The Turks Today

Congratulations Mr Mango on your very good book. It can be made superb if the double spacing is used to allow easy reading and published more professionally (which deserves it) rather than on an average paperback edition, which does not help the readers' eyes to follow it easily. I have Mango's personal signature in your best-seller on Ataturk. What I like about Mango is his historical (although he doesnot claim to be a hard-core historian) objectivity and his genuinely feeling the Turkish heart-beat since he -having been born in Istanbul- knows Turkish and Turks profoundly. He does not write artificially like some other so-called experts who publish pages of sometimes fancy garbage about Turkey and his populace...

Dr. Mango has correctly portrayed the present day Turkey and the Turks in this wonderful book. The book is easy read and hughly recommended

The sequel to Mango's renowned biography "Ataturk", it tracks the development of the Turkish Republic into the 21st Century. A good read and excellent reference, I keep it on my desk (when not loaned to friends) and is in the top five of books I recommend on the subject (the first three being "Ataturk", "The Turks Today" and "Turkey: The Challenge of a New Role", all authored by Andrew Mango). Of interest to anyone concerned about the future of Ataturk's legacy, is the section titled "Further Reading", pages 275-279. If you respect the works of this author (and I do) then accept his guidance on what books/authors to read next. -Joe Kennedy W.W.A.D "What Would Ataturk Do?"

This book gives an excellent account of recent events in Turkey. It starts out with an overview of Turkish history which is fairly brief, then moves into the 20th century and gives a nice summary of events since 1923, and most of the book then focuses on events of the last few years. There are MANY statistics, and much research obviously went into this book. Overall it is a great resource for recent events in Turkey and would be the perfect companion book to Stephen Kinzer's "Crescent & Star."

Dr. Andrew Mango in The Turks Today covers the history of the Turkish Republic with an easy-to-read narrative and thoughtful analysis. In the fist segment, the author provides a short history of the * Ataturk era (1923-1938) when the founding principles of the Republic were established, * difficult times (1938-1945) in which President Ismet Inonu managed to keep Turkey non-aligned and out of WW II, * transition period to a multi-party system (1946-1960) and the huge electoral successes of the Democratic Party in 1950, 1954 and again 1957 and the first intervention of the military into politics in 1960, * years of strife (1960-1980) when the coalition governments struggled to cope with growing domestic problems, * conflict contained (1980-2003) while Turkey made progress and emerged as a regional economic and military power. In the second segment, Dr. Mango offers insightful analysis on several major issues, such as: * economy, education, culture, Ankara (the seat of government and the ruling elite), Istanbul (the center of practically everything outside of government), the divide between Islam and secularism, the Cyprus saga and relations with Greece, the quest to join the European Union and all EU related matters, the Kurdish problem and PKK's terrorist activities, the contentious Armenians' claim of genocide of events in 1915, changes in relations between USA, Israel and Iraq after the events of Sep 11, 2001 and the rule of an Islamist party in a majority government since November 2002. This book is vintage Mango. Page after page, it offers the essentials without getting into boring details yet remains factual and balanced. Once you begin to read "The Turks Today", it becomes very clear that Dr. Andrew Mango knows the history of the Turkish Republic and presents it in a marvelously lucid fashion. Anyone who is interested in knowing "what's going on in Turkey today" would enjoy reading this book. Muharrem Sev Ottawa, Canada Dec 16, 2004