Zürcher, professor of history at the University of Amsterdam, has written a synthetic account of Turkey over the two centuries 1789-1991. The book will probably become the standard English-language account, for it is fast-moving, comprehensive, and reliable. By looking at the Young Turk and the Atatürk eras as a single whole, stretching from 1908 to 1950, it offers valuable new insights into a time too little understood. As for the future, Zürcher sensibly concludes that the country's two main problems are inflation and the Kurdish question.
At the same time, Zürcher's text reflects the anti-Turkish biases regretfully so prevalent among Europeans. On the incendiary issue of Armenian genocide during World War I, he writes that "this author at least is of the opinion that there was a centrally controlled policy of extermination, instigated by the CUP [i.e., the top leadership]." Without condemning Atatürk, Zürcher knocks him down a peg or two. Here we learn that his rule had "totalitarian tendencies." There we are told that his ideology "lacked coherence and . . . emotional appeal." In another place, we find out that his interpretation of the Turkish national movement "distort[s] the historical picture." Instead of this grudging attitude, it would be more helpful if the author (and Europeans in general) celebrated the Republic of Turkey as a success story and as a model for the Muslim world to emulate. The Turks need that boost; and the outside world very much needs for them to succeed in their bold, Atatürkist experiment.
