Inzamam-ul-Haq, who had just turned 22 and was not a well-known player at the time, burst onto the international stage with a match-winning 60 off 37 balls. Once Inzamam got out, Pakistan required 36 runs from 30 balls, which wicketkeeper Moin Khan ended with a towering six over long off, followed by the winning boundary to midwicket. The match is seen as the emergence of Inzamam onto the international stage.

The 1992 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand marked Pakistan's first World Cup victory. It is remembered for the comeback Pakistan made after losing key players such as Waqar Younis and Saeed Anwar and being led by an injured captain Imran Khan. Pakistan lost 3 of their first 5 matches and were nearly eliminated in the first round of the tournament after being bowled out for 74 runs against England, until the match was declared as a "no result" due to rain. Imran Khan famously told the team to play as "cornered tigers", after which Pakistan won five successive matches, including, most famously, the semi-final against hosts New Zealand and the final against England.
2007 Cricket World Cup

The 2007 Cricket World Cup was one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history when Pakistan was knocked out of the competition in a shock defeat to Ireland, who were playing in their first competition. Pakistan, needing to win to qualify for the next stage after losing to the West Indies in their opening match, were put into bat by Ireland. They lost wickets regularly and only 4 batsmen scored double figures. In the end they were bowled out by the Irish for 132 runs. The Irish went on to win the match, after Niall O'Brien scored 72 runs. This meant that Pakistan had been knocked out during the first round for the second consecutive World Cup. Tragedy struck the team when coach Bob Woolmer died one day later on 18 March 2007 in a hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. Jamaican police spokesman, Karl Angell, reported on 23 March 2007 that, "Mr Woolmer's death was due to asphyxiation as a result of manual strangulation" and that, "Mr Woolmer's death is now being treated by the Jamaica police as a case of murder."[19] Assistant coach Mushtaq Ahmed acted as temporary coach for the team's final group game of the tournament.[20] Subsequent to his team's defeat and the death of Woolmer, Inzamam-ul-Haq announced his resignation as captain of the team and his retirement from one-day cricket, stating that he would continue to take part in Test cricket but not as captain.[21] Shoaib Malik was announced as his successor.Following his return to the squad, Salman Butt was appointed as vice-captain until December 2007.

On 23 March 2007, Pakistan players and officials were questioned by Jamaican police and submitted DNA samples along with fingerprints, as part of the routine enquiries in the investigation into Woolmer's murder. Three days after leaving the West Indies for Pakistan, via London, the Pakistan team were ruled out as suspects. The deputy commissioner of Jamaican police. Mark Shields, the detective in charge of the investigation, announced, "It's fair to say they are now being treated as witnesses." "I have got no evidence to suggest it was anybody in the squad." A memorial service was held in Sacred Heart Church, Lahore, for Bob Woolmer on 1 April 2007. Among the attendees were Pakistan players and dignitaries, including Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was quoted as saying, "After Woolmer's family, the Pakistan team was the most aggrieved by his death." After the World Cup ended, serious doubts were raised about the investigation, with increasing speculation that Woolmer died of natural causes. This has now been accepted as fact, and the case has been closed.
Shahid Afridi batting against Sri Lanka in the ICC World Twenty20 Final at Lord's in England.

On 20 April 2007, a PCB official announced that former Test cricketer Talat Ali would act as interim coach, in addition to his rôle as team manager, until a new coach had been appointed. On 16 July 2007, Geoff Lawson, previously head coach of New South Wales, was appointed coach of the Pakistan for two years, becoming the third foreigner to take on the rôle. In the 2007 ICC World Twenty20, Pakistan exceeded expectations to reach the final but ended as runners-up, after losing the final to India in a nail-biting finish. On 25 October 2008, Intikhab Alam was named as a national coach of the team by the PCB.
2009 ICC World T20

On 21 June 2009 Pakistan won the 2009 ICC World Twenty20, beating Sri Lanka in the final by eight wickets. Pakistan had begun the tournament slowly losing two of their first three matches but after dismissing New Zealand for 99 runs in the Super 8 stage they had a run of four consecutive wins including beating previously unbeaten South Africa, in the semi-final and Sri Lanka in the Final. Due to the Pakistan cricket player Shahid Afridi who was at top form made Pakistan win the match including the world cup.
2011 Cricket World Cup

Pakistan started well in the ICC Cricket World Cup, which was held in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, after beating Kenya, Sri Lanka(one of the tournament favourites) and narrowly beating Canada. After a huge loss against New Zealand, Pakistan defeated Zimbabwe by 7 wickets.'. One of the highlights of the tournament for Pakistan was when they beat Australia, who were led by 3 brilliant pace bowlers, Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson. However Pakistan defied the odds and defeated Australia, courtesy of a brilliant bowling display. In the quarter-finals they played West Indies. Pakistan were ruthless, as they emphatically beat the West Indies by 10 wickets, due to another brilliant bowling display. In the semi-finals on 30 March, Pakistan had a match with its fiercest rival, India. India, due to Tendulkar who was dropped several times in a very poor fielding display, managed 260 after they batted first. Not having a good batting line-up along with a slow start to the chase, Pakistan were 29 runs short as India reached the final (India went on to win the final). Pakistan have never defeated India in an ODI World Cup match to date, losing in all 5 matches contested between the two sides.
2012 ICC T20I World Cup

On 11 July 2012, Pakistan announced the provisional 30-man squad for the ICC T20I World Cup finally decided their 15-man squad by September. Pakistan began their campaign by topping their group, with wins over New Zealand and Bangladesh. The team qualified for the semi-finals by overcoming South Africa and Australia in the Super Eight stage which also included India. Pakistan met Sri Lanka in the semi-finals on 4 October and lost by 16 runs, getting knocked out of the tournament. The captain's decision to let Abdul Razzaq, and Asad Shafiq sit out of the match instead of Shahid Afridi was heavily criticised by supporters. Criticism also came from letting out-of-form Umar Gul play every single match instead of Mohammad Sami. However, Pakistan is still the only team to have reached the semi-finals in all World T20 tournaments.

Pakistan women's cricket team
Main article: Pakistan national women's cricket team

The Pakistan women's cricket team has a much lower profile than the men's team. For all national women's cricket teams, the female players are paid much less their male counterparts and the women's teams do not receive as much popular support or recognition as the men's team. The women's teams also have a less packed schedule compared to men's teams and play fewer matches. The team played it first match during 1997, when it was on tour of New Zealand and Australia and were invited to the World Cup later that year and in the Women's Asia Cup during 2005 the team came third place. During 2007, the team with face South Africa and later in the year travel to Ireland to play in the Women's World Cup Qualifier. The team also played at the T20 England World Cup, the team finished 6th place, beating Sri Lanka and South Africa in 2009.
Team Colours

In Test matches, the team wears cricket whites, with an optional sweater or sweater-vest with a green and gold V-neck for use in cold weather. The team's official sponsor's have been Pepsi since the 1990s with their logo displayed on the right side of the chest and sleeve with the Pakistan Cricket star deployed on the left in test cricket. Boom Boom Cricket signed a deal with Pakistan Cricket Board in April 2010 to become the kit sponsors of the Pakistan team, the deal ended on the end of 2012 Asia Cup.

