Focus 580; Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds

Good morning this is Focus 580 our morning telephone talk show. My name is Jack Brighton glad you could listen today during this our focus 580 will be talking about the history perils and promise of the nation of Turkey situated between Europe Asia and the Middle East with a secular government and a large Islamic population. Turkey is positioned to play an important role as a modern democratic state. At the 1999 Helsinki summit of the European Union Turkey became a candidate for future membership. But for the present its record in policies on human rights and free expression among other things stand in the way. Why that is the case. Indeed much about the history and character of the people and government of Turkey is the subject for this hour. Our guest is an American journalist who has lived in and reported on Turkey for many years. Stephen Kinzer is currently national cultural consul correspondent for The New York Times as a foreign correspondent. He has covered some 50 countries on four continents and beginning in 1960 spent four years as the Times bureau chief in Istanbul. He's the author or co-author of several books including blood of brothers life and war in Nicaragua and bitter fruit. The UN still on

told story of the American coup in Guatemala. During this hour focused 580 will talk with Stephen Kinzer about his latest book crescent and star Turkey between two worlds recently published by Farrar Straus and Giroux. And his name by the way is K I N Z E R. So he's Balkans or as we talk with Stephen Kinzer. During this hour you are welcome to join us. Questions and comments on the topic are welcome. All you need to do is call us the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 W while wealthy match the letters with the numbers that's what you get. We also have a toll free line anywhere you hear us around Illinois Indiana the other states our signal reaches or via the Internet anywhere in the U.S. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 going around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 to 2 2. Well Stephen Kinzer Good morning good to be with you thank you. Well glad to have you with us. Most Americans myself included probably don't know much about Turkey so maybe we can begin by asking you to talk a

bit about its founding in 1903 and its extraordinary leader most often. Atatürk Turkey is a relatively new nation as you say as a modern republic it has only existed for a little more than 75 years. It plays a special role in the Islamic consciousness because what's now Turkey was for centuries the center of the Ottoman Empire which was the greatest Muslim empire of all time Constantinople the city that was the capital of the Ottoman Empire is now Istanbul the main city in the Republic of Turkey. Now in the last decades and in the deed the last century or so of Ottoman power was a difficult period the Ottoman Empire began collapsing in the face of various forces in the world after World War 1 there was an effort by the victorious allies to carve up what is now Turkey among them and give a peace to the French and of peace to the Italians and so forth. At that moment the only Turkish officer who

had won a victory during World War One roused a national force of his own to overthrow the free tensions of Western powers to take this land for themselves. And then one of the most surprising military reversals of the 20th century. He turned this defeat into a great victory. He expelled foreign armies. And in 1923 founded the Republic of Turkey. Now that alone. It would have made him an important figure as the George Washington of his country so to speak. But that was really only the beginning for the two of his given name was Mostafa Kemel. He later took the name out to tork or father of the Turks and it is with that name he hasn't It is that that he has entered history now opted to work began a one man revolution as president of the new Turkish Republic. He decided that Turkey's only hope was to break violently away from

traditional theocratic Islam and move decisively towards secularism. Western thought openness European ideas and the principles of the Enlightenment. So he banned the fez. He banned the veil for women. He changed the script from Arabic script to modern script. He changed the calendar he changed the clocks he changed the entire mentality of a nation and turn turkey on the path that it has followed ever since he began his noble work and that is the path towards democracy. Now Turkey as a result of this period and the decades that have followed has become the closest thing there is in the world to a real Islamic democracy. Turkey is 99 percent Muslim but yet it is a candidate for membership in the European Union it has an elected government and Islam is held out to be an

appropriate guide for private morality and personal behavior but not a system that shapes state policy. Islam does not influence the direction of public policy in Turkey it is a matter of private belief. And right now as the message from the cave coursing throughout the Islamic world Turkey is a country ideally placed to offer the counter message which is secular democracy can coexist with Islam. That's very interesting. We mentioned atatürk. His drive was toward democracy the values of the Enlightenment. He himself had read you know a great deal of the you know the leading lights of that particular political philosophy which was you know certainly has come into force in Europe and elsewhere. But first he you know certainly ruled with an iron fist in many of the things that he did. His government you know tried to mean can't control or did maintain control through military means.

