Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds

The history of Turkey is as old as civilization itself. The Byzantine and Ottoman Empires; the Crusades; and the mystery of the East. Constantinople was one of the cradles of civilization, and modern Istanbul is one of the worlds most cosmopolitan cities. Ancient Christian churches stand next to holy Islamic mosques, and the city straddles the Bosphorus between Europe and Asia. It is no wonder that Turkey has intrigued visitors for centuries. One of them is the New York Times¡¦ former Istanbul Bureau Chief, Stephen Kinzer, who has written an accessible introduction to the Turkish experience.

The country is full of contradictions and paradoxes: old and modern, religious and secular, East and West. Kinzer traces the history of modern Turkey from its inception from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, through the regime of Mustapha Kemal, a hero of Galipoli who changed his name to Ataturk (Father of the Turks).

Ataturk instituted wide-ranging reforms including allowing women to participate in public life, stressing literacy, changing the Turkish alphabet from Arabic to western expressions, banning the Fez and the Veil- symbols of Islam-- and making the country responsible to the Military.

Kinzer traveled the country from Hookah parlors to bistros to impoverished villages in predominantly Kurdish eastern Turkey. He examines the Kurdish and Armenian problems and the difficulty of having a free press in a controlled society. Among his conclusions are that Turkey has to embrace modernity and accept change if it is to fulfill Ataturk s vision.

My views about the Turkish culture have completely vanished, for a couple of reasons. For one, this book helped me understand the historical nature of Turkey, their composition, and their underlyings as it relates to its culture. The second reason is the mere fact that I had the opportunity to visit Turkey- and what an incredible relation.

This book was an amazing look at the history of Turkey as well as how they do things and why they do things. Don't think for a second that you know everything about Turkey- I still don't! But- I think the best medicine for wiping away the prejudices and views of a culture is to visit, and to research.

Pick this book up and get engulfed into an amazing story- a true story...

WOW, THIS IS A GREAT BOOK, HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT, I HOPE TURKEY GETS RID OF ISLAMIST FASCISM, AND TURNS COMPLETELY TO THE WEST, AND LET FREEDOM OF SPEECH RULE.

What would you think of a foreign correspondent in America who wrote about the politics of the 1990s without exploring the influence of Christianity? New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer has written about Turkey in the `90s without any effort to take account of Islam.

America is a secular state with a Christian society. Turkey is a secular state with a Muslim society. If the object of your sermon -- "Crescent and Star" is a sermon not an analysis -- is to promote democracy, then Christianity is not too much of a problem. There are Christian democracies. But there are not any Muslim democracies, and it must be asked, is that a consequence or an accident?

Kinzer doesn't ask. He spends chapter after chapter on the Kurds, victims of a genocide in the `90s that most of the world chose not to see. Some pages on women, a few on economics. Several chapters on the army, which runs the country as a disguised military dictatorship. Page after page about the ineffectual political system and corrupt parties.

Kinzer is capable of breathtakingly stupid writing. My favorite example is his description of the father of the republic, Kemal Ataturk: "Ataturk and his comrades came to think of themselves as righteous crusaders." I doubt any Turk ever thought of himself as any kind of crusader.

Without providing the slightest evidence, Kinzer opines: "Many devout Muslims . . . want to cooperate with secularists in building an open, tolerant nation." But the only political act tied to Islam in the book describes how Turkish Hezballah (Party of Allah) subjected Konca Kuris, a Muslim woman "who had written many articles describing Islam as a gentle, tolerant faith that demanded equality for women" to "unspeakable tortures," which they videotaped for the enjoyment and political/religious edification of Turkish Muslims.

"Crescent and Star" was finished shortly before Sept. 11, 2001, but even then anyone with eyes could see that tolerant Islam was losing ground. Even then, the secular, corrupt political establishment had made a bargain with expansionist Muslims (the Welfare Party) to bring them into the government. Readers of historical experience are likely to be reminded of how the conservatives in Germany thought they could tame Hitlerism by bringing it into the government.

Turkey would be another Iran now if the secular army had not stepped in to force the Welfarist prime minister Erbakan out. Kinzer gets half of it, writing that "the worst legacy of Erbakan's disastrous year in power was that it convinced the army that Turks were still not ready for democracy."

But having just stated that Turks were unable to handle democracy, Kinzer also says Turks are "a people who are quite mature enough to deal with the challenge of freedom."

Kinzer adores Turkey and Turkishness. It is not clear whether he is blinded by love or just a silly twit.

