Reviews for Educational policies and initiatives of the European Union: Amsterdam Treaty, Languages of t...

The average rating for Educational policies and initiatives of the European Union: Amsterdam Treaty, Languages of t... based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-22 00:00:00 Lance Reynolds Though not a comprehensive study, this is the best introduction to modern Turkey. Before picking it I checked negative reviews on its Turkish edition. Most of those dislikes stemmed not from the book’s failures but its strengths. Some didn’t like it because it “downplayed” Ataturk’s role. Zurcher takes into account different perspectives and thus provides a theoretically mixed but quite an objective history of Turkey. He doesn’t take a side. Official Turkish history and more recent religiously colored narrations about the perceived glorious past both want to see history as a weapon to justify their own worldviews. In other words, their necrophilia prevents them from forming a more forgiving and balanced view of past events. In Zurcher’s book, contrary to what Turkish secularists believe, Ataturk isn’t a superhero who can beat Superman to a pulp. He also isn’t an evil godless traitor whose only goal in life was to destroy Ottoman legacy and Islam. Many conservative Turks still fervently believe that the republic was a mistake, one of them probably being the current president and uncontested “supreme leader” of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But I don’t want to be too harsh to His Majesty. Erdogan has proven many times to be a shrewd pragmatist rather than an honest Islamist like Erbakan. An example. In the early 2000s, Erdogan was a strong proponent of European integration. His relations with EU soared after he consolidated his power and started freely imprisoning thousands of people under dubious coup accusations. Sorry for the rant above. Anyway, the best thing about this book is that it provides a lot of facts instead of trying to simplify and explain away everything by using theoretical/ideological tools. It isn’t encumbered by strict explanations. Therefore readers are free to come up with their own answers and/or do further research on the subject.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-22 00:00:00 Jonathan Evans I read a lot of history so I know a good history when I see one. This book is history as it ought to be written. It is not only 'modern' in the sense that it covers the modern era; it is modern in its approach to history, giving due weight to economic and social factors and citing scholarship on the cutting edge for each chapter. The idea of the book is that modern Turkey did not begin abruptly with Ataturk's republic but rather began sometime around 1800. The story of the decline of the Ottoman empire and the desperate attempts to keep it alive for the next 120 years is a compelling one with a tragic feeling of futility throughout. This is followed by the drama and violence of the war for Independence, an extraordinary story in its own right. But the establishment of the Republic is put in its proper context as the culmination of a longer process while Ataturk is knocked down a peg from his god-like status, despite the author's obvious admiration for the man. The story is not quite as exciting after the great man's death, but it is still worth getting an idea of how Turkey survived through three military coups to reach the status that it holds today. The book is, however, seriously due for an update as it stops at around 2002 and has nothing to say about the era of Erdogan.