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Title: another book on Turkey
Review: The book is an interesting attempt to formulate some impressions and views about present day Turkey. Besides a few wellknown cultural and popular findings, the author's views on Turkey's foreign policy, the role of the military, Ataturk's reforms and Kemalism, on Kurdish problem, Armenian realities and on Turkish-Greek relations are rather shallow.Statements such as Turkey's "political and psychological underdevelopment" (Page:24), Turkish "National Security Council" is like the "Iranian Mollahs' Council of Guardians" (Page:17),"Turks are victims of Devlet" (PP:12,26-28 and 145) are erroneous and misleading.As regards the "politics" recommended by the author; these are not at all adequate to Turkish realities and to Turkish historical background.Kinzer is of course not the only writer who after having lived in a country for four years feels quite confident and entitled to recommend major policy changes or cultural shifts towards new horizons. This is an unfortunate mistake.
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