Pakistan's One Day and Twenty 20 kits vary from year to year with the team wearing its famous green color in various shades from kit to kit. Historically, Pakistan's kits have had shades of blue, yellow and golden in addition to green.
For official ICC Tournament's 'Pakistan' is written on the front of the jersey in place of the sponsor logo, with the sponsor logo being placed on the sleeve. However for non ICC tournaments and matches the 'Pepsi' logo feature prominently on the front of the shirt. As always the Pakistan Cricket Board logo is placed on the left chest. An example of the different shades of green Pakistan wears from kit to kit can be seen in the example of the 2010–11 kit which was in the famous lime green color. However for the World Cup a new jersey with a dark green to light green fade was introduced in February 2011. CA Sports became Pakistan team's sponsor during 2012, and is currently providing kits for all three cricket formats.

Pakistan Hockey Federation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Pakistan Hockey Federation.

PHF
Pakistan Hockey federation Logo.svg
Sport     Field Hockey
Founded     1948
Affiliation     International Hockey Federation
Regional affiliation     Asian Hockey Federation
Headquarters     Lahore
Location     National Hockey Stadium, Ferozepur Road
President     Akhtar Rasool
Pakistan

The Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) is the national governing body for field hockey in Pakistan. It is affiliated to the International Hockey Federation (FIH).

The current PHF president is Akhtar Rasool.

Contents

History
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Hockey was originally brought to Pakistan under British rule, and like cricket soon became popular with the local population.

The Pakistan Hockey Federation came into being in 1948, following the independence of Pakistan in 1947. Prior to this players from what is now Pakistan had competed internationally alongside players from what is now India. In the beginning, the Federation's membership included the Provincial Hockey/Sports Associations of West Punjab, East Bengal, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Bahawalpur & Services Sports Board. Pakistan played their first international in London when they defeated Belgium 2-1 in 14th Olympic Games hockey tournament on 2 August 1948.

The first President of PHF was Ghazanfar Ali Khan with Baseer Ali Sheikh as Honorary Secretary. The Pakistan national side soon established a strong reputation in international competition, helping to mainatin interest in the game in Pakistan which assisted the growth of the Federation. However, no full-time central office or secretariat, as such, was established until the 1960s.

The office of the Pakistan Hockey Federation, located in National Hockey Stadium, Lahore, Lahore, was developed into a Secretariat in 1971. It was during the second term as president of Air Marshal Nur Khan from 1978 that Pakistani hockey entered something of a golden age. National Senior, National Junior and Women Hockey Teams were all competing internationally, increasing the work load of PHF Office and secretary Brigadier M. H. Atif tremendously.

On the personal initiative of Air Marshal M. Nur Khan, the FIH introduced the World Cup Tournament and the Champions Trophy Tournament, which are now rated amongst the major international tournaments, alongside the Olympics. At this time, Pakistan held all the major titles in men's international hockey.

However, the 1976 Olympics in Montreal had seen the introduction of artificial turf to international hockey competition. Pakistan was unable to build as many of the new pitches as the European nations or Australia and New Zealand and so the strength of the national side declined. It was after a lapse of 12 years that the Pakistan Hockey Team again started climbing and won the Champions Trophy and the World Cup with Air Vice Marshal Farooq Umar as president and Colonel Mudassar as secretary of the Federation.
AVM Farooq Umar President of PHF 1993-1996

AVM Farooq Umar was also elected “President Pakistan Hockey Federation.” (PHF) It was during his tenure that he Resurrected Pakistan Hockey and made it Win the “World Champions Trophy” and the “World Cup Sydney 94” after a long lapse of 14 years . (Since he Left his President Ship Pakistan has not able to Win these titles although an other 16 long years have since elapsed. His success depended on upfront leadership and the ability to motivate the players right in the play field. (See relevant motivational clips in YouTube.

The PHF has provincial teams who play against each other such as:

    Baloch Lions
    Capital Dynamos
    Frontier Falcon
    Northern Cavaliers
    Shan-e-Punjab
    Sindh Qalanders

In recent times, the Pakistan Hockey Team has seen some lacklustre performances and has failed to win a major hockey tournament since the 1994 World Cup, mainly due to lack of proper nurturing of youth, administrative problems, increasing apathy towards the game by public in favour of cricket, and unstable player-coach relationships.
Presidents

    Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan (1948–50)
    Chaudhry Nazir Ahmed (1950–52)
    Khan Abdul-Qayyum Khan (1952–54)
    Nawab Mushtaq Ahmed Gurmani (1955–56)
    Mian Naseer Ahmed (1956–59)
    General Muhammad Musa (1960–66)
    Air Marshal Nur Khan (1967–69)
    Lieutenant General Khwaja Mohammad Azhar Khan (1969–71)
    Nawab Sadiq Hussain Qureshi (1971–76)
    Air Marshal Nur Khan (1976–84)
    Air Vice-Marshal Waqar Azeem (1984–86)
    Air Marshal Azim Daudpota (1986–90)
    Air Chief Marshal Farooq Feroze Khan (1990–91)
    M Nawaz Tiwana (1991–93)
    Air Vice-Marshal Farooq Umar (1993–96)
    M Nawaz Tiwana (1996–97)
    Akhtar Rasool Chaudhry (1997–99)
    Arif Ali Khan Abbasi (1999–2000)
    General Aziz Khan (2000–05)
    Tariq Kirmani (2005–06)
    Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali (2006–2008)
    Qasim Zia (2008-2013)
    Akhtar Rasool (2013 onwards)

Secretaries

    General Baseer Ali Sheikh (1948–54)
    Syed M Ayub (1954–55)
    Mian Raziuddin Ahmed (1955–60)
    Brigadier Riaz Hussain (1960–62)
    Aurangzeb Khan (1962–64)
    Lieutenant Colonel Zafar Ali Khan (1964–67)
    Wing Commander Masood Ahmed (1967–69)
    Iftikhar Rasool Mali (1969–70)
    Major Khurshid Zaman (1970–72)
    Dr. Chaudhry Ghulam Rasool (1972–73)
    Shamim Yazdani (1973)
    M Sharif Janjua (1973–74)
    Captain Syed Naseer Ahmed (1974–75)
    Sardar Asif Hayat (1975–78)
    Brigadier MH Atif (1978–89)
    Brigadier A Hamid Hameedi (1989–92)
    Colonel Syed Mudasir Asghar (1993–99)
    Brigadier MH Atif (1999–2000)
    Zahir Shah (2000)
    Brigadier Musaratullah Khan (2000–06)
    Akhtarul Islam (2006–07)
    Khalid Memood (2007–08)
    Muhammad Asif Bajwa (2008–2013)
    Mujahid Ali Rana

Skype ˈskaɪp is a telecommunications application software that specializes in providing video chat and voice calls from computers, tablets and mobile devices via the Internet to other devices or telephones/smartphones. Users can also send instant messages, exchange files and images, send video messages and create conference calls. Skype is available to download onto computers running Microsoft Windows, Mac or Linux, as well as Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows Phone smartphones and tablets. Much of the service is free but users require Skype Credit or a subscription to call landline or mobile numbers. Skype is based on a freemium model.

