beginning to confront the persistent issue of Turkey’s role in Europe. Although none
of Turkey’s territory lies along the Atlantic Ocean, Turkey had joined the North Atlan-
tic Treaty Organization in 1952 and within a decade had begun seeking membership
in the pan-European organizations that eventually evolved into the European Union.
Year after year, the Europeans rebuffed Turkey, asserting that it was not really part of
Europe or that it was too poor or too undemocratic to qualify.
Left unspoken by most European leaders was that Turkey had too many Muslims
to be part of a Europe that still considered itself Christian, at least in name. Over the
years, Europe’s ambivalence about Turkey increasingly could be seen in Turkey itself.
For example, it became acceptable in Turkey to suggest that the country stop yearn-
ing to join the West and instead embrace its Eastern heritage, including Islam and all
the other cultural and social aspects of its location in the Middle East. Ironically, it
was the AKP-led Islamist government that in 2004 finally convinced Europe to con-
sider Turkey’s application seriously. If that process stays on track, Turkey could
become an EU member in another ten or fifteen years.
Mustafa Kemal, who in 1934 became known as Ataturk (“father of the Turks”),
believed that he had resolved Turkey’s identity issues during his long hold on power.
Ataturk formally took leadership of Turkey in 1923, when he became the first president
of the new republic that succeeded the Ottoman state’s collapse. He had emerged as the
dominant figure in Turkey four years earlier, in 1919, when he took control of a nation-
alist movement that rebelled against the harsh terms imposed on Turkey by the victori-
ous Western Allies of World War I. In September 1919, Ataturk guided the writing of
the Turkish National Pact, a manifesto renouncing the old Ottoman claims to Arab lands
but insisting on retention of the core of Turkey—all of the Anatolian peninsula (Asia
Minor) and the portion of historic Thrace surrounding Constantinople (later Istanbul).
The republic that Ataturk and his allies built on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire
had the appearance, but not the reality, of a democracy. The government rested in the
628 TURKEY
KonyaBursaIstanbulIzmirAdana GaziantepAnkaraSYRIATURKEY
CYPRUSIRAQIRANARMENIAGEORGIABULGARIARUSSIAAZERAZERGREECEMuratR. Lake VanArasR.CoruhR.FiratR.TigrisR.
EuphratesRSakaryaR.DevrezRKizilR.KelkitR.YeniceR.CeyhanR.MericR.Black SeaMediterranean SeaMarmaraSea ofAegeanSeaBosporusDardanelles Mt. Ararat0 100 Mi
0 100 KmModern capital
Modern bordersW ENSTurkey.