Scotland on Sunday
August 15, 2004, Sunday

BOOK REVIEWS: THE TURKS TODAY: ATATURK’S LEGACY INSIDE OUT

by Tom Adair

The Turks Today
Andrew Mango
John Murray, GBP 20

ANDREW Mango has made the study of Turkey his business if not his
life’s work. A fluent Turkish speaker born in Istanbul, he paints a
broad and accessible picture, shrewdly gleaned from his
insider-outsider dual perspective.

The Turks of the title – today’s post-imperial 21st-century
generation led by prime minister, Recep Erdogan, are the inheritors
of Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey.

Mango traces that inheritance from the moment of Ataturk’s death 66
years ago, a progress which has been plagued by political shifts,
economic struggles, turbulent tensions between the Greek and Turkish
governments (not least in relation to Cyprus), and the unfolding
status of secularism pitched in the shifting sea of growing Islamist
identity and demands.

The Turks Today unfolds as a balanced, coherent primer for serious
travellers with an itch to read the hidden lie of the land, and for
inquisitive general readers intrigued by Turkey’s emergent role as a
growing economic force and strategic cockpit poised at the heart of
the Middle East, yet gazing westwards, towards Europe’s growing fold
of nations.

For those in a hurry, the book’s succinct prologue provides a deft
overview and analysis of the nature of Turkish society and its
peoples.

But Mango’s subsequent two-part treatment of his introductory themes
proves worth the reader’s perseverance. First comes scrutiny of the
key historic landmarks as the country evolved from Ataturk’s
authoritarian ethos into a volatile parliamentary democracy. The
second half of the book relates this governance to the vicissitudes
of its struggling but growing and stabilising economy, with chapters
devoted to culture and the arts and to the development of its
services in health and education.

There is an introductory essay explaining Erdogan’s stealthy rise
from Islamic militant to international pragmatist, and a mirroring
piece on Istanbul’s heartbeat-centrality from Byzantine times until
now.

Mango tackles human rights abuses, Kurdish nationalism, Armenian
discontent, the demise of enclaves of Greek and Jewish populations,
informing his pertinent observations with balanced argument and
recourse to historic context. The picture he paints, especially in
the book’s first half, is of a country trapped in an operatic,
melodramatic history, subjected to military juntas, interspersed with
the rise and demise of a cast of gesturing politicians producing more
heat than light.

The second half of the book is much more piecemeal, sometimes
repetitive, yet in places also lyrical, vouchsafing occasional
glimpses of everyday life, of peasant toil, relating anecdotes which
enliven the clear but didactic prose momentum.