Stanford Shaw is on the Turkish government payroll along with Robert Livingston of The Livingston Group, former Defense Secretary Cohen of The Cohen Group, soon to be ex-Rep. "Fat" Dennis Hastert, the infamous "Congressman from Istanbul" Solarz, Richard Perle, and up until recently Sen. Sam Brownback.
Ambassador Morganthau was an eyewitness to the killings in the streets of Istanbul (the very city where the Armenian Genocide OFFICIALLY began on April 24, 1915. I say OFFICIALLY because we will give the Turks the benefit of the doubt, as to whether or not they wanted to exterminate the Armenians, by discounting the 1894-6 massacre of 300,000 Armenians in Western Anatolia and the 1909 massacre of 30,000 Armenians in the coastal province of Adana. Since these killings were carried out by the Sultanate, and since the Sultan was most suddenly exiled to Arabiye Ibn al Saud in 1909 by the Ittihadist Commitee of Union and Progress, after the change of government one would be unsure as to the predisposition of the new rulers toward the Armenian millet until further developments, i.e. renewed killings. From that point on, any new killings would have to be carried out in the last and largest remaining Armenian populated areas of the Empire, the historic ancient homeland of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. Here, finally, at "the gates to the city", the Turks would arrive at their target destination, the dwelling place of the vast Armenian peasant class, which made up the mass of the Armenian nation under Turkish rule. Their journey in pursuit of the target people took them from one end of Anatolia to the other. Geographically distant from Western eyes, under the cover of war, and using the pretext that due to this subject population's proximity to enemy frontiers, it must be "relocated" to non combat areas of the Empire [the fatal Arabian desert], the Ittihadist Triumvirate, its mouth watering, embarked upon its long cherished goal to do away with the Armenians, who were the only physical barrier to Turkish expansion Eastward to that great and barren Turkic heartland known as the Central Asian steppe, where the nomadic horse peoples of Turan lived. The way forward for Turkey, the C.U.P. coup leaders agreed, was to reply to Western intrigue, manipulation and cunning with strength and Turkish unity! From the Balkans to the Pacific Ocean, a great unyielding, unbuckling, dauntless belt of Turkishness must stretch in all its glory! As an answer to European Powers, the Turk must show that he himself is a power! As a rebuke to Christian infidels, we must unite all of our brethren peoples in a mighty Pan-Islamic belt to show that the Prophet's followers will know no defeat! Oh, to accomplish all of this must be every true Turk's dream and grave earthly duty! What obstacle can possibly stop us from achieving our national destiny, a destiny in glory and righteousness?? The Armenians! They are the ones who must be trampled from our path! They are the ones responsible for our weak state! They are the traitors, the enemies within!! They must be destroyed so that we may live! But Talaat, after our divinely ordained previous attempts to teach these giaours their lesson, many of their despicable European co-religionists nearly ruined us! How can we attempt something so bold unless.........unless their same despicable European co-religionists this time were unable to act due to their own dire wartime problems. You see........the Armenians are weak and defenseless without their "protectors"........with the Europeans on one side and the Russians on the other, all bogged down in heavy combat, no one will come to the rescue of Armenians now, yes yes it is all coming together seamlessly, Allah has heard our prayers, we will finally rid ourselves of these accursed giaours, these traitors, who seek our demise! We merely have to round up their communal leaders in Istanbul and execute them, then all conscripts in the Imperial Army must be placed in worker battalions so the state gets some free labor out of them before we kill them like dogs, and then we can claim that we are relocating the women, children and elderly to a safer area hahaha, a very safe area.....for us that is.....hahaha....so no one can bother us as we go about our business!!! Well what area is that Talat?!?! The Syrian desert by Allah's grace! hehehe....leave them there without food or water to die like sheep!!!! Talaat you are brilliant!! You have thought of everything!! Surely you are a great son of Turks!! Yes my friends, yes....the time is near....soon, very soon, we shall set events in motion that can not be reversed!! I swear it there shall be a museum where one Armenian man and woman shall be kept preserved, to remind that there once was a people called Armenians hehehehehe!!!!] And so we see that though the C.U.P. Triumvirate created elaborate plans for the liquidation of their undesirables, all these events hinged on the official start, in Istanbul on that balmy April morning right after Orthodox Easter, in 1915).
