The author really bashed readers over the head with his message. The main chapters all told the same story: Turkish people traditionally accepted whatever the government said, Kemalism was great during it's time, the people are now ready for real democracy, the military is holding the country back. There, now you don't have to bother reading those chapters.

The "meze"s, however, were really cool. This is where the author stepped back from preaching mode, and told stories about real Turks and captured the spirit of the country.

Overall, I'm appreciative of the history I learned from the book. I understand now more about the background to the current situation (the president and military are locked in a power struggle). But, I wouldn't really recommend the book.

Kinzer was a foreign correspondent for the NY Times who lived in Turkey for several years and who clearly has a deep and abiding affection for the country. For my money (and, after just one trip of two and a half weeks to Turkey, albeit intense, I am anything but an expert), he does a good job of deconstructing the puzzle that is the Turkish Republic: militantly secular and yet deeply Islamic, attached to its traditions but determined to modernize, unable to decide if it is a multi-ethnic state with a Turkish majority or a state whose citizens are by definition Turkish, proud inheritors of several thousand years of Anatolian civilization but alienated from much of that history because, depending upon who you talk to, it's either not Turkish, or not Islamic, or simply not modern.

So, why not five stars? Two reasons, really. First, there are some minor errors of fact that I noticed because I knew they were errors, such as locating the Lighthouse wonder of the ancient world in Turkey (it was in Egypt), which left me wondering how many other errors of fact there were that I didn't notice because I didn't recognize them as such. Second, there's the insistent refrain of WWAD (What Would Atatürk Do), which is an odd combination of going native while remaining an optimistic American.

Nevertheless, I found that after reading the book much that had been confusing or strange about Turkey made much more sense... and since that was exactly what I was hoping for, count me as a satisfied customer.

I read this book again, despite having first read it in 2002, when it first came out, a time when I was totally engrossed in all things Turkish, especially Ataturk's biography and the historical forced swap between Greece and Turkey of their respective citizens as a result of Kemalist policies. In this work, the author focusses particularly on post 1980s Turkey, describing the role of the military as the safekeeper of Ataturk's legacy, the rise of a new political force, and the changes within the country, post the 2001 real and metaphorical earthquake. Clearly it is somewhat dated now, but its analysis remains useful for anyone interested in this amazing country or its people, in constant search of stability of some kind despite its geographical destiny. What future lies ahead? The terrible news and events of today at Reina club make this work still relevant.

This is a solid introduction to modern Turkey. It is part history, part travel log, and part journalism. If someone is looking for a probing history of modern Turkey, this book is not it. If someone is wanting to better grasp Turkey and its history before an upcoming trip to the region or to satisfy a small intellectual curiosity this is a good start. The author uses a variety of anecdotes to tell his experience in Turkey and fills in the rest with a cliff notes history for the republic.

Kinzer, a well regarded American foreign correspondent for the New York Times, has written an introduction to the history, culture, and current events surrounding Turkey, a country the author obviously has a deep love for and has lived in for considerable time.

Kinzer knows how to write and moves you through the book, but is really written for uninitiated, it'd probably be a little basic for someone who already knows a decent amount about the country and its people.

good overview book about present day turkey

This book was ok. I was much more into "The Turks Today," as an informational book on Turkey.

Generally interesting and well-written history of Turkey. However, I started this book looking for some history with a current perspective, wanting to know what life and the politics are for the Turkish people today. Wrong book. This was published in 1999, I believe, which is 16 years ago. And it was confusing. When the text would read "...today in Turkey...." I would have to remind myself that it may no longer be the same today.

I actually didn't read the whole book, but skimmed most of it once I realized when it was written. I'll look for another book to tell me about Turkey today.

Stephen Kinzer is an ex-New York Times correspondent who has written about many parts of the world, while based in locations as varied as Nicaragua, Berlin and Istanbul, the latter two as bureau chief. He has covered Central America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Turkey, Africa … -- in short, he's been around.

I picked up this book because I read one of his previous efforts, Blood of Brothers, while travelling through Nicaragua in 2008. Daniel Ortega had just been re-elected, and the book dealt with, yes, Daniel Ortega and the struggle of the Sandinistas against the US-funded contras in the 1980's. The book was the ideal travel companion, adding richness of detail and breadth of historical perspective to my travels through that country. Crescent and Star is almost as impressive.

