Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey [Paperback]

Hugh Pope (Author), Nicole Pope (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

In this "deeply revealing guide to modern Turkish culture and politics"(The New York Times Book Review), Hugh and Nicole Pope provide a glimpse into a culture that has long been misunderstood. Turkey Unveiled is the only book in many years to attempt to fill a gap in perception with regard to this extremely complex country, and this paperback edition includes an epilogue that brings the book totally up to date, with coverage of the most recent developments in Turkey.

Throughout the last generation Turkey has opened up to the outside world, increasingly revealing a pluralistic and dynamic society. The authors, who speak fluent Turkish and have reported from Turkey for over a decade, provide a rich mosaic of contemporary Turkey and its formative past. The strengths and weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian tragedy, the ongoing Kurdish struggle, and the controversial legacy of the brilliant but autocratic founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatark, are all here. They also provide portraits of new leaders who have broken taboos and ushered in new freedoms at a time when other forces attempt to pull Turkey back into the Middle Eastern vortex. Hugh and Nicole Pope, combining analysis with understanding, make recent developments in Turkey intelligible for both the general reader and the millions of visitors welcomed by a burgeoning tourist industry.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Turkey, write journalists Nicole and Hugh Pope in this well-made narrative history, is a land that defies easy categorization, a melange of elements "European, Western, Eastern, Islamic, fascistic, anarchic" that has always been something of an enigma to outsiders. After decades of stagnation, it is now emerging as a nation of central importance in Eurasian geopolitics, as it was in the days of the Ottoman Empire. The authors describe the growth of the modern Turkish state in the aftermath of World War I, when that empire, defeated by the Allied powers, splintered into some 30 independent states. Led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his so-called Young Turks, the postwar state sought to curb the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, to introduce some measure of democracy into a formerly autocratic system, and to secure a place for Turkey in the constellation of world powers. They were only partly successful; Atatürk, the authors contend, "led Turkey on the path of Westernization, but left it stranded half-way to full democratization because, deep down, he was not a democrat." Now, after years of military rule, the Turkish government is making efforts both to continue that democratization and to secure influence among the emerging Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The nation, the authors write, is now the arena of conflict between left and right, fundamentalist and secularist, nationalist and cosmopolitan: it stands at a crossroads both political and historical. Westerners, they suggest, would do well to pay closer attention to Turkish affairs, and their book is a fine contribution toward that end. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

...a deeply revealing guide to modern Turkish culture and politics that fills a wide gap in general knowledge.... a brave and at times an ironic book. -- The New York Times Book Review, Robert D. Kaplan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 373 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585670960
• ISBN-13: 978-1585670963
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #955,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must read" to understand Turkey's complexities., March 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Turkey Unveiled (Hardcover)

More than any country Turkey has been almost deliberately misunderstood in Europe and in the United States. Some of the misunderstanding comes from lazy thinking, much is ignorance and the rest predjudice combined with politics. Nicole and Hugh Pope, who speak Turkish as well as several other languages, have lived for the past decade in Instanbul. Their clear-eyed understanding of Turkey's promise and problems is clearly conveyed in this well written book. It is a "must read" for anyone who wants to understand the reality of this complex and fascinating country.

It's difficult to think of a country in a more complex neighborhood. Turkey has borders with Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Turkey's relations with each brings a different set of complexities. Ironically Turkey's most strained relations are with it's NATO ally, Greece. Internally Turkey's relations with its Kurdish minority, creates a tension with no signs of easy resolution yet are less hostile than many in the west realize. The Popes explore and explain with a depth of understanding and feeling that can only come not only knowing the language and the people but from having the energy and curiosity to travel widely and interview citizens at all levels of society.

This is not a travelogue but a serious history of modern Turkey. Still one wishes they'd found a way to mention the joys of walking through both the rich and poor neighborhoods of Istanbul where a foreigner can see and experience first hand the Turks righly famous hospitality as well as the dynamic tension inherent in a rapidly changing society where you can see traditionally garbed mothers walking with short skirted, lipsticked daughters.

Since Mustafa Kemal Attaturk the Turks have dealt with adversity. The Popes describe a country that is at once moving towards modernity, and possibly prosperity, while at the same time is rediscovering its past. Turkey is a work in progress. The Popes do a masterful job of describing the progress to date, warts and all.

