Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds | 
| Author: Stephen Kinzer
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 75233
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0374528667
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.1
EAN: 9780374528669
ASIN: 0374528667
Publication Date: September 4, 2002
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Product Description
If Turkey lived up to its potential, it could rule the world - but will it? A passionate report from the front lines
For centuries few terrors were more vivid in the West than fear of "the Turk," and many people still think of Turkey as repressive, wild, and dangerous. Crescent and Star is Stephen Kinzer's compelling report on the truth about this nation of contradictions - poised between Europe and Asia, caught between the glories of its Ottoman past and its hopes for a democratic future, between the dominance of its army and the needs of its civilian citizens, between its secular expectations and its Muslim traditions.
Kinzer vividly describes Turkey's captivating delights as he smokes a water pipe, searches for the ruins of lost civilizations, watches a camel fight, and discovers its greatest poet. But he is also attuned to the political landscape, taking us from Istanbul's elegant cafes to wild mountain outposts on Turkey's eastern borders, while along the way he talks to dissidents and patriots, villagers and cabinet ministers. He reports on political trials and on his own arrest by Turkish soldiers when he was trying to uncover secrets about the army's campaigns against Kurdish guerillas. He explores the nation's hope to join the European Union, the human-rights abuses that have kept it out, and its difficult relations with Kurds, Armenians, and Greeks.
Will this vibrant country, he asks, succeed in becoming a great democratic state? He makes it clear why Turkey is poised to become "the most audacious nation of the twenty-first century."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 79 more reviews...
Ataturk's Dream June 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 Latin, 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.
 In Understanding the Turkish Culture, this book was the way to go November 19, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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...
GREAT BOOK! May 3, 2007
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
 Talk, talk talkin' sappy talk January 28, 2007
11 out of 18 found this review helpful
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.
 Turkey August 19, 2006
3 out of 14 found this review helpful
Writer in general tries to be neutral in his views but did not divert himself from prejudgment, tales and fabrications regarding the Armenian allegations.
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