The revolution was very much a top down Revolution for example when he decreed that women had the right to vote. He didn't do this because there were suffragettes out on the street or people demanding that right. He imposed it because he believed this is what a modern nation needed. Now at the time when I was alive in the 1920s and 30s when he was ruling Turkey. There was no other way to have imposed these kinds of tremendously radical and very profound reforms. Turkey was surrounded by enemies abroad and had many enemies within that is the US did to our revolution was very unpopular with the sheiks the vicious the sector leaders and many of the religious and clan figures who benefited from the old order and perhaps who sincerely believed that traditional theocracy was the way to run the country. Therefore it's quite understandable and excusable and indeed praiseworthy to use repressive methods to

impose his democratic project. However Turkey has changed tremendously since then. Turkey is a very modern country where the intellectuals the educated people the young people have been very much affected by television and world travel and the education and the Internet they are now looking at their leaders and saying. You guided us for many years with the principle that we should be marching toward democracy but we couldn't have complete democracy because that would allow separatist religious fundamentalists and others who detest our modernizing project to subvert that project. We've gotten past that now. We have absorbed your years of lectures about how Turkey needs to be a complete democracy and we now believe that. So please take the lid off and let us complete our march toward democracy. If Turkey can do this then Turkey will truly be the nation that can be the beacon for

the Islamic world and a counterbalance to this message from the cave. Some of the you know the the link Well the power of Ataturk remains to this day in in what is described as Cornwallis and then when if you could talk about what that is. Turkey is supposed to be a secular country and a country where people's religion is a private matter but as I write in my book I've got the fence living there that actually Turkey does have a religion and it's Kemo ism natively political ideology that Kemah left behind and you'll see at the expect you're in every door in every movie theater and every restaurant in every government office is pictured on every corner and it's on every bank note the devotion to Ataturk there is intense and overwhelming. And yet there is a battle going on now in Turkey over the right to

Ataturk's legacy was that the person who believed that the military should have a dominant role in forming public policy as it did while he was alive was he the person who believed that there had to be restrictions on public discourse as there were during his presidency. Or was he the person who had to impose these restrictions while he was alive because of the circumstances. But who actually was the great European arising the great westernized in the great modernizing influence in Turkey who therefore would today be telling the Turks to complete your march toward democracy your old enough now you're grown up enough and you can you can handle the pressures of democracy. This is the great overwhelming debate that shapes the intellectual and political ferment in Turkey today. Are we ready. Can we handle democracy. This is a very interesting conflict. As you mention I wonder to what

extent Ataturk foresaw that this might someday be the case. I mean currently there are laws that restrict political debate or any real criticism of the government or the past. But did he did he leave in his legacy. You know some kind of you know grandfather clause on these restrictions. Well the scripture of Kemalist And if we can continue with the religious analogy is just like the scripture of the Bible of the Koran open to a variety of interpretations. I noticed however that in one of his last speeches before his death in one thousand thirty eight That said I am leaving behind me no blueprint for the future no set plan. I think that the true essence of his ideology can be found in his repeated statements that science is the only true guide for humanity by science. I think that he meant rationalism. He wanted Turkey to follow the currents in the world

to be a part of the dominant forces in the modern ideas in the world. This was the essence of his message. Now today the message of democracy and human rights and individual freedom is the current of the world. And to meet Turkey's embrace of that current will only be a completion of the Chautauqua legacy. And I would say this that I think is a very important point to make about Turkey today. Up until recently whether or not Turkey decided that it wanted to play this role that it was going to finish its march toward democracy and be the true beacon of Islamic secularism in the world was a question that was interesting to the outside world but actually truly important only to Turkey itself that has now changed. The world is desperately looking for a nation that can stand up in front of the Islamic world and say we are the anti Taliban we are the anti bin Laden we can show you

a form of Islamic Republic that gives its people prosperity and freedom while still allowing them to embrace their Islamic faith. Turkey is the only country in the world that can play this role. And as we're going to start seeing in Afghanistan now Turkey is going to be the country that is going to go in there as a lead part of the world coalition in the post-Taliban era and will probably play a bigger role in the weeks and months and years ahead in Central Asia than it has ever played on the world stage since the days of the Ottoman Empire. We have a call to include a conversation but just a real quick follow up on that. Do you think that the government of Turkey in the end many of the people see themselves in that role. Definitely I think Turks are proud of what they have accomplished. They are proud of the level of democracy and development that they have in their country. And when they look around the Islamic world they feel like they'd like to show that model because of the Ottoman history and because of

