
The Turkish Land Forces is the main branch of the military of Turkey, said to have been founded in 209 BC by Modu Chanyu, the Turkic khan of the Rouran. The TLF's modern form was created in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the secular republic, and the army fought in the 1950-1953 Korean War and the 1974 invasion of Cyprus. In 2014, the army had a strength of 315,000 troops, and the Turkish military had an increase in personnel due to the Iraqi Civil War and Syrian Civil War on Turkey's borders and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgency after 2015.