The History of the Republic of Turkey

Grandeur and Grievance
A readable, balanced history of Turkey’s first century, from Atatürk’s modernization and mid-century military coups to Erdoğan’s electoral autocracy. It explores the nation's political shifts, migration, and treatment of minorities like Alevis and Kurds, revealing a culture shaped by tension between pride and grievance.
A comprehensive, readable history of the Republic of Turkey that gives equal weight to all periods in the first century of the Republic of Turkey. The republican order of Turkey seems not to have changed much since its foundation in 1923, but there were dramatic transformations: From Atatürk’s modernization dictatorship in the 1920s and 1930s, over the massive migration into the cities and the military coups in the second half of the twentieth century, up to Recep Tayyip Erdoğans electoral autocracy since the 2010s. This book makes us understand Turkey’s historical trajectory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the fate of its various communities and ethnic groups—in particular Alevis and Kurds—and argues that a particular trait of Turkish political culture is its constant fluctuation between confidence and contention, grandeur and grievance.