Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds [Paperback]

Stephen Kinzer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2002

If Turkey lived up to its potential, it could rule the world - but will it? A passionate report from the front lines

For centuries few terrors were more vivid in the West than fear of "the Turk," and many people still think of Turkey as repressive, wild, and dangerous. Crescent and Star is Stephen Kinzer's compelling report on the truth about this nation of contradictions - poised between Europe and Asia, caught between the glories of its Ottoman past and its hopes for a democratic future, between the dominance of its army and the needs of its civilian citizens, between its secular expectations and its Muslim traditions.

Kinzer vividly describes Turkey's captivating delights as he smokes a water pipe, searches for the ruins of lost civilizations, watches a camel fight, and discovers its greatest poet. But he is also attuned to the political landscape, taking us from Istanbul's elegant cafes to wild mountain outposts on Turkey's eastern borders, while along the way he talks to dissidents and patriots, villagers and cabinet ministers. He reports on political trials and on his own arrest by Turkish soldiers when he was trying to uncover secrets about the army's campaigns against Kurdish guerillas. He explores the nation's hope to join the European Union, the human-rights abuses that have kept it out, and its difficult relations with Kurds, Armenians, and Greeks.

Will this vibrant country, he asks, succeed in becoming a great democratic state? He makes it clear why Turkey is poised to become "the most audacious nation of the twenty-first century."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A passionate love for the Turkish people and an optimism that its ruling class can complete Turkey's transformation into a Western-style democracy mark Kinzer's reflections on a country that sits geographically and culturally at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. Kinzer, the former New York Times Istanbul bureau chief, gives a concise introduction to Turkey: Kemal Ataterk's post-WWI establishment of the modern secular Turkish state; the odd makeup of contemporary society, in which the military enforces Ataterk's reforms. In stylized but substantive prose, he devotes chapters to the problems he sees plaguing Turkish society: Islamic fundamentalism, frictions regarding the large Kurdish minority and the lack of democratic freedoms. Kinzer's commonsense, if naeve, solution: the ruling military elite, which takes power when it feels Turkey is threatened, must follow the modernizing path of Ataterk whom Kinzer obviously admires a step further and increase human rights and press freedoms. Kinzer's journalistic eye serves him well as he goes beyond the political, vividly describing, for instance, the importance and allure of the narghile salon, where Turks smoke water pipes. Here, as elsewhere, Kinzer drops his journalist veneer and gets personal, explaining that he enjoys the salons in part "because the sensation of smoking a water pipe is so seductive and satisfying." Readers who want a one-volume guide to this fascinating country need look no further.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Americans can no longer plead ignorance about modern Turkey. Recently, several excellent books on the subject have been published by Western journalists: Marvine Howe's Turkey Today (LJ 6/1/00), Nicole and Hugh Pope's Turkey Unveiled (Overlook, 1998), and now this work by Kinzer, former New York Times Istanbul bureau chief (1996-2000). All three are informative and provocative, though each has a slightly different focus (Howe focuses on the role of Islam, while the Popes provide a narrative history). Interspersing journalistic essays with personal vignettes, Kinzer discusses Turkey's potential to be a world leader in the 21st century, as it is truly a bridge between East and West, politically and geographically. Kinzer questions Turkey's ability to achieve this potential, however, unless true democracy can be established. Whether it can depends on Turkey's military, which, in order to ensure the continuation of the Kemalist ideal of a paternalistic state, has never allowed real freedom of speech, press, or assembly. Kinzer argues persuasively that if the military refuses this opportunity, the consequences (Islamic fundamentalism, Kurdish terrorism, denial of EU membership) could be catastrophic for the Turkish state and its people. An excellent, insightful work; highly recommended. Ruth K. Baacke, formerly with Whatcom Community Coll. Lib., Bellingham, WA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (September 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374528667
• ISBN-13: 978-0374528669
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,197,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Kinzer was Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times and is now that paper's national cultural correspondent. He is the author of Blood of Brothers and co-author of Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. He lives in Chicago.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 94 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A centered, rational view of Turkey. October 5, 2001

By W. Jarvis

Format:Hardcover

Thank you, Mr. Kinzer.

To all reading this, please buy this book if Turkey or world cultures interest you.

I've heard Turkey and Turks called everything from genocides to barbarians to philistines to militarists and just as easily, I've heard the country brushed off as if it's just another fragment of a nation, a third-world country. The problem is that Turkey is only half-known, and Turkey is half-sure of what it must do.

The book makes clear all the difficulties of Turkey and its search for a place in the sun. Yes, there were massacres of Armenians after their support of Russia in WWI. Yes, there have been several military coups that tortured thousands of people. Yes, the Kurdish wars were terrible and kept secret by the government. But what were the circumstances of these events? Kinzer answers all, taking the right people to task for the crimes in Turkey's past.