That you are suggesting that Morganthau was translating "words" and "dates" incorrectly is totally wrong. What possible document could he be translating from?? "Turkish Killings of the Armenians Documented In Detail by Talaat Pasha and Company, 2nd Revised Edition" ??? "Ottoman script" as you put it was simply the Arabic alphabet which was used from Osman the First to Sultan Osman the Last of the 20th century since the Turks NEVER had and still do not have an alphabet of THEIR OWN, today they use the Latin alphabet like so many other cultureless nations around the globe. Morganthau was writing IN ENGLISH, what he saw with his eyes on the streets of istanbul and that stuff wasnt pretty but it was cake compared to the provinces of western armenia. Imagine a whole town sacked and claughtered, or a whole caravan heading to the desert of Der el Zor, starvin and dyin of thirst, as the people are jumped by roving bands of Kurds and Arabs to be robbed and raped. The slaughter was so great to force a good, decent German to abandon not only his post but also his nation's ally (Turkey) and take precious photographs which were priceless evidence of the events considering the backward setting in both time and place. The only merchants to own photo studios were Greeks and Armenians in western Anatolia, close to European protection, and their shops and assets were promptly looted in the Genocide.
My own family is victim to the genocide, my dad's side is from western Anatolia (Rodosto) and my mom's side is from eastern Anatolia (Van). Anatolia and the deserts to its south are the real historic scene of the Armenian Genocide, not some forged government document in the Turkish National Archives or some squiggly arabic scripted letter from Enver to Jemal or Talaat saying "oh all Armenians are being treated real nice and they're all being issued food rations and the government is taking all precautions to safeguard them from Kurds and Turks and none of their property is looted and no harm is coming to them and none of their Churches are desecrated and destroyed and their homes are not being given away to Turkish settlers and their daughters are not divided up as gifts among the Muslims and none of their children are being stolen by Turkish families no sir, we're good civilized Turks , we're incapable of harming Armenians."
The pre World war 1 population of Armenians was 2 million and thats an absolute fact. No mater what the Turkish oppression was, no matter how heavy the Turkish yoke, Armenians have proven that they will survive and multiply up until the point where the full weight of a government mechanism of destruction is brought to bear against them and their national survival apparatus is not merely interrupted or temporarily stopped but wholly smashed and destroyed. Including the pre world war one massacres of 330,000 by the end of 1923 including thr 1.5 million, we arrive at a figure of just under 2 million dead, with the other several hundred thousand displaced initially into Syria and Iraq and from there to lebanon and Egypt, where they remain even today. So how do you my darling Turk disguised as a certain Mr. Mitchell from sunny San Diego, suppose that there are 9 million Diasporan Armenians and that Diasporan Armenians are pitiful for basing their whole national identity on their sorry Genocide, when there arent 9 million Armenians in the whole world, let alone 9 million Diasporans. Whats left as Armenia today is nothing more than the shadow of a coutry %10 its former size having 3 million people. Adding to that the 2 million Armenians in Russia, the .8 million in Europe, the 1 million in the U.S., the 70,000 in Canada, 40,000 in Australia, 200,000 in the Mid East ( dont forget that desert), and u come at around 7 million. But look today, at that very same land, WESTERN ARMENIA, EASTERN ANATOLIA, AND THERE IS NOT ONE ARMENIAN ALIVE THERE.....NOT ONE!!! I SWEAR IT IF THATS NOT GENOCIDE NOTHING IS. Even in Germany there were still several dozen Jews alive in 1945. Simply stated, the majority of the Armenian Genocide was carried out on Arab real estate, where very cleverly, the Turk succeeded in harnessing the destructive power of the desert to kill so many people so very efficiently. I guess thats why the Turks feel that they personally didnt kill the Armenians, since they paid Kurdish gangs to drive the Armenians into the desert (if anything, the desert killed the Armenians, go and take the desert to The Hague) and told the Arab bedouins to merely line up along the caravan routes and wait for nice prey to walk right under their noses for the looting and the Turks also opened their jails and let loose the criminals to have free reign and pillage over the Armenians in the cities and towns (if a Turkish criminal is jailed for murder or theft upon a Turkish citizen [since no crime is considered committed if a Turk kills or steals from an Armenian and therefore there is no need to imprison him], how much more freely will those newly freed criminals indulge in killings of non-Turks knowing full well they are doing their governments bidding and no punishment, but rather reward awaits them).
You say no genocide has taken place. If no genocide had taken place, there would be minimum 11 or 12 million Armenians in the whole world today not an anemic 7 million. And there would be millions of Armenians in Western Armenia. I would be in my country, i wouldn't be a displaced person living 12 time zones away in California. Can you tell me how a nation which just spent the last thousand years of its history in one confined place on the map in its own country, in the space of a decade became absolutely and totally displaced out of its homeland and is now scattered all over the world in absolutely every major continent??? Only a calamitous national disaster (hmm let me guess..... genocide maybe?) has the power to bring national displacement to levels of extinction. The Armenians have survived Bal, the Hitites, the Sumerians, the Greeks, Persians, Romans, Arabs, Medes, Byzantines, Mongols, Seljuks, Ottomans, Communists and hopefully Capitalists. But they were not able to survive...THE TERRIBLE TURK!

