The Republic of Turkey between the East and the West

On the eve of the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey, although geographically neighbouring to Bulgaria, it remains too unknown to us Bulgarians. The transition the country is making from the "sick man of Europe" to the sixth economic power on the continent raises a cascade of questions: what are the reasons for its upward development, where is the limit of such growth, how does this trend affect the social fabric, what will be the geopolitical implications, and to what extent is the country's economic success due to its geostrategic choice to follow the Western model of modernization. This book offers answers to all of them, revealing the sociological aspects, logic, specificities, and snags of Turkey's modernization experience by tracing key historical milestones from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to Erdogan's long dominance in Turkish politics, thereby lifting the veil on a society riven by social, ethnic, religious, political, geographic, and civilizational contradictions. The challenge in the analysis is that it focuses on a country that is still moving along its modernization path, i.e. the processes at work are dynamic, not settled in their entirety, and have the complicating property of changing before our eyes.