geography. Turkey plays a central role in the Islamic consciousness. In addition Turkey has a long time in Afghanistan. Actually I said to a correspondent at great length with the Afghan king the grandfather actually of this here Shabazz we're now reading because the Afghan leaders were very interested in Turkey as a model. Turkey is very aware of the fact that it plays a leading role in the Islamic world and in the Islamic consciousness it will take advantage of that in the period to come and not only will it benefit but hopefully the entire world can benefit from the model and the example that Turkey will present. We're talking during this hour focus 580. Stephen Kinzer He's a writer for The New York Times was the Istanbul bureau chief for The Times for a number of years. And we're discussing his latest book crescent and star Turkey between two worlds. We have one caller waiting which will include in just a second let me give the phone numbers if you'd like to join us the number around Champaign-Urbana

3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free anywhere else you hear us 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have a listener in Champaign County here in London before. Good morning you're in focus 580. This is just a little bit too emblematic and idealistic. You haven't said anything about the modernization you know uniformity of culture and you know it was a colonial maps you know to stand for places. But I mean between that and the fact that the U.S. needed Turkey are its own. Projection of power in the surreal politics is just the start of this very admirable you know image that you've developed I think beyond you know beyond belief I'm something I digress and I'd like to ask you about momentarily but what do you how do you respond to that I mean it seems like cold

water. Well one reason why I think it's very important for Turkey to get over some of its psychological and political problems at this moment is that Turkey is not yet able to stand up in front of the Islamic world or anyone else and say we are the perfect example of Islamic democracy be like us. Turkey has problems in the embracing the diversity of its own population as it looks around the neighborhood and sees what happens to happen to the Soviet Union and Lebanon and Afghanistan and the Yugoslavia it has a terrible fear that allowing people to express their ethnic identity and even to a certain extent their religious identity is going to lead to disaster for the secular project Turks I think need to get over that and realize that what most of their people want which is an embrace of the modern idea of diversity within democracy is something that.

Turkey is now ready to handle Turkey needs to get over some of the problems to which you alluded and I think right now because so much is going to be asked of Turkey in these coming months ideal time for the Turks to look in the mirror and ask are Isn't it time now that we put aside some of the impulses that have led us to repression at home and embrace the idea that we can now bill a bill ourselves and become a Muslim democracy. But at this very time they're using this war against terrorism to you know call anti or non violent. Kurdish activists are criminals. They're trying to extradite them out of Washington D.C. where they're having this vigil right next to the Turkish Embassy. This image that the. The crimes of the time is the Scotian of human rights brings me to the idea that the sun and the US are supposedly the champion of us but you yourself have written

about further criminal Negra Ponce who is now with our U.N. representative. This is regarding your peace and the character of your books and the letters that you have to sort of send off from these various projects. Let me tell you we talk a little bit about the Kurds since you brought them up during the late 1990s in the late 1980s and early 1990s an intense war was being fought in southeastern Turkey between guerillas of the PKK the Kurdish rebel party and the Turkish army. I was a very brutal war terrorism with views on both sides and left a tremendous scar in that part of the country. Now as a result of that experience and as a result of changing trends in the world there's been a great change in the Kurdish consciousness not just. Inside Turkey but in even in Kurdish exile communities in Europe and in my book I write about taking a tour through these Kurdish exile

communities after the war had more or less ended in trying to take their pulse. I see now that what most Kurds in the Kurdish region of Turkey want is very very minimal compared to what they wanted 10 years ago. You don't hear anybody talking about forming an independent state anymore. They want an environment in which they can be who they are they can live out their identity they can use their language and have their TV stations and educate their children. And if that environment is called Turkey it's fine with them. I think the level of Kurdish demands is now at a level lower than it has been at any time in several decades. This is a time now when Turkey can resolve this problem almost forever with very very minor compromises in its own psychology. But even though the minor compromises are a little too much for people in the Turkish establishment particularly in the military to grasp there are some changes underway. A constitutional reform package has just been approved in the Turkish parliament which will allow radio broadcasting in Kurdish