First released in August 2003, Skype was created by Dane Janus Friis and Swede Niklas Zennström in cooperation with Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who developed the backend which was also used in music-sharing application Kazaa. In September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay, valuing the business at $2.75 billion. Skype was later acquired by Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. Microsoft's Skype division headquarters are in Luxembourg, but most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.

Skype allows users to communicate by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Skype-to-Skype calls to other users are free of charge, while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones (over traditional telephone networks) are charged via a debit-based user account system called Skype Credit.

Skype originally featured a hybrid peer-to-peer and client–server system, however since May 2012 Skype is entirely powered by Microsoft-operated supernodeThe 2013 mass surveillance disclosures revealed that Microsoft has granted intelligence agencies unfettered access to supernodes and Skype communication content.

Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate, government, home and education networks citing reasons such as inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage, and security concerns.

History
Main article: Skype Technologies

Skype was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklas Zennström from Sweden. The Skype software was created by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn The first public beta version was released on 29 August 2003.

In June 2005, Skype entered into an agreement with the Polish web portal Onet.pl. On 12 September 2005, eBay Inc. agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA for approximately US$2.5 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration.

On 1 September 2009, it was announced that eBay was selling 65% of Skype to Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for US$1.9 billion, valuing Skype at US$2.75 billion.
Microsoft acquisition

On 10 May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications, S.à r.l for US$8.5 billion.The company was incorporated as a division of Microsoft, and Microsoft acquired all of the company's technologies with the purchase. This was completed on 13 October 2011.

Microsoft phased out its long-standing Windows Live Messenger instant messaging service in favour of Skype, although Messenger continues in mainland China.Microsoft began this transition on 8 April 2013, and completed the move by 30 April of the same year.

Features
Main article: Features of Skype

Registered users of Skype are identified by a unique Skype Name, and may be listed in the Skype Skype allows these registered users to communicate through both instant messaging and voice chat. Voice chat allows telephone calls between pairs of users and conference calling, and uses a proprietary audio codec. Skype's text chat client allows group chats, emoticons, storing chat history and editing of previous messages. Offline messages were implemented in a beta of version 5, but removed after a few weeks without notification. The usual features familiar to instant messaging users—user profiles, online status indicators, and so on—are also included.

The Online Number, a.k.a. SkypeIn, service allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed by conventional phone subscribers to a local Skype phone number; local numbers are available for Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A Skype user can have local numbers in any of these countries, with calls to the number charged at the same rate as calls to fixed lines in the country. The countries on this growing list are referred to collectively as the SkypeIn Countries.
Skype supports conference calls, video chats and screen sharing between 25 people at a time for free.

Skype does not provide the ability to call emergency numbers such as 112 in Europe, 911 in North America, 100 Call Police in India and Nepal. However, as of December 2012 there is limited support for emergency calls in the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark and Finland. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ruled that, for the purposes of section 255 of the Telecommunications Act, Skype is not an "interconnected VoIP provider". As a result, the U.S. National Emergency Number Association recommends that all VoIP users have an analog line available as a backup.

On 14 July 2011, Skype partnered with Comcast to bring its video chat service to Comcast subscribers via their HDTV sets.
On 17 June 2013, Skype released a free video messaging service which can be operated on Windows and Mac OS, iOS, Android and BlackBerry.
On 12 August 2013, Skype released the 4.10 update to the app for Apple iPhone and iPad that allows HD quality video for iPhone 5 and fourth generation iPads.

On 20 November 2014, Microsoft Office's team announced that a new chat powered by Skype is going to be implemented in their software, giving tools to be able to chat with co-workers in the same document.

Client applications and devices

Skype runs on a number of platforms including Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8), OS X (10.6 or newer), Linux (Ubuntu and others), Android, BlackBerry 10, iOS, and Windows Phone 8.

On 29 October 2007, Skype launched its own mobile phone under the brand name 3 Skypephone, which runs a BREW OS

Skype also offers a Skype Wi-Fi Phone, which is a wireless mobile phone that allows users to make Skype calls, using a wireless Internet connection. The Skype Wi-Fi Phone has an on-screen menu that lets Skype users see who is online and available to talk, similar to what is seen on a PC. It can also be used to talk with non-Skype users. SkypeOut minutes can be used to call any phone for a low price and no monthly fee. The Skype Wi-Fi phone does not contain a web browser and so can not access hotspots that require web-based login or authentication.

Other platforms officially supported include:

    The Nokia N800, N810 and N900 Internet Tablets, which run Maemo
    The Nokia N9, which runs MeeGo, comes with Skype voice calling and text messaging integrated however lacks video-calling.
    Both the Sony mylo COM-1 and COM-2 models
    The PlayStation Portable Slim and Lite series, though the user needs to purchase a specially designed microphone peripheral. The PSP-3000 has a built in microphone, which allows communication without the Skype peripheral.[78] The PSP Go has the ability to use Bluetooth connections with the Skype application, in addition to its built-in microphone.Skype for PlayStation Vita may be downloaded via the PlayStation Network in the U.S. It includes the capability to receive incoming calls with the application running in the background.
    Samsung Smart TV has a Skype app which can be downloaded for free.It uses the built in camera and microphone for the newer models. Alternatively a separate mountable Skype camera with built in speakers and microphones is available to purchase for older models.
    Some devices are made to work with Skype by talking to a desktop Skype client or by embedding Skype software into the device. These are usually either tethered to a PC, or have a built-in Wi-Fi client to allow calling from Wi-Fi hotspots like the Netgear SPH101 Skype Wi-Fi Phone, the SMC WSKP100 Skype Wi-Fi Phone, the Belkin F1PP000GN-SK Wi-Fi Skype Phone, the Panasonic KX-WP1050 Wi-Fi Phone for Skype Executive Travel Set, the IPEVO So-20 Wi-Fi Phone for Skype and the Linksys CIT200 Wi-Fi Phone.

