EXPERIMENT The Shortest History of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

For more than nine centuries, the region that makes up modern-day Turkey has been a cultural melting pot, straddling Asia and Europe. It has been home to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and survived various conquests and periods of reform, appeals to tradition and calls to modernize. From the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire to the populist, authoritarian leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today, Turkey has been a land caught between Islamic traditions and pressures to Westernize.In The Shortest History of Turkey, historian Benjamin C. Fortna offers a concise yet nuanced overview of this complex trajectory. He tracks the founding of the Ottoman Empire in the late thirteenth century, pressures for the empire to Westernize during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, and its transition from a single-party regime to a multi-party republic throughout the twentieth century. Examining the politics and people behind the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic, Fortna reveals how persistent tensions between opposing visions for Turkey have shaped, and continue to shape, the country and its citizens.