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An admirably clear and well-researched account of the recent history of a complex, conflict-ridden and fascinating country. While Kerem Öktem is uncompromising about the dark side of Turkey’s recent past, he also argues persuasively that social, economic and political changes are creating a new, outward looking country capable of playing a key role in an increasingly important part of the world. Essential reading for anyone interested in a country which is, in several senses, at a critical crossroads.
Margaret MacMillan (University of Oxford), author of ‘The Uses and Abuses of History’ and ‘Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war’.
This book provides an unusually lucid and well-structured account of developments in Turkey since the end of the Cold War. In a fluent and accessible style, the author addresses the most significant events of the last two decades. The new actors and the challenging issues of this era in Turkish politics are explored against the backdrop of the emergence of modern Turkey since the 19th century. The author is part of a new generation of critical scholars in Turkish studies, for whom cultural issues related to Alevis, Kurds, and Armenians are as important as issues of power politics.
Elisabeth Özdalga (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul), editor of ‘Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy’.
Turkey’s rapid development over the last three decades has added new layers of complexity – political, social, legal, religious, ethnic – to an already formidable mix. This makes Kerem Öktem’s forensic and engaging analytical portrait of Turkey since 1980 all the more welcome. In five deft, lucid chapters the author deploys intimate knowledge and illuminating detail to examine the forces shaping the country and contesting its future. The result is a brilliant, assured overview that plunges into a maelstrom of issues surrounded by passionate argument and makes sense of them with cool judgment and an acute sense of balance. Kerem Oktem has written a compelling book about an indispensable nation – and done both scholarship and modern Turkey a true service.
David Hayes (openDemocracy)
Since the end of the Cold War, the world order has been redefined with many countries renegotiating their foreign and domestic politics. Kerem Öktem’s meticuolus analysis provides valuable insights into the difficult process the Republic of Turkey has underwent since 1980, a course dictated by ruptures, missed opportunities, new syntheses and gradual erosion through it all of the state control over civil society. Öktem captures this arduous and very complex three decades of Turkey’s recent history extremely thoroughly and even-handedly: he carefully maps out all the public discourses and significant key moments in excellent prose, making frequent references to the interviews he conducted with significant public intellectuals. I too join Öktem’s concluding wish that Turkey transform into a more liberal, self-confident state of its citizens.
Fatma Müge Göçek, University of Michigan, author of ‘The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era’.