The wonderful thing is that Kinzer doesn't shy away from the awful realities, the eccentricities, and the outright pitfalls of Turkey's quirky system. He tells it all how it is, but he obviously loves the country all the same. He just hopes it will fix its flaws as he knows it can.

I am of Turkish descent but this book written by a non-Turkish American thoroughly deepened my appreciation for the country. If you're attracted by the book at all, follow your instincts and pick it up.

59 of 65 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Yes but May 2, 2005

By M. Coburn

Format:Paperback

You can learn a good deal about Turkey from this book but it suffers two weaknesses. One is the heavy-handed prescriptions for Turkey which the author voices repeatedly; while much of the analysis seems cogent, there is an almost-arrogance in the idea of an American reporter telling the Turks how they should fix their nation. The second is the almost total omission of any discussion of the role of women in the culture --- a critical and profoundly interesting question as the country finds its way between East and West.

90 of 105 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars how bright the future ? September 22, 2001

By Orrin C. Judd VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

A truly modern Turkey governed by the rule of law would raise the Turkish people to levels of
prosperity and self-confidence they have never known before. Despite the country's political and
psychological underdevelopment, it has the resources to become a towering power. If it can
liberate
itself from its paralyzing fears and embrace true democracy, it will also serve as a magnetic
example of how the ideals of liberty can triumph over enormous obstacles. By adding moral
strength to its military strength, Turkey could become a dominant force in the Middle East,
encouraging peace and pulling Arab countries away from the social backwardness and feudal
dictatorship under which most of them now suffer. It could exert a mighty and stabilizing
influence westward to the Balkans and eastward to the Caucasus and Central Asia, becoming the
key power in a region that is strategically vital, overwhelmingly rich in oil and other resources, and
now ruled mostly by tyrants who are dragging it toward chaos.
-Stephen Kinzer, Crescent & Star

Though we pay obscenely little attention, Turkey is an extraordinarily important nation and its future
may go a long way to determining whether Islam and democracy can ultimately co-exist in one
nation. Geographically and politically, Turkey occupies a unique position, squeezed between Europe
to the West and the Islamic world to the East. Though traditionally Muslim, its great revolutionary
leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, upon taking power in 1922 and establishing a Republic, reoriented the
nation towards the West, toward the values of the Enlightenment and the institutions of secular
democracy. But still today, despite the continuing devotion of Turks to the person and ideas of
Ataturk, it remains an open question as to whether the democracy can endure.

Stephen Kinzer was the NY Times correspondent in Turkey for four event filled years and his passion
for the country and its people is infectious. In conversational but admonitory style he manages both
to educate Westerners as to the history and cultural richness of Turkey while also honestly depicting
its internal problems, many of them unresolved, and firmly prodding Turks to deal with them, as a
great nation must.

One very effective device Kinzer uses is a series of brief interludes each dealing with one element of
Turkish life. These include : the fez; raki, the national drink; the nargile, or water pipe; the nation's
three favorite sports--camel fighting, oil wrestling, and cirit (a form of jousting); the literature of
Nazim Hikmet; and the romantic endeavor of swimming the Bosphorus. These quick chapters provide
a rich and fascinating texture to go along with the history.

The hero of the story is very much Ataturk, who at least in Kinzer's portrait seems to have been one
of the most remarkable national leaders of the 20th Century. Like Peter the Great in Russia and the
Shah in Iran, which not coincidentally are the two other equally troublesome Eurasian democracies,
he found it intolerable that his people should be so far behind the West in terms of technology, wealth
creation and self governance, and so, using dictatorial means, he imposed Western institutions an an
often reluctant populace and tried eliminating persistent vestiges of the Ottoman past. That the
Republic endures, is allied with NATO, has a strategic partnership with Israel, and is on the verge of
entering the EU is testimony to his success. But the too frequent necessity for the armed forces to step
in and depose governments, the oppression of the Kurd minority, and the very real fear of a takeover
of government by radical Islamicists, illustrates just how tenuous the democracy remains.

Kinzer is extremely optimistic about Turkey's future and feels that it can afford to face its past more
honestly than it has--including such issues as the Kurds, Cyprus, and the Armenian massacre--and can
take the risk of loosening the Kemalist grip on society, the military backed determination of Turkey's
elites that no threat to Kemal Ataturk's legacy will be permitted. I certainly hope that he is right,
though I'm not as confident.

Even as this book hits the stores, Turkey has decided to allow the United States to operate out of
Turkish airbases in the war on terrorism. Once again, Turkey is proving itself to be a far more
important ally than we in the West give it credit for. Hopefully Stephen Kinzer's excellent book will
educate many Americans as to the unique and potentially vital role in world affairs that Turkey, with
its uneasy blend of democracy and Islam, may play in the coming decades. We have a far larger stake
in the outcome of Turkey's internecine struggles than we seem to realize.

GRADE : A-