This book concentrates on the modern era of Turkey, mainly the period from the 1980's onwards, although it quickly covers the Mustapha Kemal Ataturk era and the decades that followed it. Here is a summary...

Ataturk and the Creation of the Turkish Republic

The unusually prominent role of the military in modern Turkey has been dictated by the peculiar circumstances of the country's birth, in the wake of the disastrous implosion of World War I when the Ottoman Empire sided with the losing side. As the victorious Allies dismembered the Empire into its constituent ethnic pieces -- Arab, Greek, Armenian … -- and parceled out parts of it among themselves as colonies / protectorates, it looked as if little would survive of "Turkey" other than a few pieces of the Anatolian homeland. It was not even clear that Istanbul itself would remain part of Turkey. Into this power vacuum stepped Ataturk. A Turkish general who had been instrumental in the defeat of the British, Australians, New Zealanders and French at the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, his reputation was strong. He was able to quickly assemble an army from the remnants of the Ottoman forces, and rout the Greek Army which had been trying to greatly enlarge the Greek holdings on the Anatolian coast. This victory ended in a mass expulsion of up to 2 million Greeks from lands that had been Greek-speaking for millennia, and effectively ensured that Turkey would retain borders essentially the same as those it has today. Turkey remains a multi-ethnic state however, mainly because of the presence of about 15 million Kurds (out of a current total population of about 80 million).

Turkey paid a heavy price for becoming more ethnically Turkish: it lost most of its Greek and Armenian population (a large percentage of the latter having been slaughtered in an earlier "ethnic cleansing" in 1915), and after World War II most of its Jewish population as well. These three ethnic groups had made up the great majority of the commercial class. Their loss took much of the energy out of the urban economy, and greatly delayed Turkey's transition from an agrarian economy.

From this foundation, Ataturk created the Republic of Turkey in 1923, sending the Sultan packing. The country he ruled until his death in the late 1930's was resolutely ethnically Turkish and secular in nature. Kurdish demands for more autonomy were met with military force. Demands by the Muslim hierarchy and by Islamic believers in general to play a role in the governing of Turkey were also turned back. Symbols of the old way of life -- from the script of the written language to the wearing of the fez and the veil -- were swept away. Turks were forced to take last names for the first time. The country was dragged, often kicking and screaming, into the modern era.

Ataturk was himself a non-religious man, who drank, smoked and had a long succession of lovers. Maybe more importantly, he wasn't willing to tolerate competing contenders for power, regardless of whether they were ethnic, religious or ideological in character. The form of governance he put in place to modernize Turkey and ensure his personal power was known as Kemalism, and was the dominant ideology of the ruling class in Turkey until at least the end of the 20th century. Its principles included ensuring the primacy of the ethnic Turkish nation, enforcing a strictly secular approach to government, and adopting a form of limited democracy that always left the ultimate veto power to the military.

The key power behind the Kemalist Turkish state was always the military, ready to depose any civilian leader who posed a threat to the military itself or to the secular and ethnically Turkish nature of the state. No compromise with Islamic fundamentalism or with other ethnic groups -- especially the Kurds -- was tolerated. When Prime Minister Menderes regime in the 1950's grew too accepting of Muslim practices, such as tolerating the creation of religious academies, he was overthrown by the army, tried for treason, and hanged along with two of his cabinet members.

The Post-1980 Era

The most recent of the military coups was in 1980, at a time of great Kurdish unrest as well as "left-wing" terrorism. The army's war against the Kurds lasted well into the 1990's, took tens of thousands of lives, and still flares up from time to time even today. However, the reins of government were soon turned back to a civilian government in 1983, under a man who proved to be a far more effective reformer and modernizer than anyone ever expected: Turgut Ozal.

After Ozal died in office in 1993, matters backslid once again, with the accession to power in 1996 of Prime Minister Erkaban of the Welfare party, whose power base was largely small town and rural Islamists. His moves to draw the country closer to Iran, along with other moves to strengthen Islamism, led to his being deposed by the army one year after coming to power. The most prominent of his followers was Tayyip Erdogan, the Mayor of Istanbul. When Erkaban's regime was deposed, the Welfare party he led was banned. Erkaban and Erdogan were both condemned to prison terms (though only Erdogan actually spent time in jail). Erkaban was finished -- he was elderly by this time -- but the much younger Erdogan emerged from jail to found a new Islamist party, the AKP.

