Flag: Tunisia

Tunisia: I'm from there, I love it, or I'm going there. In a bio or next to a name it marks origin or heritage, often alongside a second flag for people with two homes, such as 🇹🇳🇫🇷 or 🇹🇳🇮🇹. In chats it announces a trip to Tunis, Djerba, Hammamet or Sousse, cheers on a Tunisian athlete, or simply tags something as Tunisian: a plate of couscous, a wedding, a song. The tone is warm and proud; there is no ironic or coded second meaning.

The one real risk is mixing it up with Turkey 🇹🇷. Both flags are red with a crescent and star, but the Turkish symbols are white and sit directly on the red, while the Tunisian ones are red inside a white circle, and the Tunisian crescent curls around the star rather than beside it. Sending a Tunisian friend the Turkish flag, or the other way round, is a small but memorable slip.

What is on the Tunisian flag, and why?

A white sun-disc with the crescent and star of the Muslim world. The crescent and five-pointed star came to Tunisia through the Ottoman Empire, of which it was a largely self-governing province for centuries; the same emblem appears on the flags of Turkey, Algeria, Pakistan and others, and today it is read as a symbol of Islam, the country's majority faith. The white disc is usually explained as the sun, and many Tunisians describe the star's five points as standing for the five pillars of Islam, though the state has never fixed an official reading. The red field is the colour of the old Ottoman naval flags the design grew out of.

The flag turns up in daily life well beyond official buildings. Fans of the national football team, nicknamed the Eagles of Carthage after the ancient city whose ruins sit outside Tunis, paint it on their faces at the World Cup, where Tunisia's 1–0 win over France in 2022 is a cherished memory. It fills streets on Independence Day, 20 March, marking the end of French rule in 1956, and it was the banner of the 2010–2011 revolution that set off the Arab Spring.