Third-party developers, such as Truphone, Nimbuzz and Fring, previously allowed Skype to run in parallel with several other competing VoIP/IM networks (Truphone and Nimbuzz provide TruphoneOut and NimbuzzOut as a competing paid service) in any Symbian or Java environment. Nimbuzz made Skype available to BlackBerry users and Fring provided mobile video calling over Skype as well as support for the Android platform. Skype disabled Fring users from accessing Skype in July 2010. Nimbuzz discontinued support on request of Skype in October 2010.

Before and during the Microsoft acquisition, Skype withdrew licensing from several third parties producing software and hardware compatible with Skype. The Skype for Asterisk product from Digium was withdrawn as "no longer available for sale". The Senao SN358+ long-range (10–15 km) cordless phone were discontinued due to loss of licenses to participate in the Skype network as peers. In combination these two products made it possible to create roaming cordless mesh networks with robust handoff.
Protocol
Main article: Skype protocol

Skype uses a proprietary Internet telephony (VoIP) network called the Skype protocol. The protocol has not been made publicly available by Skype and official applications using the protocol are closed-source. Part of the Skype technology relies on the Global Index P2P protocol belonging to the Joltid Ltd. corporation. The main difference between Skype and standard VoIP clients is that Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model (originally based on the Kazaa softwar), rather than the more usual client–server model (note that the very popular Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) model of VoIP is also peer-to-peer, but implementation generally requires registration with a server, as does Skype).

As far as networking stack support is concerned, Skype only supports the IPv4 protocol. It lacks support for the next generation Internet protocol, IPv6.
Protocol detection and control

Many networking and security companies claim to detect and control Skype's protocol for enterprise and carrier applications. While the specific detection methods used by these companies are often private, Pearson's chi-squared test and naive Bayes classification are two approaches that were published in 2008. Combining statistical measurements of payload properties (such as byte frequencies and initial byte sequences) as well as flow properties (like packet sizes and packet directions) has also shown to be an effective method for identifying Skype's TCP- and UDP-based protocols.
Audio codecs

G.729 and SVOPC. Skype added a Skype-created codec called SILK to Skype 4.0 for Windows and other Skype clients. SILK is intended to be "lightweight and embeddable". Additionally, Skype has released Opus, and an open source codec which integrates the SILK codec principles for voice transmission with the CELT codec principles for higher quality audio transmissions such as live music performances. Opus was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in September 2010. Since then it has been standardized as RFC 6716
Video codecs

VP7 is used for versions prior to Skype 5.5

As of version 5.7 VP8 is used for both group and one on one standard definition video chat and H.264 is used for 720p and 1080p high definition group and one on one video chat

Security and privacy
Main article: Skype security

Skype is claimed initially to be a secure communication, with one of its early web pages stating "highly secure with end-to-end encryption".Security services were invisible to the user, and encryption cannot be disabled. Skype reportedly uses publicly documented, widely trusted encryption techniques: RSA for key negotiation and the Advanced Encryption Standard to encrypt conversations.However, it is impossible to verify that these algorithms are used correctly, completely and at all times as there is no public review possible without a protocol specification and/or the program source code. Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users with no proof of identity. Instead, a free choice of nicknames permits users to use the system without revealing their identity to other users. It is trivial to set up an account using any name; the displayed caller's name is no guarantee of authenticity. A third party paper analyzing the security and methodology of Skype was presented at Black Hat Europe 2006. It analyzed Skype and found a number of security issues with the current security model

Skype incorporates some features, which tend to hide its traffic, but it is not specifically designed to thwart traffic analysis and therefore does not provide anonymous communication. Some researchers have been able to watermark the traffic so that it is identifiable even after passing through an anonymizing network.

In an interview Kurt Sauer, the Chief Security Officer of Skype, said, "We provide a safe communication option. I will not tell you whether we can listen or not."This does not deny the fact that NSA monitors Skype conversations. Skype's client uses an undocumented and proprietary protocol. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is concerned by user privacy issues arising from using proprietary software and protocols and has made a replacement for Skype one of their high priority projects. Security researchers Biondi and Desclaux have speculated that Skype may have a back door, since Skype sends traffic even when it is turned off and because Skype has taken extreme measures to obfuscate their traffic and functioning of their program.[106] Several media sources reported that at a meeting about the "Lawful interception of IP based services" held on 25 June 2008, high-ranking unnamed officials at the Austrian interior ministry said that they could listen in on Skype conversations without problems. Austrian public broadcasting service ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, reported that "the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections". Skype declined to comment on the reports. One easily demonstrated method of monitoring is to set up two computers with the same Skype user ID and password. When a message is typed or a call is received on one computer, the second computer duplicates the audio and text. This requires knowledge of the user ID and password.

The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has interpreted the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) as requiring digital phone networks to allow wiretapping if authorized by an FBI warrant, in the same way as other phone services. In February 2009 Skype said that, not being a telephone company owning phone lines, it is exempt from CALEA and similar laws, which regulate US phone companies, and in fact it is not clear whether Skype could support wiretapping even if it wanted to. According to the ACLU, the Act is inconsistent with the original intent of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; more recently, the ACLU has expressed the concern that the FCC interpretation of the Act is incorrect. It has been suggested that Microsoft made changes to Skype's infrastructure to ease various wiretapping requirements however, Skype denies the claims.

Some time before Skype was sold in 2009, the company had started its own program, called Project Chess, to explore legal and technical ways to easily share calls with intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

On 20 February 2009 the European Union's Eurojust agency announced that the Italian Desk at Eurojust would "play a key role in the coordination and cooperation of the investigations on the use of internet telephony systems (VoIP), such as 'Skype'. ... The purpose of Eurojust’s coordination role is to overcome the technical and judicial obstacles to the intereption of internet telephony systems, taking into account the various data protection rules and civil rights"

In November 2010, a flaw was disclosed to Skype that showed how hackers could secretly track any user's IP address As of 2013, this has still not been fixed.

In 2012, Skype introduced automatic updates to better protect users from security risks, but received some challenge from users of the Mac product, as the updates cannot be disabled from version 5.6 on, both on Mac OS and Windows versions, although in the latter, and only from version 5.9 on, automatic updating can be turned off in certain cases.

According to a 2012 Washington Post article, Skype "has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police"; the article additionally mentions Skype made changes to allow authorities access to addresses and credit card numbers.

In November 2012, Skype was reported to have handed over user data of a pro-Wikileaks activist to Dallas, Texas-based private security company iSIGHT Partners without a warrant or court order. The allegation was an apparent breach of Skype's privacy policy. Skype responded with a statement that it launched an internal investigation to probe the breach of user data privacy.

13 November 2012, a Russian user published a flaw in Skype's security, which allowed any person to take over a Skype account knowing only the victim's email by following 7 steps.This vulnerability was claimed to exist for months, and existed for more than 12 hours since published widely.

