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The growing number of books in foreign languages on contemporary Turkish affairs is most welcome.
The outside world is indeed badly in need of becoming better informed about Turkey today. One of the books worth noting in this context is “The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey” (2012) edited by Metin Heper and Sabri Sayarı, two distinguished professors of Turkish politics. The book covers 35 articles by acclaimed experts on topics ranging from Turkey's history, culture, politics and society to its demography, environment and economy.
Here I will only be able to say a few words about the entries that I found particularly interesting. Ali Karaosmanoğlu's article on “Civil-Military Relations” is highly worth reading since it analyzes the military's waning political role in Turkey. Karaosmanoğlu explains this by the following factors: The officer corps has increasingly grasped the fact that democracy, which requires the military to be subjected to the authority of the elected government, is an indispensable part of modernization. They have also increasingly realized that involvement in politics is undermining the professional duties of the army. They feel the growing pressure from civil society for further democratization, while the contemporary international context is also discouraging military intervention in politics.
Another factor which perhaps needs to be considered is the existence of not one but two armies in Turkey: one committed to the preservation of the Kemalist ideology of the state and the other to professional duties, with the latter increasingly gaining ground due to the factors indicated above. The difference between the two trends may be observed in the high military command's intolerance of junta formations in violation of discipline in the armed forces and the relatively short-lived periods of military rule since the transition to multi-party politics. In this context, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's success in helping to establish discipline in the military ranks should also be considered. The institutionalization of the supremacy of civilian authority is still awaiting, however, the adoption of a constitution that will consolidate liberal democracy.
A piece conspicuous by its inadequacy is David Shankland's article “Islam” in Turkey. Shankland is a social anthropologist who has studied Alevis and can certainly claim to be an expert in that field. Alevis, part of whom regard their belief system to be an altogether different religion than Islam, however, comprise only 10-12 percent of Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population. Shankland's views on Islam and politics in Turkey, on the other hand, properly reflect hard-line Kemalists' position, but are bound to be found highly biased by others. One really wonders why the editors of the book have not been able to find any other author to assign this highly important topic, whose treatment certainly requires broader qualifications than Shankland's.
Shankland finds Kemalist authoritarian policies highly successful in secularizing Turkey. Those who are interested to learn about the serious problems that those policies have led to are recommended to read the studied treatment of the issue of secularism in Turkey by Elisabeth Özdalga in the same book.
Finally, a few words about Andrew Mango's article on “The Kurds.” Reading the article, one gets the impression that repeated violent Kurdish uprisings in Turkey since the founding of the republic are not due to reactions to the denial of Kurdish identity, forced assimilation of the Kurds and brutal suppression of their objections to it but the consequence of the republic contributing to the rise of Kurdish nationalism by opening free boarding schools for Kurdish students from poor families. This is what he writes: “It was the Turkish Republic that fed, lodged, and trained the Kurdish nationalists who claimed to be victims of official discrimination.” (p. 251) It is much better to read Mango's article on “Atatürk and the Kurds” (Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4, 1999, pp. 1-25) if one wants to understand the Kurdish question in Turkey.