Er sieht das Land sogar auf einem guten Weg dorthin. Gleichwohl ist Kinzer der Meinung, dass die Türkei ein Modellstaat für Demokratie, Menschenrechte und einen modernen Islam werden könnte. Grundsätzlich sieht Kinzer ein Defizit an echter Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit, weil zum einen Militärs und Bürokraten, zum anderen Politiker und einflussreiche Kreise kein Interesse an einer echten Öffnung des Landes für Demokratie haben. Dort hat er einige Jahre verbracht und sich dabei ein Bild der Türkei gebildet. Der Autor ist amerikanischer Journalist und als Korrespondent nach Istanbul gekommen. Related Topics: Turkey and Turks | Daniel Pipes | Summer 2001 MEQ receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.Dieses Buch wird jeden erfreuen, der eine profunde Analyse der modernen Türkei sucht. In all, Crescent and Star amounts to an impressive achievement with a high potential to make a difference. One has a sense that Kinzer sees himself as the spokesmen for those Turks who lack his full freedom of speech therefore, the true readership of his book will be those who read it in a possible future Turkish translation, especially if they wear uniforms. The author sees Turkey's chance coming up very soon: either break with the old ways and become a major success and model, or stick in the same rut and slowly decline. And in each one too, he ends up with a new reason for the military to pull back. In each discussion, he conveys information easily and purveys a sense of contemporary Turkey. Kinzer draws this conclusion in every chapter of Crescent and Star: when discussing Atatürk, the military officer corps, the earthquake of August 1999, relations with Greece, the Kurdish insurrection, and the Islamist opposition. Kinzer is alive to the advantages in the past of having the military and its allies (summarized by the Turkish word devlet) guiding the Turkish state and society but holds that the country is now ready to bust out of its "ossified" condition and go for full-fledged democracy. That thesis is that the time has come for the powers-that-be in Turkey to get out of the way and allow the country to develop in a thoroughly democratic way. Rather than give vignettes-"300 pages of newspaper columns" as one critic puts it-he has a thesis which he returns to again and again, making his case and wearing down the reader's resistance. But Kinzer, New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul in 1996-2000, has written a powerful, directed, and important book. The title is banal and the prospect of another Timesman's book summing up his stint gives pause.
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