14 May 2013, it was documented that a URL sent via a Skype instant messaging session was usurped by the Skype service and subsequently used in a HTTP HEAD query originating from an IP address registered to Microsoft in Redmond (the IP address used was 65.52.100.214). The Microsoft query used the full URL supplied in the IM conversation, and was generated by a previously undocumented security service. Security experts speculate the action was triggered by a technology similar to Microsoft's SmartScreen Filter used in its browsers.

The 2013 mass surveillance disclosures revealed that agencies such as the NSA and the FBI have the ability to eavesdrop on Skype, including the monitoring and storage of text and video calls and file transfers. The PRISM surveillance program, which requires FISA court authorization, reportedly has allowed the NSA unfettered access to its data center supernodes. According to the leaked documents, integration work began in November 2010, but it was not until February 2011 that the company was served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general, with NSA documents showing that collection began on 31 March 2011.

On November 4, 2014, Skype scored 2 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. It lost points because users can't verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, the code is not open to independent review, the security design is not properly documented, and there has not been a recent independent code audit. On November 10, 2014, Skype lost yet another point because communications are not encrypted with a key the provider doesn't have access to.

Prehistory of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace
Main articles: Prehistory of Anatolia and Prehistory of the Balkans
See also: Ancient Anatolians, Ancient kingdoms of Anatolia and Thracians
The Lion Gate at Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire. The city's history dates back to the 6th millennium BC.

The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, beginning with the Neolithic period until conquest of Alexander the Great.Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical center from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since forty thousand years ago, and is known to have been in the Neolithic era by about 6000 B.C. with its inhabitants starting the practice of agriculture.

Göbekli Tepe is the site of the oldest known man-made religious structure, a temple dating to 10,000 BC, while Çatalhöyük is a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BCE to 5700 BCE. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date and in July 2012 was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age.

The earliest recorded inhabitants of Anatolia were the Hattians and Hurrians, non-Indo-European peoples who inhabited central and eastern Anatolia, respectively, as early as ca. 2300 BC. Indo-European Hittites came to Anatolia and gradually absorbed the Hattians and Hurrians ca. 2000–1700 BC. The first major empire in the area was founded by the Hittites, from the 18th through the 13th century BC. The Assyrians conquered and settled parts of southeastern Turkey as early as 1950 BC until the year 612 BC. Urartu re-emerged in Assyrian inscriptions in the 9th century BC as a powerful northern rival of Assyria.

Following the collapse of the Hittite empire c. 1180 BC, the Phrygians, an Indo-European people, achieved ascendancy in Anatolia until their kingdom was destroyed by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BC. Starting from 714 BC, Urartu shared the same fate and dissolved in 590 BC. The most powerful of Phrygia's successor states were Lydia, Caria and Lycia.
Antiquity and Byzantine Period
Main articles: Classical Anatolia and Byzantine Anatolia
See also: Byzantine Empire, Constantinople and Odrysian kingdom
Originally a church, later a mosque, and now a museum, the Hagia Sophia was built by the Byzantines in the 6th century.

Starting around 1200 BC, the coast of Anatolia was heavily settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. Numerous important cities were founded by these colonists, such as Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna and Byzantium, the latter founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 657 BC. The first state that was called Armenia by neighbouring peoples was the state of the Armenian Orontid dynasty, which included parts of eastern Turkey beginning in the 6th century BC. In Northwest Turkey, the most significant tribal group in Thrace was the Odyrisians, founded by Teres I.

Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire during the 6th and 5th centuries BC and later fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC, which led to increasing cultural homogeneity and Hellenization in the area. Following Alexander's death in 323 BC, Anatolia was subsequently divided into a number of small Hellenistic kingdoms, all of which became part of the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC. The process of Hellenization that began with Alexander's conquest accelerated under Roman rule, and by the early centuries AD the local Anatolian languages and cultures had become extinct, being largely replaced by ancient Greek language and culture.

In 324, Constantine I chose Byzantium to be the new capital of the Roman Empire, renaming it New Rome. Following the death of Theodosius I in 395 and the permanent division of the Roman Empire between his two sons, the city, which would popularly come to be known as Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. This, which would later be branded by historians as the Byzantine Empire, ruled most of the territory of what is today Turkey until the Late Middle Ages.
The Seljuks and the Ottoman Empire
Main articles: Seljuk dynasty and Ottoman dynasty
See also: Turkic migration, Turkification, Seljuk Empire, Sultanate of Rum and Ottoman Empire
Mevlana Museum in Konya was built by the Seljuk Turks in 1274. Konya was the capital of the Sultanate of Rum.

The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Kınık Oğuz Turks who resided on the periphery of the Muslim world, in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Oğuz confederacy, to the north of the Caspian and Aral Seas, in the 9th century. In the 10th century, the Seljuks started migrating from their ancestral homeland into Persia, which became the administrative core of the Great Seljuk Empire.

In the latter half of the 11th century, the Seljuks began penetrating into the eastern regions of Anatolia. In 1071, the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert, starting Turkification of the area; the Turkish language and Islam were introduced to Anatolia and gradually spread over the region and the slow transition from a predominantly Christian and Greek-speaking Anatolia to a predominantly Muslim and Turkish-speaking one was underway.

In 1243, the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols, causing the Seljuk Empire's power to slowly disintegrate. In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman I would, over the next 200 years, evolve into the Ottoman Empire, expanding throughout Anatolia, the Balkans, the Levant and North Africa. In 1453, the Ottomans completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople.
Topkapı and Dolmabahçe palaces were the primary residences of the Ottoman Sultans and the administrative center of the empire between 1465 to 1856 and 1856 to 1922, respectively.

In 1514, Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) successfully expanded the Empire's southern and eastern borders by defeating Shah Ismail I of the Safavid dynasty in the Battle of Chaldiran. In 1517, Selim I expanded Ottoman rule into Algeria and Egypt, and created a naval presence in the Red Sea. Subsequently, a competition started between the Ottoman and Portuguese empires to become the dominant sea power in the Indian Ocean, with a number of naval battles in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean was perceived as a threat for the Ottoman monopoly over the ancient trading routes between East Asia and Western Europe (later collectively named the Silk Road). This important monopoly was increasingly compromised following the discovery of a sea route around Africa by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, which had a considerable impact on the Ottoman economy.

The Ottoman Empire's power and prestige peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The empire was often at odds with the Holy Roman Empire in its steady advance towards Central Europe through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At sea, the Ottoman Navy contended with several Holy Leagues (composed primarily of Habsburg Spain, the Republic of Genoa, the Republic of Venice, the Knights of St. John, the Papal States, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Savoy) for control of the Mediterranean Sea. In the east, the Ottomans were occasionally at war with Safavid Persia over conflicts stemming from territorial disputes or religious differences between the 16th and 18th centuries.

From the beginning of the 19th century onwards, the Ottoman Empire began to decline. As it gradually shrank in size, military power and wealth, many Balkan Muslims migrated to the Empire's heartland in Anatolia, along with the Circassians fleeing the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. The decline of the Ottoman Empire led to a rise in nationalist sentiment among the various subject peoples, leading to increased ethnic tensions which occasionally burst into violence, such as the Hamidian massacres of Armenians.