and some other steps. But the Turkish nation as I said earlier was founded at a time when it was under tremendous pressure from abroad and from within it was a very unstable Republic at the beginning. And so these repressive methods and methods were justified then they're not justified anymore because Turkey is not so threatened anymore Turkey is stable enough to be able to handle its ethnic diversity. And one of the great challenges facing its leaders is to accept and recognize this fact. I just get the idea that these repressive methods and the reason why but the demands are so minimal is because of the crushing repression that the U.S. sort of pretty much paid for. A lot of ways. I just don't think that's entirely true I do think that many Kurdish thinkers have come to realize that in the modern age national borders don't mean so much when you can set up a website or an antenna and reach anyone you want. What they're looking for the

democratic environment to live in and if people will let them live in that kind of an environment in Turkey which is I think what most Turks want I think they'll be very happy with that. It's not just as a result of repression although the repression was quite fierce during the early 1990s. It's also a result of an evolving Kurdish consciousness. The Kurds that's like the Palestinians I might add have been cursed with terrible leadership. One of the reasons for that is that the Turkish establishment has not allowed a moderate peaceful Kurds to emerge and function so the only leaders that come forward are clandestine and revolutionary. The Turks need to realize that encouraging a class of civilian democratic Kurdish activists is actually in the benefit of the Turkish state it's no longer to be seen as a subversive threat. I want to perhaps follow up on the whole Kurdish Civil War thing there. The things I want to try to get to and hopefully will come back to that I did want to ask you to talk a little bit about

the military culture and the civilian government how those things sort of relate to each other the military culture often has acted to protect the state from itself. I suppose that's one way to put it has staged civil coups in recent years and return power when it decided it was safe to do so and largely was applauded by the people of Turkey. It's a very interesting and probably unique situation in the world. As the caller mentioned earlier I happened to come to Turkey after spending a number of years in Latin America and covering Latin American countries during the 1980s burgher and late 1970s left me with a very clear view of the military role in society. There was an almost direct inverse proportion inverse relationship between the power of the military and the happiness of the people up strong powerful military men brutal repression savagery poverty and misery for the people.

Tear down the military and kick them and spit on them and throw them out. People become happier more fulfilled and more secure. Well after I reached Turkey I had to throw that whole standard right into the Bosphorus. The military plays a very different role in Turkey first of all the military founded the Turkish Republic without the military. That part of the world would have been carved up by European allies and there wouldn't be a turkey today. Turkey is also a place where the military is thought to have saved the nation on several occasions most recently by defeating the Kurdish uprising that many Turks feared were going to tear their old country apart. In addition to that every occur every Turkish male served in the military so everything Emily has had the experience of seeing their son or husband in military uniform. There is a great desire to think the best about the government. Now that about the military now the military

plays a special role in the Turkish governing system. Turkey has a parliament and a president and a prime minister and all of the accoutrements of a democratic state. But it also has a body called the National Security Council. This is the body which is made up of the country's leading generals and leading civilian politicians through which the military exercises influence over politics. When something is happening in Parliament that the military doesn't like it can let the National Security Council know that that's a bill we really don't want passed when there is a development in Turkish society. Too many girls wearing headscarf to university. Kurdish groups being found in Iran there are some other development that the military finds disconcerting. Its generals express their discontent through the National Security Council and when they make their voice known that voice carries a lot of weight. So there is in there now in Turkey a current flipped over this military role. There is

still a desire to listen to the military on national security affairs and that is why when the military officers stand in front of Turkey as they are doing right now and saying and say we dont we know many of you are dubious about this project in Afghanistan but were telling us leave people in charge of national security. This is something Turkey has to do. We have to participate in this anti-terror coalition. The Turks will understand that they will embrace that and they will give their military leaders the benefit of the doubt. Where the difference comes is that many Turks are no longer. Willing to accept the military's role in civilian politics. They are saying when it's a question of what should be allowed to be written in the newspaper there are not a what should be the limits of religious expression that are tolerated by our society or what kind of lesson the concessions can we give to our Kurdish minority. These are questions that we can decide what the Parliament can decide the civilians can decide. Civil society can decide. There are not questions

of the military. We'd like the generals to stick to national security and the general the answer to this is that is a national security. Those are issues of national security just as much as foreign policy is this clash of ideals and this debate over the role of the military is one of the key debates that's shaping Turkey today. Well Pastor mid-point. Conversation with Stephen Kinzer author of the book crescent and star Turkey between two worlds. We do have a caller waiting and welcome others in the remaining time the number around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L toll free anywhere else 800 1:58 w While Well let's talk with a caller in Bloomington Indiana on line number 1. Good morning. Right now you're a guest describe how Ataturk westernised Turkey and gave Turkey a secularized government. Would you contract would you contrast that that westernization of Turkey with the with the restored Islam of repression which occurred when the