Erdogan's release from jail coincided with the devastating earthquake of August, 1999, which struck the region about 50 miles away from Istanbul near the sea of Marmara. Twenty thousand people died, while the army and the government did … next to nothing. It was a catastrophe made worse by official incompetence. The main search and rescue efforts for survivors were mounted by the locals themselves as well as by foreign disaster relief workers, including significant numbers from Turkey's old enemy, Greece. For days, Turkish troops sat in their barracks while the government called press conferences to say that their its soldiers and workers couldn't reach the disaster zone. TV crews and foreign teams seemed to have no such difficulty, and the popularity and credibility of both the government and the army plummeted.

It is very plausible to argue that it was the discrediting of Turkey's old institutions, both civil and military, that laid the foundations for the AKP's election victory in 2002. The party won a majority and Erdogan became prime minister -- and remains so to this day.

Erdogan proceeded to loosen the controls on the expression of religious opinion. He largely did away with the practice of torture, which had been routine in police stations and prisons. He also loosened controls on the press, though the constitution of the country remained unchanged, with all its restrictive provisions regarding civil rights. For example, political parties that advocate on behalf of ethnic minorities are not allowed. Nor is any form of expression seen to insult the memory of Ataturk. Nor anything seen to attack the "historical and moral values of Turkishness." Not surprisingly, it's easy to still run afoul of such broadly worded provisions, and even such world renowned figures as Turkey's Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk have been indicted and tried under these laws.

One notable piece of progress was in acknowledging the role of Turks in the 1915 slaughter of the Armenians. The government even allowed a university conference on the subject in Istanbul itself in 2005, though not without government officials displaying a lot of huffing and puffing about insults to Turkishness. The conference was held successfully, and the issues it raised were debated for weeks in the Turkish press, which would have been unthinkable a few short years earlier.

A major force in helping Erdogan to drive liberalization was the hope and expectation of being admitted to the EU. The EU laid out a long list of conditions, and the Turkish government set to work to fulfill them. But after a courtship lasting several years, the EU suddenly announced in 2006 that the it was re-thinking admitting Turkey. The Turks felt dissed and duped. However, as the EU lurched from crisis to crisis from 2008 onwards, Turks had some reason to feel both vindicated and even grateful for not being embroiled in the mess.

Throughout his first term, Erdogan ruled as Prime Minister, but the President was the army's man. In 2007, Erdogan decided to place his own man, Abdullah Gul, in the presidency. All that was required to do so was for Parliament to elect him. At this point, the army pushed back hard, and tried to use the courts to ban the AKP for violations of the constitution. Erdogan fought back by calling an election, which he won with an increased majority, and in the process managed to both install a new president and humble the army. He remains firmly in control today.

Summary

It's impossible not to be impressed with this book. At times it seems somewhat rambling, as journalistic works often do, but the author knows the country about as intimately as any foreigner ever can -- and tells its story very well. He understands its history, its institutions, and the players that make the country what it is today. It's hard to escape that this man knows whereof he speaks. As well, he clearly loves most everything about it, from its people to its food to its landscapes to its music, and it shows. At times he displays a tolerance for prolonged repressiveness of the Turkish regime that seems surprising, until you begin to compare it to the bad neighborhood that surrounds it. For decades, its neighbors to the north were the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc satellites, which on its southern and eastern borders sat the dictatorial regimes of Syria, Iraq and Iran. By comparison, Turkey was a liberal paradise. Some parts of the neighborhood have improved -- notably with the disappearance of the Soviet Union -- but it's still not great. Turkey deserves much credit for being the most democratic regime in the Islamic world and one of the most economically dynamic. And Kinzer deserves great credit for this wonderful book.

After reading "All the Shah's Men", I sought to read Kinzer's views on Turkey. However, it really fell short and was not the book I was looking for in order to get a better understanding of the history and current political situation of the country.

Excellent short political history of Turkey

A readable and consistently interesting short introduction to current political trends and issues in Turkey. Kinzer was the NYT's Istanbul bureau chief in the late 90s and his strong affection for the country comes through on every page as he lucidly and concisely walks you through fascinating twists and turns from Ataturk to Erdogan.

Turkey is in a remarkable political moment, with an Islamist government gently but firmly prying the military's fingers off of the political machinery, and democrats lining up behind a party they're not sure they should trust.

Kinzer can get a little too breathless in his enthusiasm, and seems a little too ready to tell Turks what they should do, but I don't know of a better introduction to the current affairs of one of the world's most interesting countries.