Turkey unveiled - Ataturk and after.

Turkey unveiled--Ataturk and after by Nicole and Hugh Pope John Murray, London, [pounds sterling] 25

Did you know that the Great Wall of China was probably built to keep out the marauding ancestors of the present-day Turks? Or that Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal in Agra, was Turkic-speaking? Turkey unveiled gives many fascinating facts about the long history of a dynamic people.

It also illustrates how different are peoples' views of history. While most Westerners regard Attila the Hun as a barbarian scourge of 6th Century Europe, Turkish school-books describe the `first all-Turkish hero' as `an extremely gifted diplomat'. `From the Turkish point of view,' write Nicole and Hugh Pope, `the conquering Turkic tribes from the east civilized and improved the primitive peoples they found on the eastern marches of Europe.'

As its title suggests, Turkey unveiled is primarily a history of modern Turkey. Its chief importance lies in helping counteract the simplistic black and white picture, based largely on ignorance or prejudice, which too many Westerners have of the country. It does this by presenting the bare, often brutal, facts in the context of the external circumstances, inner tensions and traditions which have shaped the Turkish way of life.

The authors, who both speak Turkish fluently, `fell in love with Turkey' but have not flinched at reporting the massacres of Armenians, the brutal suppression of Kurdish nationalists, the expulsion of other minorities, the invasion of northern Cyprus and the frequent intolerance of dissent. Yet there are at least two sides to most stories and the authors aim to give a rounded picture. They point out, for instance, that Armenian nationalists tried to split up Anatolia (the large plateau region of Asian Turkey) in the 1890s. And `Turkish army officers can still remember the enosis (forced union) of 1913 that joined Crete to mainland Greece, with its expulsion of Muslim Turks and subsequent Hellenization of the island.'

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), revered by most Turks as the founder of the republic, was a larger-than-life character. Hard-drinking, determined, visionary and dictatorial, he more than anyone forged the modern Turkish state from the devastated rump of the Ottoman Empire. It is impossible to understand modern Turkey without some appreciation of the Father of the Turks' westernizing, secularizing mission. In view of his importance, it is surprising that there is nothing about his formative years.

The book shows how Europe's willingness to help Turkey has largely correlated with how much Europe wanted from Turkey at the time. President 13zal applied to join the European Union in 1987. In 1989 the European Commission said that no new applications for membership would be considered till at least 1993. But by 1996 (the year in which Turkey consumated its `intimate and unique Customs Union with Europe'), Turkey found itself formally placed behind a whole list of East European states for discussion of full membership. `This rankled especially when Turks saw that, despite 40 years' service guarding the southern third of NATO's flank against the Warsaw Pact, Turkey was now on the same list as Russia or the Ukraine as far as Brussels was concerned,' write the Popes.

You are left with a feeling that the tragedy of Turkey is its failure to come to terms with the 12 million Kurds and the other minorities within its borders. This is partly due to fears that the minorities' aspirations might lead to the break-up of the 74-year-old republic. Such fears are not helped by the fact that the Allies drew up a plan, the unratified Treaty of Sevres, after World War I to carve up Anatolia and give much of it to the Kurds. Also, Ataturk's legacy of authoritarianism and Turkey's militaristic traditions have ill-equipped the establishment to deal skilfully with militant nationalists. The state has tended to drive moderates into the hands of the extremists. And the vision embraced by Ataturk of a nation state with a single reformed `Turkish' culture led to official blindness to the Kurds' distinctive cultural identity.

Turkey unveiled is not faultless. I found the account of the breakdown of relations between Armenians and Turks hard to unravel; and the maps could be clearer. Such minor quibbles apart, the book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in a country which has the potential to be a bridge between East and West.