Ayatollah Khomeini came to Iran. And remember that when Khomeini overthrew the Shah and the Shah had the show had produced a fairly secularized government in her ran. And when the Ayatollah Khomeini came back to Iran people cheered in the streets. And the result was a return to Islamic militants a very good question and of Iran and Turkey being neighbors also reflect two very very different approaches to religion. The difference between the Shah's regime and the equally if not more militant least secular Islamic regime in Turkey is that the Shah's regime only consisted as we learned afterwards of changes that had been made only at the top level of society. Ordinary people had not embraced the idea of Iran that the Shah represented and they were very good reasons for that

which we can discuss on another program. But in Turkey the idea of the secular republic has really taken root. There is an overwhelming majority in Turkey that favors the militant least secular and anti fundamentalist policies that are at the base of its government. Any fundamentalist Turk who would seek to build a base for a return to theocracy in Turkey to a return for a return to a kind of government like exist in Iran would find very slim pickings there. There is no popular base for religious fundamentalism in Turkey. There is a popular base though for certain expressions of religious identity that the Turkish state is very uncomfortable with. You mentioned you know where you have you know headscarves. For women that you know one point was I believe illegal. It's a very interesting situation just to think of Turkey comparing it to

the Arab countries in other parts of the Islamic world like Afghanistan Pakistan in many of those countries there are intense social pressures and sometimes the laws requiring women to wear headscarves in Turkey in many circumstances it's illegal. You could still see had scars on the streets but a nurse in a public hospital or a doctor or a lawyer or a judge or a civil servant or a member of parliament is forbidden from wearing a headscarf. I have even had military officers tell me that a military officer who prays or who doesn't drink wine at the office or the luncheon and prefers to have Coca-Cola and therefore is suspect of being perhaps sympathetic to Islamic principles to excess is suspect is going to become a victim of a purge and can be thrown out of the Army for being too religious. Turkey has gone so far in its secularism that it even infringes on the rights of ordinary devout

religious believers. There is a fear in Turkey that allowing unlimited amounts of religious devotion to be manifested in public is going to start pulling the country away from its secular roots and back towards obscurantism. This is another psychological barrier that Turkey needs to leap over now. And there have been religions in every society that has ever existed in the entire history of humanity no state that has ever placed itself in opposition to religion has ever emerged victorious from that confrontation. The Turkish state needs to give religious believers in Turkey the sense that they are part of the Turkish Republic and that is a long as they accept the principles of a secular republic which nearly all of them do. They should be allowed to practice their religion in ways that may be devout and serious but do not in any way threaten the state. It's still a psychological problem for some people in the old elite to allow

this. We have another call to talk with this is someone had a banner online. One good morning on focus 580. Hello I'd like to take issue with part of what the previous caller said. Khomeini did not overthrow of the Shah. He co-opted an existing revolution that was already underway. Well this could be you know this could be another hour we could talk about Iran and you know but I just want to correct it. Sure OK all right. And the prophets of the real misfortune in me and were Iran and Turkey went different ways was when the oil shock was deposed by the world powers at the height of the Second World War. I take your point and I think the history of revolutionary developments in Iran did have an influence on Turkey. It I think it was my other way to really make I think was really more the other way that

the history of Turkey had an influence on the early development in Iran. But my real point was that the danger of militant religion taking over is always there even if it's not a majority position. And even in Turkey as it's a danger I wouldn't want to rule that out. I agree it is a danger and I sympathize with the fears of Turks that if we allow unlimited forms of religious devotion we're laying the groundwork for fundamentalism in our own country. I do think however that given the fact that the people in Turkey will be believe in religious rule are something like 5 percent of the population. Turkey can't afford to embrace its the reverse and not run the risk of telling them that they have to make a choice between their religious beliefs and their loyalty to the secular state. I think your point is well taken. Thank you. Thank you for the call. This is the real. Turning point

in that particular issue isn't it. That is if Turkey tries to suppress those religious expressions. Only you know sort of fuels the fire as it has in many other places. It is exactly as you say a question that is burning not just in Turkey but throughout the Islamic world. How do you control the fundamentalist tendencies how do you prevent them from sweeping across the country. Do you do it by suppressing every form of religious belief and throwing people in jail or otherwise repressing them when they insist on practicing their religion in a devout way. Or does that only feed the fire. Is it better to try to embrace and I believe certainly in Turkey and I don't want to generalize for other countries but in Turkey where the raw material for a fundamentalist revolution really is not there. Turkey can afford

