This concise account of the life and career of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881--1938), the formidable "founder of modern Turkey", offers a substantial revaluation of a key figure in modern history, and also an introduction to the Turkish republic itself. It is a timely study with Turkey again at the centre of international attention, as Islamic fundamentalists challenge many of Atatürk's westernising and secularizing reforms, and as the regional aftershocks of the Soviet collapse reopen profound questions about Turkey's nature, role and relationships Atatürk had sought to settle for good.

The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today’s EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines. It then moves to more detailed accounts of political and cultural developments in the three principal states of the original Common Market—France, Germany and Italy. A third section explores the interrelated histories of Cyprus and Turkey that pose a leading geopolitical challenge to the Community. The book ends by tracing ideas of European unity from the Enlightenment to the present, and their bearing on the future of the Union. The New Old World offers a critical portrait of a continent now increasingly hailed as a moral and political example to the world at large.

This book examines the Kemalist ideology of Turkey from two perspectives. It discusses major problems in the existing interpretations of the topic and how the incorporation of Soviet perspectives enriches the historiography and our understanding of that ideology. To address these questions, the book looks into the origins, evolution, and transformational phases of Kemalism between the 1920s and 1970s. The research also focuses on perspectives from abroad by observing how republican Turkey and particularly its founding ideology were viewed and interpreted by Soviet observers. Paying more attention to the diplomatic, geopolitical, and economic complexities of Turkish-Soviet relations, scholars have rarely problematized those perceptions of Turkish ideological transformations. Looking at various phases of Soviet attitudes towards Kemalism and its manifestations through the lenses of Communist leaders, party functionaries, diplomats and scholars, the book illuminates the underlying dynamics of Soviet interpretations.

The grand narrative of "The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building" is that of the essential continuity of the late Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey that was founded in 1923. Erik J. Zurcher shows that Kemal's 'ideological toolkit', which included positivism, militarism, nationalism and a state-centred world view, was shared by many other Young Turks. Authoritarian rule, a one-party state, a legal framework based on European principles, advanced European-style bureaucracy, financial administration, military and educational reforms and state-control of Islam, can all be found in the late Ottoman Empire, as can policies of demographic engineering. The book focuses on the attempts of the Young Turks to save their empire through forced modernization as well as on the attempts of their Kemalist successors to build a strong national state. The decade of almost continuous warfare, ethnic conflict and forced migration between 1911 and 1922 forms the background to these attempts and accordingly occupies a central position in this volume. This is a powerful history reflecting and contributing to the latest research from a leading historian of modern Turkey. It is essential for all readers interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and for an understanding of a key player in the politics of the Middle East and Europe.

In the United States and Europe, the word "caliphate" has conjured historically romantic and increasingly pernicious associations. Yet the caliphate's significance in Islamic history and Muslim culture remains poorly understood. This book explores the myriad meanings of the caliphate for Muslims around the world through the analytical lens of two key moments of loss in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. Through extensive primary-source research, Mona Hassan explores the rich constellation of interpretations created by religious scholars, historians, musicians, statesmen, poets, and intellectuals. Hassan fills a scholarly gap regarding Muslim reactions to the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258 and challenges the notion that the Mongol onslaught signaled an end to the critical engagement of Muslim jurists and intellectuals with the idea of an Islamic caliphate. She also situates Muslim responses to the dramatic abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 as part of a longer trajectory of transregional cultural memory, revealing commonalities and differences in how modern Muslims have creatively interpreted and reinterpreted their heritage. Hassan examines how poignant memories of the lost caliphate have been evoked in Muslim culture, law, and politics, similar to the losses and repercussions experienced by other religious communities, including the destruction of the Second Temple for Jews and the fall of Rome for Christians. A global history, Longing for the Lost Caliphate delves into why the caliphate has been so important to Muslims in vastly different eras and places.