Writer in general tries to be neutral in his views but did not divert himself from prejudgment, tales and fabrications regarding the Armenian allegations.

This is a very interesting book, which should be read by anyone who is interested in Turkish culture. However, it gives a very narrow view of this culture and the political situation. Kinzer does a very good job of presenting what is happening in Turkey, but his endless preaching does get a little old. Other than that, I truely enjoyed this book.

Kinzer's book provides some excellent insight into the modern world of Turkey in addition to some fun mezes into Turkish culture. His review of the country is in-depth and his perspective is enhanced by actually talking with locals on the street. Here's a man who loves the Turks and wants the best for them.

This book serves as a useful introduction to Turkey and the problems, hopes, challenges, etc., of the country and its people. However, Kinzer's views on democracy in Turkey, in which he repeatedly (dare I say, repetitively) claims that the Turks are "mature enough" for real democracy if only the leaders of the country would let them express it, for example, are patronising and completely lacking in scholarly analysis. One might disagree with him, or one might agree with him, but one would find it difficult to find evidence in the book supporting his biases, especially that Turkey must look toward the West, that Turkey must face up to Armenia and the Kurds, that (as he cites someone saying, having expressed an inability to argue with him) "Turkey is a very faulty democracy with [...] a megalomania that has given it the idea that it is a global power, as if size and population and weaponry rather than democracy and human rights and social peace are what makes a state powerful." (page 211). If not other statement in the book lacked sound historical support, this one does. After all, Rome, China (Current and past), Spain in the 16th century....were all powerful with neither democracy nor human rights. While one might agree with his theses, his presentation of them fails to support them, which makes them useless (how could one argue with one of Turkey's generals with such a quote as the one above, if he claimed that Turkey needed the military, not human rights?). So, in short, read it for information, but look elsewhere for profundity.

Stephen Kinzer's book provides an excellent introduction to and overview of one of the most facsinating -- and most complex -- countries in the world. Flanked by the edges of Europe on the east and Asia on the west (including shared borders with countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria), with the Black Sea and the former Soviet Union to the North, and the Mediterranean to the South, Turkey has played a central role in world history dating back to Herodotus and continuing through the Ottoman Empire. Even in modern times, events ranging from the Allies' disastrous defeat at Gallipoli to the difficulties encountered by the U.S. when Turkey rejected the use of Turkish airspace for the assault on Iraq in the second Gulf War, demonstate the strategic importance of the country -- and the perils posed by underestimating or not understanding the stengths, diversity, and complexities of the Turkish people. I read Kinzer's book on the airplane on my first trip to Istanbul. It's a delight to read: fast-paced, well-written, tremendously informative, and filled with often moving personal vignettes about Kinser's time there as the NY Times' Istanbul Bureau Chief. Kinser has managed to capture the complexities, contradictions, difficulties, and the tremendous potential of this amazing country in a couple hundred pages or so. I can't imagine a better or easier introduction to Turkey than Kinser's book. Anyone with any interest in Turkey -- for for that matter, in world affairs in general -- ought to read it.

For anyone who is interested in present day Turkey this is a book that is very informative and interestingly told. His subject -- a very complicated land -- is brought to life clearly and colorfully.

V. Green

I have been fascinated by Turkey for a long time, and this book does a great job of giving the reader the basics of what internal and external forces are at work in Turkey that will shape its destiny. The Turkish people have a big choice to make, whether to become a modern western democracy or to languish as an authoritarian regime. Kinzer gets a little preachy in the book, which after a while kind of gets old. It is almost like he is using the book as a platform to dialog with the Turkish elite, and he kind of talks down to them throughout the whole book. That aside, he does a great job in giving the reader a greater understanding of what is going on in a very important country that is not very well known by the West. Well worth the read. I think it is a four star book, but because there is so little books that I'm aware of about Turkey I'll up the four star rating to a five.