to allow its people full freedom of religious belief without fearing that that is going to result in disaster for the secular state. We have another. Call the talk with this is a listener in Champaign on line number two. Good morning you're in focus 580. Yes hi. I guess looking at this from a broader historical perspective it it seems to me that the United States needs allies in various parts of the world and in this case the Middle East obviously to kind of enforce what it costs to stability which means access to regular access to the resources of that region namely in this case obviously oil and that to do so the United States you know has always needed to deal with some very unsavory people and some unsavory governments. And when you know even though these tides change over time when you have a country like Turkey you are dealing with

you know a continuous regime that started out as a genocidal regime with the with the with the Armenians during the First World War and has continued to breed to be exposed extremely repressive and over press of its own people and up to the Kurds. And that's what's needed at this time is a kind of a PR job it's a kind of a historical rewriting of what Turkey has been and what Turkey has done to make it seem like you know that they're becoming if we give them a chance and if we guide them properly in this kind of patronizing way they can become kind of like us meaning that they can participate in the kind of a minor partner in the exploitation of those resources. Now none of this is intended to actually benefit the people of Turkey who happen to devastated economic system. But

somehow we need Turkey we need to make Turkey look good and look acceptable as a part of this quote unquote war against terror or this promotion of stability in the Middle East. And it seems like academic journalism or journalists you know this this sort of journalism which tries to bring a historical perspective to bear kind of participates in a propaganda exercise which makes makes it very difficult to see Turkey for what it is and to see our motives in patronizing Turkey for what it for what they are. I think we take your point I wonder what. What I guess would have to say about that. I have a whole chapter in my book about Turkey's difficulty in confronting history. Yeah. And that is something that Turkey needs to be able to do but let me make a couple of responses because I think your caller really overstate the case in the first place. The tragedy of the massacres of

Armenians that took place in 115 was not something that the Turkish Republic was involved in there was no Turkish Republic and that came during the period of the Ottoman Empire and that was the regime that Ataturk fought to destroy. So although the Turks have had their problems dealing with that in the modern age this is not an action associated with the Turkish Republic which was not even in existence at that time. Secondly I think it's going too far to call Turkey an extremely repressive state. Anyone who visits there will contradict that view and certainly I lived there for four years. I'm able to do so. Turkey is in many ways a very democratic and very open country. Now Turkey has had its problems dealing with its minorities and it participated in a very brutal civil war. When I say brutal on both sides against Kurdish separatists during the 1980s and 90s. But we are not trying to put a little gloss on a brutal country in order to use it the

way we have done with Guatemala and die each year and many countries around the world. Turkey is a country where support for the ideals of democracy and freedom is very very widespread in fact they may even be too widespread for the tastes of some of the people in power. Turkey is the country Turkey is far from being the perfect democracy but Turkey is the closest that we have to a country that can stand up to the rest of the Islamic world and particularly to what we're hearing from Afghanistan now and say we represent another way. We represent another model now before Turkey can play this role as the beacon of democracy in the Islamic world. Turkey must itself change before Turkey can change the world it needs to change itself. And Turkey definitely has a democratic deficit. Turkey needs to complete its march toward democracy and I'm hoping that this project that it's about to undertake in Central Asia which will be a very large scale project will

help push it in that direction. But Turkey is the only country that is on the one hand Muslim therefore acceptable to many people in a place like Afghanistan. And on the other hand a longstanding faithful ally of the United States. This is not something that has just scrapped up over recent years. Turkey has been a member of NATO for almost 50 years. And has taken its responsibilities as an ally of the West very seriously. There is the most reliable friend we have in that part of the world and it does not mean being friends with Turkey does not require us to check our democratic principles at the door the way being friends with many other countries in that part of the world and further eastward does require us to do that. There are a number of illusions that people have had about turkey that you suggest are being shattered or have been shattered by particular incidents. There is the earthquake in 1999 which we could talk about hopefully will have time but the one

