Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World [Paperback]

Hugh Pope (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 31, 2006

A compellingly readable account of Turkey and its people by acclaimed author, Hugh Pope Since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I and the subsequent founding of the Turkish Republic by Ataturk, Turkey has played a prominent, albeit dependent, role in international affairs, as a vital ally to NATO and as a secular Islamic democracy. In this major new work, Hugh Pope provides a vivid picture of the Turkish people, descendants of the nomadic armies that conquered the Byzantine Empire and dominated the region for centuries. Today the Turks encompass a region much larger than the political boundaries of the nation of Turkey - from China, to Iran, Iraq, the Netherlands, Germany, and all the way to the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. Hugh Pope has travelled the world to encounter and assimilate the many facets of this extraordinarily complex and fascinating ethnic group. Rich with stories and legends stretching back centuries, Sons of the Conquerors is a compellingly readable account of a profoundly neglected subject that brings readers into closer contact with a culture that has shaped history.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Delving deep into a world most westerners are shamefully ignorant of, this highly readable collection of essays about Turkic people from Virginia to Xinjiang, China, buzzes with life and personality even as it explains topics as obscure as the inner workings of Azerbaijani politics. Pope, who also wrote (with Nicole Pope) Turkey Unveiled and is the Istanbul correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, has a knack for storytelling and an inexhaustible store of novelistic details-the pop of a weld torch, for example, as an Istanbul ironworker explains that UFOs are proof that Americans have djinns (evil spirits) instead of souls. The only real flaw in this appealing, affectionate portrait of the Turkic world (a term that includes all Turkish speakers, not only those who live in Turkey) is that all this vivid reporting can't compensate for a relative lack of big-picture analysis. The book's dozens of otherwise deft capsule histories of obscure corners of the world have an oddly free-floating quality, unmoored from any clear geopolitical understanding. It is perhaps this that gives some of Pope's conclusions a tossed-off feeling. "Bulgarian Turks still do not really trust the Bulgarians," he writes in a chapter about the persecution of the former by the latter, before breezily concluding, without offering any supporting evidence, that "the edge is off the conflict." Pope's gift for accessible writing make this an excellent first book for anyone interested in the subject, even if its dearth of analysis means it shouldn't be the last.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

With the end of the Soviet Union began independence for a half-dozen Turkic countries, where Istanbul-based reporter Pope has made forays for the past 15 years, traveling in both presidential airliners and faltering taxis. Pope does not organize his trips chronologically, but, rather, according to what he believes are the seven collective characteristics of Turkic peoples. One is the "military vocation" epitomized by Turkey itself, whose military is regarded as the guardian of secularism; a concomitant trait is predilection for the political strongman. None of the new Turkic states is a liberal democracy, and none less so than Turkmenistan, home to a shambolic personality cult devoted to its dictator. Pope's talks with officials are always revelatory of local and international politics, but readers will most value his perceptiveness about Turkic culture when he, speaking fluent Turkish, meets ordinary people. Some of these are Uygurs, the Turkic minority suppressed by communist China, and others are part of the Turkic diaspora in Europe and America. A sensitive presentation of how Turks view themselves and their future. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158567804X
• ISBN-13: 978-1585678044
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #432,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hugh Pope is since 2007 the Turkey/Cyprus Project Director for International Crisis Group, the conflict-prevention organization. Based in Istanbul, he writes reports on EU-Turkey relations, Cyprus and Turkey's ties with its neighbours. Pope was previously a foreign correspondent for 25 years, most recently spending a decade as a Turkey, Middle East and Central Asia Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Pope received a B.A. in Oriental Studies (Persian and Arabic) from Oxford University.

Mr. Pope has written TURKEY UNVEILED: a History of Modern Turkey (London 1997, a New York Times "notable book"), and SONS OF THE CONQUERORS: the Rise of the Turkic world (New York 2005, an Economist magazine "book of the year"). His forthcoming book, DINING WITH AL-QAEDA: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East will be published in March 2010 (New York: Thomas Dunne/St Martins Press).

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Report From a Hidden Part of the World June 16, 2005

By John Matlock

Format:Hardcover

Turkey is the keystone between the Middle East of Syria, Iran and Iraq, and on the other side is Greece and the European Union. The broader Turkic World, those countries or regions where Turkish is the predominant language, lies to the northeast of Turkey and make up the region that lies between China and Russia.

In this book, Mr. Pope who heads the Istanbul bureau for the Wall Street Journal, gives a report of his travels throughout this part of the world. He reports on the transition in the countries that were previously part of the Soviet Union. He reports on the religious aspects of a country viewed with suspicion by the Christian West because of their Muslim religion, and shunned by their co-religionists in the Islamic world for its alliance with the Christian West.

This book is more of a chronicle of Mr. Pope's travels and experiences through this world than a true history. The years since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been years of drastic change in this region. Countries like Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and others are visited and some of their story told.

