The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century's First Muslim Power - Hardcover

Cagaptay, Soner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1612346502 ISBN 13: 9781612346502

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc., 2014

Synopsis

Turkey is positioned to become the twenty-first century’s first Muslim power. Based on a dynamic economy and energetic foreign policy, Turkey’s growing engagement with other countries has made it a key player in the newly emerging multidirectional world order. Turkey’s trade patterns and societal interaction with other nations have broadened and deepened dramatically in the past decade, transforming Turkey from a Cold War outpost into a significant player internationally.

Turkey’s ascendance and the changes that have taken place under the leadership of Turkey’s Muslim conservative government have prompted its policymakers to craft a new vision of their role in twenty-first-century society. This developing worldview animates Turkey’s desire to sometimes take the lead with its co-religionists and occasionally challenge its partners in the West, while showing no inclination to become an irresponsible rising power. If it can consolidate liberal democracy at home, Turkey could also assume the role of serving as an example for the newly emerging governments brought about by the Arab Spring.

The cornerstone of Turkey’s rise has been the government’s ability to foster stable political conditions for economic growth, alongside a foreign policy that balances Turkey’s Muslim identity with its Western overlay, including its strong ties to the United States. Accordingly, policies that could tarnish Turkey’s reputation as a bastion of stability risk undermining its position between Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. This realization has been the catalyst for Ankara's careful management of Eastern and Western desires and expectations. The result is a new Turkey: a twenty-first-century Muslim power that promotes stability without the confines of a regional, European rubric.

About this title

About the Author

SONER CAGAPTAY is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute. A historian by training, Dr. Cagaptay has written extensively on U.S.-Turkey relations, Turkish domestic politics, and Turkish nationalism. He has taught courses at Yale University, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and Smith College on the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe. From 2006 to 2007 he was Ertegun Professor at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Cagaptay’s work has been published regularly in scholarly journals and in major international print media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. He has been a regular columnist for CNN-GPS and HÜrriyet Daily News, Turkey’s oldest and most influential English-language paper, and he appears frequently on radio and television in the United States and abroad.

Edition details

• Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1612346502
• ISBN 13: 9781612346502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192