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The Making of Modern Turkey, by Feroz Ahmad. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. xiv + 227 pages. Notes to p. 237. Bibl. to p. 242 Index to p. 252. $18.95 paper.
This informative survey, by a well-known specialist on Turkey and Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts (Boston), consists of ten chapters. These focus on events from 1900 to 1991. The Making of Modern Turkey begins with an introduction: "Turkey, a Military Society?" and concludes with an epilogue: "Turkey Today and Tomorrow." Chapters in between discuss chronologically: "The Ottoman Legacy," "From Empire to Nation, 1908-1923," "The New Turkey: Politics, 1923-1945," "The New Turkey: Society and Economy, 1923-1945," "The Multi-Party Conundrum, 1945-1960," "Military Intervention, Institutional Restructuring, and Ideological Politics, 1960-71," "Military Intervention, Social Democracy, and Political Terror, 1971-1980," and "Military Intervention and Political and Economic Restructuring, 1980-1991."
The discussion centers on military, political, economic, and, to a lesser degree, ideological issues. Ahmad underscores the continuity between the late Ottoman and new Republican periods of contemporary Turkish history documented in his earlier work and more recent studies by Zurcher and Hanioglu.(1) He notes that "this book...was conceived in the early 1980s when Turkey was under military rule," adding, "I thought it necessary to explore the roles of the army as a dynamic institution....This I do in the introduction" (p. ix).
Ahmad's reviews of the three military interventions that interrupted the evolution of democracy in Turkey in 1960, 1971, and 1980 are among the book's strong points. The author's emphasis on the power and ubiquity of the military in Turkish society, however, appears exaggerated. Other significant contributions deal with organized labor and elections,...