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey., August 5, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern Turkey (Paperback)

The title is unfortunate; the subtitle not quite accurate. "Modern Turkey" usually means starting in about 1800 and trailing off somewhere in the last generation; this appears to be another once-over that familiar ground, but it is not. Instead, the Popes (a wife-husband time), in a well-written and reliable account, devote three quarters of their study to the years since 1960. Chapters deal, in a sympathetic but always critical manner, with such issues as the military coups, the Cyprus issue, the Kurdish problem, domestic economic developments, the newly-liberated Turkic republics, the Tansu Çiller fiasco, and the Islamist phenomenon. Throughout, the Popes blame much that they find in Turkey on the modern state's founder, Kemal Atatürk, including the "repression, the intense national paranoia, the shortcomings of its democracy and the over-reliance on the army."

Perhaps most interesting is their account of Türgut Özal, the man who dominated Turkish politics between 1983 and his death in 1993. He was "the catalyst for much of the breathless pace of change that revolutionized Turkey" during that decade-long period. His influence extended to much of Turkish public life: "Undermining the Kemalist bastions of state dominance of business and the media, flamboyantly popularizing a new ideology of the market and international trade, irreverently breaking taboos about the military, Islam and the Kurds, Türgut Özal became Turkey's most influential political personality since Atatürk." The authors catch his contradictions ("for all his Muslim piety, [he] liked to finish off a bottle of his favorite Courvoisier brandy") and his foibles ("He is like a piece of soft iron. Whatever magnet he sees, he sticks to"), without undermining his outsized and constructive role.

Middle East Quarterly, December 1999

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Journalistic and Biased, July 28, 2006

By 

Ali Caglar Akgungor "Fokki" (France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Turkey Unveiled (Paperback)

Don't think this book is completely useless. But it's not a serious resource about Turkey. If you already know a lot about this country (I mean if you already read for exemple Kalaycioglu's Turkish Dynamics or at least Zürcher's History of Turkey) Popes' book may be interesting in order to understand how foreigners see Turkey, Turkish people and turkish politics.
However, I saw much better exemples of this kind of "journalistic account" books such as the "The Turks" by David Hotham (published 40 years ago), or the recent Crescent and Star by Kinzer. I think Mango's The Turks Today is the best, altough Mango prefer to not deal with some "sensitive" subjects.

Popes' book is heavily biased, especially in some parts. Their style remembers me some orientalist authors who were against the idea of modernization of the east. Still, some people are disapointed by discovering a modernizing country in Turkey, instead of an oriental one, where people ride camels while girls are doing belly-dancing. So I call this type of text "neo-orientalistic".

Another point is, just as it is with some other foreign journalists working in Turkey (especially french), they still think in terms (and paradigms) of the country from where they are; and they are tended to suggest "solutions" for everything. Their country is the correct one, and others are "deviations". When reading Turkey Unveiled, you can see that the authors can't stop seeing things that way. So they just misundertand some important facts and make very subjective comments. That's what french call "donneur de leçon" attitude ("lesson-giver").

Another very important point: yes there is a bibliography at the end but almost no references inside !!! We can't understand if what they wrote is from a real source or just a rumor.

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ATTENTION ATTENTION ATTENTION SECOND "REVIEW" ADDED
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Dear Amazon Users,

I decided to write a second "review" in order to get your attention to the following facts:

1) Most of the positive reviews like "...I didn't read the book yet but I will definitely buy it" are ANONYMUS !!!

2) A person has 2 separate positive reviews, one on this page, the other at the page two (click "next" to see)

I believe this 2 and most of the other (+) reviews are just advertisement. I suspect that the person who managed wrote 2 reviews is probably a friend of the authors.

You can think and say what you want about Turkey and Turks, but please try to read serious authors : (in English) Feroz Ahmad, Eric Zürcher, Ersin Kalaycioglu, Caglar Keyder, Tim Jacoby, William Hale (in French) Paul Dumont, François Georgeon, Stephanos Yerasimos, Jean Paul Burdy, Semih Vaner, Jean Paul Roux...

Yes some are turkish but non of these are "Turkish-lovers" and they don't hide their critics about a lot of issues including armenian massacres, cyprus, kurdish question, human rigths and democratization issues...

Read and decide by yourself !

Thanks.


----------------------- December 2010 Update-------------------------------------------------

4 years after my first comment, I'm still defending the same point of view about this book. I regret to have given more than 25 USD to it; and I'm asking the same question again: WHY ALL THE POSITIVE COMMENTS HAVE BEEN SIGNED BY " A CUSTOMER" (anonymous user) ??? WHY THOSE WHO SEEM TO BE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THIS MASTERPIECE DO NOT WRITE THEIR NAMES DOWN???

CAVEAT EMPTOR !