that you write was a key turning point in Turkey's modern history thats the saucer look incident and if you could talk about that. So look at the name of a little town in western Turkey that nobody had ever heard of up until about six years ago when there was a car crash their Mercedes Benz crashed into a slow moving truck on a nighttime highway on a highway and night there. And when the police got there they found a very unusual combination of people in the Mercedes. All but one of whom had been killed. One was one of the top police officials in Turkey. The other was one of the most famous gangster than arrow and smugglers in Turkey. And the third was a member of parliament who also was head of his own private Kurdish army he's a traditional Kurdish chieftain from one of the clans in eastern Turkey. Now why would these people all of been together as a as the police opened the

trunk of the car they find a bunch of weapons pistols and silencers this gangster who was in the car who was wanted by Interpol after having escaped from a jail in Europe in which he had been imprisoned for heroin smuggling had a bunch of fake passports issued apparently with the permission of people in the Turkish government. He had a variety of gun licenses as the. The strings were followed back. It turned out that this gangster was also a famous gunman had been actually used by the Turkish state to assassinate leaders of groups that the Turkish state felt were subversive or threatening. And this opened up a whole scandal in which it became clear that during the Kurdish conflict the state had cooperated with criminals and essentially made a an evil deal with them and that was you kill our enemies out there and in exchange will allow you to practice your criminal

enterprises without interruption. This guy was a huge scandal in Turkey. It's the biggest scandal of modern Turkey and it has never been completely unraveled but it has had a great impact on the Turkish psyche for one reason. It has always been traditional in Turkey and it goes all the way back to the Ottoman days for people to take the state in the power of the state very seriously. The state is something to be obeyed. The state is something that knows better the state of something that commands and the state is something to which every citizen should respond because the state always is going to know what's best for the people in the long run. Now when the people of Turkey look and see what the state or some aspect of its apparatus have been doing under the carpet behind closed doors in the dark so to speak. It begins to ask itself is the state really protecting us. Maybe we should be more critical toward the state. And this is the real expandable has helped shake a lot of Turks out

of their exaggerated respect for the state and into a healthy skepticism that puts them more in line with the citizens of democratic countries. We have just about two or three minutes left I'm sorry there's much more we'd like to talk about but one thing I want to make sure to ask you about is entry into the European Union. What would that mean for Turkey. What do they offer. STICKLES and so forth. Entry into the European Union would be a great boon for Turkey because that prize essentially is about as close as you can get to being a long term guarantee of prosperity and stability for all nations. I also think it will be a very good thing for Europe. Turkey is a very young and vibrant country. Two thirds of the people are under 35. The countries of Europe are in many cases getting very old the birth rates are very low. Ideas are very stale. Turkey could play a wonderfully positive role in the European Union. But Turkey is a long way from being able to join because Turkey is not yet a complete democracy. Put aside

its economic problems for the moment which are considerable and which alone would be more than enough to keep Turkey out of the EU. But politically Turkey cannot have a regime in which for example the military plays such a dominant role in shaping civilian policy. Turkey cannot have laws that restrict what journalists can write in newspapers or what authors can write in their book. Turkey cannot have prisons in which practices. Exist like the ones that now exist in many Turkish prisons. There are a series of obstacles that block Turkey's entry into the EU along these lines and I believe that the process of Turkey pushing toward membership in the EU will be extremely positive not because it helps Turks get into the EU but because it's very good for Turkey. All these conditions of membership that the EU hold out in front of Turkey now are essentially a codification of what most Turks want for Turkey. So this is just

a little bit more detailed version of the formula that I've had to lay down 75 years ago. And as Turkey moves closer to qualifying for membership in the EU it will also move closer to fulfilling the dreams that most Turks have of a truly democratic Turkey. Do you think that most tricks understand that that's where. They need to move. Absolutely I know that the every public opinion poll has shown and the political party leaders and their followers in Parliament all agree that there is a very large consensus in Turkey that driving towards membership in the European Union is a very beneficial thing. First of all because it holds out this great prize to us and secondly because the steps that we have to take to join the EU are just the kinds of steps that we want to take to complete our own march toward democracy.

Well I'm sorry that we're here at the end of our time because there's much more that we could talk about lot of great stories in the book. People would like to look at the title again crescent and star Turkey between two worlds published recently by Farrar Straus and Giroux. The author our guest Stephen Kinzer in his last name is spelled K I N Z E R and Stephen Kinzer thanks so much for talking with us. That was a pleasure let's go one of the four or five hours on time. Sounds good. Okay thank you. All right thanks.