The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. During the war, the empire's Armenians were deported from Eastern Anatolia to Syria as part of the Armenian Genocide. As a result, an estimated 1,500,000 Armenians were killed. The Turkish government denies that there was an Armenian Genocide and claims that Armenians were only relocated from the eastern war zone. Large-scale massacres were also committed against the empire's other minority groups such as the Greeks and Assyrians. Following the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918, the victorious Allied Powers sought to partition the Ottoman state through the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres.
Republic of Turkey
Main article: History of the Republic of Turkey
See also: Atatürk's Reforms
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey.

The occupation of Constantinople and Smyrna by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I prompted the establishment of the Turkish National Movement. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a military commander who had distinguished himself during the Battle of Gallipoli, the Turkish War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.

By 18 September 1922, the occupying armies were expelled, and the Ankara-based Turkish regime, which declared itself the legitimate government of the country in April 1920, started to formalize the legal transition from the old Ottoman into the new Republican political system. On 1 November, the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, thus ending 623 years of monarchical Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923 led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the continuing state of the Ottoman Empire, and the republic was officially proclaimed on 29 October 1923 in Ankara, the country's new capital.The Lausanne treaty stipulated a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, whereby 1.1 million Greeks left Turkey for Greece in exchange for 380,000 Muslims transferred from Greece to Turkey.

Mustafa Kemal became the republic's first President and subsequently introduced many radical reforms with the aim of transforming the old Ottoman-Turkish state into a new secular republic. With the Surname Law of 1934, the Turkish Parliament bestowed upon Mustafa Kemal the honorific surname "Atatürk" (Father of the Turks).

Turkey remained neutral during most of World War II, but entered the closing stages of the war on the side of the Allies on 23 February 1945. On 26 June 1945, Turkey became a charter member of the United Nations. Difficulties faced by Greece after the war in quelling a communist rebellion, along with demands by the Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits, prompted the United States to declare the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece, and resulted in large-scale U.S. military and economic support. Both countries were included in the Marshall Plan and OEEC for rebuilding European economies in 1948, and subsequently became founding members of the OECD in 1961.

After participating with the United Nations forces in the Korean War, Turkey joined NATO in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean. Following a decade of Cypriot intercommunal violence and the coup in Cyprus on 15 July 1974 staged by the EOKA B paramilitary organization, which overthrew President Makarios and installed the pro-Enosis (union with Greece) Nikos Sampson as dictator, Turkey invaded Cyprus on 20 July 1974. Nine years later the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey, was established.

The single-party period ended in 1945. It was followed by a tumultuous transition to multiparty democracy over the next few decades, which was interrupted by military coups d'état in 1960, 1971, and 1980, as well as a military memorandum in 1997. In 1984, the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group, began an insurgency campaign against the Turkish government, which to date has claimed over 40,000 lives. Peace talks are ongoing. Since the liberalization of the Turkish economy during the 1980s, the country has enjoyed stronger economic growth and greater political stability. In 2013, widespread protests erupted in many Turkish provinces, sparked by a plan to demolish Gezi Park but growing into general anti-government dissent.
Administrative divisions
Further information: Regions of Turkey, Provinces of Turkey, Districts of Turkey and NUTS of Turkey

Turkey has a unitary structure in terms of administration and this aspect is one of the most important factors shaping the Turkish public administration. When three powers (executive, legislature and judiciary) are taken into account as the main functions of the state, local administrations do not have almost any power. In other words, there are not units called "states" in Turkey and the provinces and cities come after the central administration. Local administrations were established to provide services in place and the government is represented by the governors and city governors. Besides the governors and the city governors, other senior public officials are also appointed by the central government rather than to be appointed by mayors or elected by constituents.

Turkey is subdivided into 81 provinces for administrative purposes. Each province is divided into districts, for a total of 923 districts.

Turkey is also subdivided into 7 regions and 21 subregions for geographic, demographic and economic purposes; this does not refer to an administrative division.
Ankara

Turkey is a parliamentary representative democracy. Since its foundation as a republic in 1923, Turkey has developed a strong tradition of secularism. Turkey's constitution governs the legal framework of the country. It sets out the main principles of government and establishes Turkey as a unitary centralized state. The President of the Republic is the head of state and has a largely ceremonial role. The president is elected for a five-year term by direct elections and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is first president elected by direct voting.

Executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers which make up the government, while the legislative power is vested in the unicameral parliament, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature, and the Constitutional Court is charged with ruling on the conformity of laws and decrees with the constitution. The Council of State is the tribunal of last resort for administrative cases, and the High Court of Appeals for all others.

The prime minister is elected by the parliament through a vote of confidence in the government and is most often the head of the party having the most seats in parliament. The prime minister is Ahmet Davutoğlu who is also the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 27 August 2014.

Universal suffrage for both sexes has been applied throughout Turkey since 1933, and every Turkish citizen who has turned 18 years of age has the right to vote. There are 550 members of parliament who are elected for a four-year term by a party-list proportional representation system from 85 electoral districts. The Constitutional Court can strip the public financing of political parties that it deems anti-secular or separatist, or ban their existence altogether. The electoral threshold is 10% of the votes.

Supporters of Atatürk's reforms are called Kemalists, as distinguished from Islamists, representing two extremes on a continuum of beliefs about the proper role of religion in public life. The Kemalist position generally combines a kind of democracy with a laicist constitution and westernised secular lifestyle, while supporting state intervention in the economy, education, and other public services. Since the 1980s, a rise in income inequality and class distinction has given rise to Islamic populism, a movement that in theory supports obligation to authority, communal solidarity and social justice, though what that entails in practice is often contested.

Human rights in Turkey have been the subject of some controversy and international condemnation. Between 1998 and 2008 the European Court of Human Rights made more than 1,600 judgements against Turkey for human rights violations, particularly regarding the right to life, and freedom from torture. Other issues, such as Kurdish rights, women's rights, and press freedom, have also attracted controversy. Turkey's human rights record continues to be a significant obstacle to future membership of the EU. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the AKP government has waged one of the world's biggest crackdowns on press freedoms. A large number of journalists have been arrested using charges of "terrorism" and "anti-state activities" such as the Ergenekon and Balyoz cases, while thousands have been investigated on charges such as "denigrating Turkishness" or "insulting Islam" in an effort to sow self-censorship.In 2012, the CPJ identified 76 jailed journalists in Turkey, including 61 directly held for their published work, more than in Iran, Eritrea or China. A former U.S. State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said that the United States had "broad concerns about trends involving intimidation of journalists in Turkey."
Law
Main articles: Judicial system of Turkey and Law enforcement in Turkey

Turkey has a legal system which has been wholly integrated with the system of continental Europe. For instance, the Turkish Civil Law has been modified by incorporating elements mainly of the Swiss Civil Code, the Code of Obligations and the German Commercial Code. The Administrative Law bears similarities with its French counterpart, and the Penal Code with its Italian counterpart.

