The Shortest History of Turkey

The world-changing story of Turkey – a country caught between two worlds

This brilliant distillation traces Turkey’s long and complicated history from the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire – the most enduring, and perhaps the most important, Islamic empire in history – to the emergence of the modern Turkish Republic in the early twentieth century and the populist, authoritarian leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today.

Over more than nine centuries of change, Turkey has been a cultural melting pot, straddling Asia and Europe, and a nation-state bent on ethnic unity. It has seen conquest and reform, appeals to tradition and calls to modernise. It has been a home to Christians, Jews, Muslims and others, while pursuing both secularisation and Islamisation with equal fervour.

In The Shortest History of Turkey, historian Benjamin Fortna offers a concise yet nuanced overview of this complex trajectory, revealing how persistent tensions between opposing visions for Turkey have shaped, and continue to shape, the country and its people.