This book is very sincerely written words by someone who tried to understand the people of another culture. He serves an important cause: bringing people and cultures together, understanding each other better, which producess less conflicts and less tears in the world. He might sound like a Turcophile for many people, however, this would be an overjudgement. Having lived many years in Turkey, he also penetrated into the society, the only thing we can judge about him is that he knows and understands them better than other outsiders. I found this book informative as much as fun. He is mostly true, he sounds like he mostly understood Turks. There are minor points that I wouldn't agree with him, but reading this book is a positive thing for anyone, Turkish or not. Since 2001 that he finished writing this book, Turkey has changed (mostly positively), too, and I bet he himself would even be surprised by the change, although he foresaw the potential of this change. The best part of the book: Mezes.

The first and last chapters are repetitive, self-serving, opinionated, and uninteresting reading. Not at all what I expect from a career journalist who prides himself on objectivity. I came thissssss close to quitting the book 25 pages into it. But, I kept going.

Glad I did. The middle of the book is fascinating, accurate (as I found when I later visited Turkey), and appealing. It nicely bundles all the drama, death, and romance of Turkey's last 100 years into a tight package. Turks were impressed with my "depth of knowledge" of Turkish affairs in discussions--almost all of which came from this book. So in that respect, this might serve as an EXCELLENT political science primer for someone working with the Turks.

The last chapter might actually be, word for word, the first chapter. I got too bored while reading it to confirm or deny that. But, the rest is good reading. I wouldn't buy this in hard copy. Soft copy yes as long as it's cheap. Use the ripped out pages to blow your nose.

I've read the book last summer and it was one of the best books I read--period. Upon finishing the book, I googled other articles by Stephen Kinzer and, to my absolute delight, discovered a man of conscience, with impeccable intellectual and moral integrity.

I have also read most of the preceding reviews about the book, and, again to my amazement, found that the readers were very fair, even when they criticized Kinzer. Kinzer writes with such passion, honesty and integrity that he makes it almost impossible for anyone to be unfair to him.

I am Turkish, and I lived an worked in the US for 12 years, learning/teaching physics and doing research. And like Kinzer I loved my host country and tried to understand its people. I was addicted to McNeil-Lehrer newshours, The Morning Edition with Bob Edwards, and yes to the Wheel of Fortune as well. And like Kinzer, I would sometimes pass judgements about the US and casually tell my friends what the US should be doing etc, and like some of the reviewers here pointed out, would fall into the awkward position of an outsider giving unsolicited sermons which were almost surely to be ignored. But I did it out of a desire to make something good that you love even better, whatever my notion of better was at the time.

I see in Kinzer a similar attitude: his sermons are not those of an "anthropologist" trying to analyze/civilize a savage people. Rather, they are like the kind of advice that you give a friend, a neighbor, because you want to see him/her fare better. As such, I think they are wonderful, both in their intended spirit and in their specific content. Yes the army should loosen its grip on civilian politics --but keep an eye open as well. What Wilson once said for Americans, that they should speak softly but carry a big stick with them, also applies to the army in Turkey, or for that matter to any army anywhere, and I think Kinzer is right about that, and it's happening already.

So all in all I think Kinzer's book makes for a great reading, and is easily the best spent $10 of my life.

had previously read Kinzer's excellent account of the CIA organized 1953 coup in Iran, so when I saw this book I was quite excited to read his take on Turkey, where he lived for several years as a journalist. And I wasn't disappointed. Excellently written, he describes the past, present, and future of Turkey in a way that both exposes the countries myriad problems as well as showing the promise of the county's future. Turkey is definitely on the move, and I find the country quite fascinating, as I'm sure you can tell by now. Kinzer, unlike many who write about the contemporary Middle East, truly has a respect for the people and their culture, and this allows him to analyze the politics and culture of the society in a way unencumbered by Orientalist images of `the other'. I wish I could write like this guy, and I recommend this book for anybody who wants an intro to Turkey today.

A great way to visit Turkey, before or after you travel there, or even if you unfortunatelly never go there. Not only interesting, complete and easy to read, but a virtual "walk" through culture and lifestyle.

As a Turk, I found Kinzer's account of my country very accurate, honest and enlightening. I had a lot of fun as I read a foreign opinion on everyday aspects of Turkish life and politics. I believe this book will be more than a worthwhile reading regardless of your background on Turkey (or lack thereof).

For someone with little background on the nation of Turkey - this book was excellent - very easy read - even fun.
Strong buy.

Ray