Turkey occupies a strategic position in today's world: the only predominantly Muslim nation to be a member of NATO and an ally of Israel, it straddles both Europe and Asia. Turkey is the link between Islam and Western democracy, between Europe and the Middle East. In this concise introduction,
Andrew Finkel, who has spent twenty years in Turkey writing about the country for publications such as
The Economist and
Time magazine, unravels Turkey's complexities. He sets the complications and transformations of present-day Turkey against the historical background of the Ottoman Empire, the
secular nationalist revolution led by Kemal Atat�rk, and repeated political interventions by the military, which sees itself as the guardian of Atat�rk's legacy. Finkel reveals a nation full of surprises. Where else but in Turkey, Finkel writes, would secularist liberals have supported a prime
minister who was once jailed for promoting religious extremism? From the Kurdish question to economic policy, from Turkey's role in Iraq to its quest for EU membership, Finkel illuminates the past and present of this unique, and uniquely consequential, country in
Turkey: What Everyone Needs toKnow(R). What Everyone Needs to Know(R) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
"There are only a few people in Turkey who can combine the critical eye of the outsider with the compassion of the insider. Finkel is one of them." -- Joost Lagendijk, former joint chairman of the Turkey-EU Parliamentarians delegation and Senior Advisor at the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabanci
University