Turkey - Erik Jan Zurcher

The book covers a broad sweep of history, exploring the ways in which Turkey became a part of the modern capitalist world of the great European powers, and the beginning of modernization and reform following the French Revolution and Revolutionary wars. It traces Turkish history through two centuries of turmoil: the end of the Ottoman empire, the establishment of the Turkish republic, the Kemalist period and the time of troubled democracy to the present. The book also looks at the three military coups in the post-Second World War period, and the subsequent return to democracy, the human rights questions, the current economic situation and relations with the IMF, Turkey's integration into the Western alliance and the bid for membership of the European community, and the re-emergence of the age-old issues: the Kurdish question and the place of Islam in the Turkish state.;As the first book of its kind since the publication of Bernard Lewis's "The Emergence of Modern Turkey" over 30 years ago, this book explores the evolution of cultural, religious, social and economic life though two centuries as well as political transformation, and will be read by all students of the Middle East, as well as general readers.