Turkey has adopted the principle of the separation of powers. In line with this principle, judicial power is exercised by independent courts on behalf of the Turkish nation. The independence and organization of the courts, the security of the tenure of judges and public prosecutors, the profession of judges and prosecutors, the supervision of judges and public prosecutors, the military courts and their organization, and the powers and duties of the high courts are regulated by the Turkish Constitution.

According to Article 142 of the Turkish Constitution, the organization, duties and jurisdiction of the courts, their functions and the trial procedures are regulated by law. In line with the aforementioned article of the Turkish Constitution and related laws, the court system in Turkey can be classified under three main categories; which are the Judicial Courts, Administrative Courts and Military Courts. Each category includes first instance courts and high courts. In addition, the Court of Jurisdictional Disputes rules on cases that cannot be classified readily as falling within the purview of one court system.

Law enforcement in Turkey is carried out by several departments (such as the General Directorate of Security and Gendarmerie General Command) and agencies, all acting under the command of the Prime Minister of Turkey or mostly the Minister of Internal Affairs. According to figures released by the Justice Ministry, there are 100,000 people in Turkish prisons as of November 2008, a doubling since 2000.
Foreign relations
Main article: Foreign relations of Turkey
After becoming one of the first members of the Council of Europe in 1949, Turkey became an associate member of the EEC in 1963, joined the EU Customs Union in 1995 and started full membership negotiations with the European Union in 2005.

Turkey is a founding member of the United Nations (1945), the OECD (1961), the OIC (1969), the OSCE (1973), the ECO (1985),the BSEC (1992), the D-8 (1997) and the G-20 major economies (1999). Turkey was a member of the United Nations Security Council in 1951–1952, 1954–1955, 1961 and 2009-2010. In September 2013, Turkey became a member of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD).

In line with its traditional Western orientation, relations with Europe have always been a central part of Turkish foreign policy. Turkey became one of the first members of the Council of Europe in 1949, applied for associate membership of the EEC (predecessor of the European Union) in 1959 and became an associate member in 1963. After decades of political negotiations, Turkey applied for full membership of the EEC in 1987, became an associate member of the Western European Union in 1992, joined the EU Customs Union in 1995 and has been in formal accession negotiations with the EU since 2005. Today, EU membership is considered as a state policy and a strategic target by Turkey. Turkey's support for Northern Cyprus in the Cyprus dispute complicates Turkey's relations with the EU and remains a major stumbling block to the country's EU accession bid.

The other defining aspect of Turkey's foreign policy is the country's strategic alliance with the United States. The common threat posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War led to Turkey's membership of NATO in 1952, ensuring close bilateral relations with Washington. Subsequently Turkey benefited from the United States' political, economic and diplomatic support, including in key issues such as the country's bid to join the European Union. In the post–Cold War environment, Turkey's geostrategic importance shifted towards its proximity to the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Balkans.

The independence of the Turkic states of the Soviet Union in 1991, with which Turkey shares a common cultural and linguistic heritage, allowed Turkey to extend its economic and political relations deep into Central Asia, thus enabling the completion of a multi-billion-dollar oil and natural gas pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline forms part of Turkey's foreign policy strategy to become an energy conduit to the West. However Turkey's border with Armenia, a state in the Caucasus, was closed by Turkey in support of Azerbaijan during the Nagorno-Karabakh War and remains closed.

Under the AK Party government, Turkey's influence has grown in the formerly Ottoman territories of the Middle East and the Balkans, based on the "strategic depth" doctrine (a terminology that was coined by Ahmet Davutoğlu for defining Turkey's increased engagement in regional foreign policy issues), also called Neo-Ottomanism. Following the Arab Spring in December 2010 and the choices made by the AK Party for supporting certain political opposition groups in the affected countries, this policy has led to tensions with some Arab states, such as Turkey's neighbour Syria since the start of the Syrian civil war, and with Egypt after the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi. As of 2014, Turkey doesn't have an ambassador in Syria, Egypt and Israel (diplomatic relations with the latter country were severed after its bombing raids on the Gaza Strip.) This has left Turkey with few allies in the East Mediterranean (where rich natural gas fields have recently been discovered), and is in sharp contrast with the original goals that were set by the Foreign Minister (currently Prime Minister) Ahmet Davutoğlu in his "zero problems with neighbours" foreign policy doctrine.

Turkey has maintained forces in international missions under the United Nations and NATO since 1950, including peacekeeping missions in Somalia and former Yugoslavia, and support to coalition forces in the First Gulf War. Turkey maintains 36,000 troops in Northern Cyprus, though their presence is controversial,[132] and assists Iraqi Kurdistan with security. Turkey has had troops deployed in Afghanistan as part of the United States stabilization force and the UN-authorized, NATO-commanded International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since 2001.Since 2003, Turkey contributes military personnel to Eurocorps and takes part in the EU Battlegroups.
Military
Main article: Turkish Armed Forces
See also: Defense industry of Turkey
The Turkish Armed Forces collectively rank as the second largest standing military force in NATO, after the U.S. Armed Forces. Turkey joined the alliance in 1952.

The Turkish Armed Forces consists of the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Force. The Gendarmerie and the Coast Guard operate as parts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in peacetime, although they are subordinated to the Army and Navy Commands respectively in wartime, during which they have both internal law enforcement and military functions.

The Chief of the General Staff is appointed by the President and is responsible to the Prime Minister. The Council of Ministers is responsible to the Parliament for matters of national security and the adequate preparation of the armed forces to defend the country. However, the authority to declare war and to deploy the Turkish Armed Forces to foreign countries or to allow foreign armed forces to be stationed in Turkey rests solely with the Parliament.

Turkey has the second largest standing armed force in NATO, after the US Armed Forces, with an estimated strength of 495,000 deployable forces, according to a 2011 NATO estimate.Turkey is one of five NATO member states which are part of the nuclear sharing policy of the alliance, together with Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.A total of 90 B61 nuclear bombs are hosted at the Incirlik Air Base, 40 of which are allocated for use by the Turkish Air Force in case of a nuclear conflict, but their use requires the approval of NATO.

Every fit male Turkish citizen otherwise not barred is required to serve in the military for a period ranging from three weeks to a year, dependent on education and job location. Turkey does not recognise conscientious objection and does not offer a civilian alternative to military service.
Geography
Main article: Geography of Turkey
Topographic map of Turkey

Turkey is a transcontinental Eurasian country. Asian Turkey, which includes 97% of the country, is separated from European Turkey by the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles. European Turkey comprises 3% of the country.

