Tunisia

Tunisia (Tunisie), officially the Republic of Tunisia (Republique Tunisienne), is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The capital and largest city is Tunis, located on the northeast coast, which lends the country its name.

From early antiquity, Tunisia was inhabited by the indigenous Berbers. Phoenicians began to arrive in the 12th century BC, establishing several settlements, of which Carthage emerged as the most powerful by the seventh century BC. A major mercantile empire and a military rival of the Roman Republic, Carthage was defeated by the Romans in 146 BC, who occupied Tunisia for most of the next 800 years, introducing Christianity and leaving architectural legacies like the amphitheatre of El Jem. After several attempts starting in 647, Muslims conquered all of Tunisia by 697, bringing Islam and Arab culture to the local population.

The Ottoman Empire established control in 1574 and held sway for over 300 years, until the French conquered and colonized Tunisia in 1881 as the French Profectorate of Tunisia. Tunisia gained independence under the leadership of Habib Bourguiba, who declared the Tunisian Republic in 1957. Tunisian culture and identity are rooted in this centuries-long intersection of different cultural and ethnic groups.

In 2011, the Tunisian Revolution, triggered by the lack of freedom and democracy under the 24-year rule of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, overthrew his regime and catalyzed the broader Arab Spring across the region. Free multiparty parliamentary elections were held shortly after; the country again voted for parliament on 26 October 2014, and for president on 23 November 2014.

Tunisia remains a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic; it is the only country in North Africa classified as “Free” by Freedom House, and considered the only fully democratic state in the Arab World in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index.