Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey - Softcover

Pope, Hugh; Pope, Nicola

3.5

163 ratings by Goodreads

9781590206904: Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590206908 ISBN 13: 9781590206904

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2011

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In this "deeply revealing guide to modern Turkish culture and politics"(The New York Times Book Review), Hugh and Nicole Pope provide a glimpse into a culture that has long been misunderstood. Turkey Unveiled is the only book in many years to attempt to fill a gap in perception with regard to this extremely complex country, and this paperback edition includes an epilogue that brings the book totally up to date, with coverage of the most recent developments in Turkey.

Throughout the last generation Turkey has opened up to the outside world, increasingly revealing a pluralistic and dynamic society. The authors, who speak fluent Turkish and have reported from Turkey for over a decade, provide a rich mosaic of contemporary Turkey and its formative past. The strengths and weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian tragedy, the ongoing Kurdish struggle, and the controversial legacy of the brilliant but autocratic founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, are all here. They also provide portraits of new leaders who have broken taboos and ushered in new freedoms at a time when other forces attempt to pull Turkey back into the MiddLe Eastern vortex. Hugh and Nicole Pope, combining analysis with understanding, make recent developments in Turkey intelligible for both the general reader and the millions of visitors welcomed by a burgeoning tourist industry.

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Review:

Turkey, write journalists Nicole and Hugh Pope in this well-made narrative history, is a land that defies easy categorization, a melange of elements "European, Western, Eastern, Islamic, fascistic, anarchic" that has always been something of an enigma to outsiders. After decades of stagnation, it is now emerging as a nation of central importance in Eurasian geopolitics, as it was in the days of the Ottoman Empire. The authors describe the growth of the modern Turkish state in the aftermath of World War I, when that empire, defeated by the Allied powers, splintered into some 30 independent states. Led by Mustafa Kemal Atat�rk and his so-called Young Turks, the postwar state sought to curb the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, to introduce some measure of democracy into a formerly autocratic system, and to secure a place for Turkey in the constellation of world powers. They were only partly successful; Atat�rk, the authors contend, "led Turkey on the path of Westernization, but left it stranded half-way to full democratization because, deep down, he was not a democrat." Now, after years of military rule, the Turkish government is making efforts both to continue that democratization and to secure influence among the emerging Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The nation, the authors write, is now the arena of conflict between left and right, fundamentalist and secularist, nationalist and cosmopolitan: it stands at a crossroads both political and historical. Westerners, they suggest, would do well to pay closer attention to Turkish affairs, and their book is a fine contribution toward that end. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

Nicole Pope has worked for the Red Cross in Iraq and Lebanon and currently reports for Le Monde and international radio stations in Turkey. Hugh Pope read Persian and Arabic at Oxford, and has reported for the Independent, Los Angeles Times, BBC, and Reuters. He currently runs the news bureau in Istanbul for the Wall Street Journal.

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