This is a region previously hidden in the monolithic Soviet Union. Now it is opening up to be a part of the rest of the world but independently. This book brings this region to light in a light and easily understood manner.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Magnificent Survey of the Pan-Turanian World November 26, 2005

By Laurence Jarvik

Format:Hardcover

Hugh Pope has travelled from one end of the Turkic world to the other to write a magnificent survey of the Pan-Turanian world he calls Sons of the Conquerors. Now Istanbul bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal,, Pope has lived and travelled in Turkey for some twenty years. He speaks Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, as well as English. As a result, he can talk to anyone from a bazaar merchant, to a police chief, to a businessman, to an imam, to a president. And he does so in this book.

Anyone who has been to Istanbul knows that the vibrant country Pope describes is already a reality. What he is saying is that even if pan-Turanianism cannot succeed as a political movement, Turkic qualities of Turkic states will give them a solid foundation to follow in Turkey's footsteps to modernity-as Sons of the Conquerors.

The author of Turkey Unveiled certainly knows Turkey, the Turks, and Turkish culture. Pope takes an almost anatomical interest in Turkey's people, as well as Turkic brothers and cousins scattered around the globe. He describes the realities of the Turkish Republic, its relation to the Balkan States and Azerbaijan. He visits the humming factories and gleaming offices of the new Turkish entrepreneurs, as well as the dusty agricultural towns of central Anatolia.

He understands Turkic psychology, too. His second section, on Turkic politicians, is entitled "Save us, Father!" It begins with a profile of Ataturk and his secular revolution, and continues to explore Turkmenbashi, Aliyev, and Nazarbaev's political debt to the Turkic leader. Finally, he tracks down the ghose of Isa Beg, and his Uighur pan-Turanian legacy. His descriptions of Kashgar and Urumqi are priceless.

From examining the Turkish mentality, Pope turns to explore Turkic geopolitics-namely Iran and Russia. The Persian and Slavic influences have been a part of Turkey's history, and the Turkic personality and society can be understood as a diamond squeezed by the pressure between Russian Orthodoxy and Persian Shi'ism.

Pope travels abroad as well, to look at Turkic communities in Germany, Holland, and the USA. What he finds is interesting, especially in the different ways expatriate Turkish immigrants adapt to their different host societies. Most intriguing is his claim that Virginia's Melengueon Indian tribe were originally Turkish galley slaves washed ashore on the American coast. Even if you don't buy that theory, his evidence that Native American Indian tribes had Turkish origins is persuasive.

There's just so much that it is impossible to summarize. He describes the Caspian oil boom, the Kazakh oil boom, and the re-invention of the Turkish police force as the nation attempts to enter the EU-from "Midnight Express" to "Midnight Espresso."

When it comes to Uzbekistan, Pope is sympathetic to Islam Karimov. Pope's basic argument seems to be that Karimov, although of Tajik (Persian) ancestry, is closely following Ataturk's path of independence, authoritarianism, secularism, and self-improvement.He sees Uzbekistan much like Turkey was in the 1920s, and is surprisingly bullish :

...But Uzbekistan has continued to develop according to the stern precepts of its regime, just as early republican Turkey insisted on it right to develop at its own pace. As in Turkey, its stubborn self-reliance and narrow-minded government have delayed its development. Again like Turkey, it may well help create a coherent Turkic nation, although scars will be left by Karimov's widescale and often vicious oppression of the Muslim-minded countryside. A Soviet legacy of urban planning, literacy and education may even give it advantages over Turkey in some areas.(p.349)

Pope does a good job of explaining Uzbekistan's uneasy relations with Turkey over the years, and details the reasons behind the closing of Turkish schools by President Karimov. He even speculates about a Turkish-Iranian-Russian alliance as an alternative to Europe-something also mentioned by Russian Eurasianist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin.

It is fascinating to think about the future of Central Asia, given Pope's hopeful analysis of Turkish mentality, culture, society, and history.It would be nice if he is right...(This review was originally published on <a href="http://www.registan.net">Registan.net</a>.)

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting overview of the Turkey and the newly independent Turkic states since 1991 July 16, 2005

By tarihci202

Format:Hardcover

This book aims to examine developments in the newly independent Turkic-speaking states of Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kirgizstan, and Kazakhstan, in the post-Soviet era, particularly in their relations to the Republic of Turkey. Because of their wealth in natural resources and their importance since 2001 in the "War on Terror," it is a region that has newfound importance for an American audience.

There are a number of concerns I have about this work. I think it overstates the importance of the Turkish Republic as a player in the region and that it overstates the saliency of "Turkic cultural" values as a way of understanding the region's politics.

But these concerns are more than balanced by Pope's familiarity with the main political actors, by his talent for using a telling anecdote to demonstrate his point, and by his sophisticated analysis of a whole series of regional issues, ranging from kleptocracy and oil wealth, to state-building, to Islam and human rights.

For those looking for a history of the region or more scholarly analysis, Carter V. Findley's The Turks in World History is a better bet. For those interested in the region's recent past and its place in contemporary politics, one could do worse than this engaging and informative book.