The territory of Turkey is more than 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) long and 800 km (500 mi) wide, with a roughly rectangular shape. It lies between latitudes 35° and 43° N, and longitudes 25° and 45° E. Turkey's area, including lakes, occupies 783,562 square kilometres (300,948 sq mi), of which 755,688 square kilometres (291,773 sq mi) are in Southwest Asia and 23,764 square kilometres (9,174 sq mi) in Europe. Turkey is the world's 37th-largest country in terms of area. The country is encircled by seas on three sides: the Aegean Sea to the west, the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean to the south. Turkey also contains the Sea of Marmara in the northwest.

The European section of Turkey, East Thrace, forms the borders of Turkey with Greece and Bulgaria. The Asian part of the country, Anatolia, consists of a high central plateau with narrow coastal plains, between the Köroğlu and Pontic mountain ranges to the north and the Taurus Mountains to the south. Eastern Turkey has a more mountainous landscape and is home to the sources of rivers such as the Euphrates, Tigris and Aras, and contains Mount Ararat, Turkey's highest point at 5,137 metres (16,854 ft), and Lake Van, the largest lake in the country.

Turkey is divided into seven census regions: Marmara, Aegean, Black Sea, Central Anatolia, Eastern Anatolia, Southeastern Anatolia and the Mediterranean. The uneven north Anatolian terrain running along the Black Sea resembles a long, narrow belt. This region comprises approximately one-sixth of Turkey's total land area. As a general trend, the inland Anatolian plateau becomes increasingly rugged as it progresses eastward.

Turkey's varied landscapes are the product of complex earth movements that have shaped the region over thousands of years and still manifest themselves in fairly frequent earthquakes and occasional volcanic eruptions. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles owe their existence to the fault lines running through Turkey that led to the creation of the Black Sea. There is an earthquake fault line across the north of the country from west to east, along which a major earthquake occurred in 1999.

ouTube is a video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion. YouTube now operates as a Google subsidiary. The site allows users to upload, view, and share videos, and it makes use of Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program.Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload videos to their channels. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old.

Company history
Main article: History of YouTube
From left to right: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, but Chen commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible".

Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson's role in the 2004 Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site. Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not.
YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006. YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.

The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.

YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in November 2005. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day.According to data published by market research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos in May 2010.

YouTube says that 300 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, three times more than one year earlier and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S. The site has 800 million unique users a month. It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. Alexa ranks YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet, behind Google and Facebook.

The choice of the name www.youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, www.utube.com. The site's owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www.utubeonline.com.

In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.

Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at $200 million, noting progress in advertising sale. In January 2012, it was estimated that visitors to YouTube spent an average of 15 minutes a day on the site, in contrast to the four or five hours a day spent by a typical U.S. citizen watching television.

YouTube entered into a marketing and advertising partnership with NBC in June 2006. In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows". The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney. In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of "Shows" available to UK viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners.[36] In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service, which is available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK as of 2010. The service offers over 6,000 films.
YouTube's headquarters as of 2010 in San Bruno, California.

In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event.

On March 31, 2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site. Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented: "We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter." In May 2010, it was reported that YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day, which it described as "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined". In May 2011, YouTube reported in its company blog that the site was receiving more than three billion views per day.In January 2012, YouTube stated that the figure had increased to four billion videos streamed per day.

In October 2010, Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of YouTube to take an advisory role, and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head of the company.[44]

In April 2011, James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed that 30% of videos accounted for 99% of views on the site.

In November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface.[46] In December 2011, YouTube launched a new version of the site interface, with the video channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of social networking sites. At the same time, a new version of the YouTube logo was introduced with a darker shade of red, the first change in design since October 2006.

In May 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program to begin offering some content providers the ability to charge $0.99 per month or more for certain channels, but the vast majority of its videos would remain free to view.
Features
Video technology
Playback

Viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer needs the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to be installed on the browser.

In January 2010, YouTube launched an experimental version of the site that uses the built-in multimedia capabilities of web browsers supporting the HTML5 standard.This allows videos to be viewed without requiring Adobe Flash Player or any other plug-in to be installed. The YouTube site has a page that allows supported browsers to opt into the HTML5 trial. Only browsers that support HTML5 Video using the H.264 or WebM formats can play the videos, and not all videos on the site are available.

YouTube experimented with Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), which is an adaptive bit-rate HTTP-based streaming solution optimizing the bitrate and quality for the available network. Currently they are using Adobe Dynamic Streaming for Flash.
Uploading

All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes each in duration. Users who have a good track record of complying with the site's Community Guidelines may be offered the ability to upload videos up to 12 hours in length, which requires verifying the account, normally through a mobile phone.[59] When YouTube was launched in 2005, it was possible to upload long videos, but a ten-minute limit was introduced in March 2006 after YouTube found that the majority of videos exceeding this length were unauthorized uploads of television shows and films.[60][61] The 10-minute limit was increased to 15 minutes in July 2010. If an up-to-date browser version is used, videos greater than 20 GB can be uploaded.

YouTube accepts videos uploaded in most container formats, including .AVI, .MKV, .MOV, .MP4, DivX, .FLV, and .ogg and .ogv. These include video formats such as MPEG-4, MPEG, VOB, and .WMV. It also supports 3GP, allowing videos to be uploaded from mobile phones. Videos with progressive scanning or interlaced scanning can be uploaded, but for the best video quality, YouTube suggests interlaced videos be deinterlaced before uploading. All the video formats on YouTube use progressive scanning.
Quality and formats

YouTube originally offered videos at only one quality level, displayed at a resolution of 320x240 pixels using the Sorenson Spark codec (a variant of H.263),[66][67] with mono MP3 audio.[68] In June 2007, YouTube added an option to watch videos in 3GP format on mobile phones. In March 2008, a high quality mode was added, which increased the resolution to 480x360 pixels.

In November 2008, 720p HD support was added. At the time of the 720p launch, the YouTube player was changed from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a widescreen 16:9. With this new feature, YouTube began a switchover to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC as its default video compression format. In November 2009, 1080p HD support was added. In July 2010, YouTube announced that it had launched a range of videos in 4K format, which allows a resolution of up to 4096x3072 pixels. YouTube has since lowered the maximum resolution to 3840x2160 pixels, which is twice as many pixels in both directions as 1080p.

In June 2014, YouTube introduced videos playing at 60 frames per second, in order to reproduce video games with a frame rate comparable to high-end graphics cards. The videos play back at a resolution of 720p or higher.

YouTube videos are available in a range of quality levels. The former names of standard quality (SQ), high quality (HQ) and high definition (HD) have been replaced by numerical values representing the vertical resolution of the video. The default video stream is encoded in the VP9 format with stereo Vorbis audio; if VP9/WebM is not supported in the browser/device or the browser's user agent reports Windows XP, then H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video with stereo AAC audio is used instead.