Soner Cagaptay - The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey

Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has written extensively on USTurkish relations, EUTurkish ties, Turkish domestic politics, the Kurdish issue, and Turkish nationalism, publishing in scholarly journals and major international print media, including the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , New York Times , Atlantic , Guardian , Foreign Affairs , and CNN.com . He has been a regular columnist for Hurriyet Daily News , Turkeys oldest and most influential English-language paper, and a contributor to CNNs Global Public Square blog. He appears regularly on Fox News, CNN, NPR, Voice of America, the BBC, and CNN Turk.

A historian by training, Cagaptay wrote his doctoral dissertation at Yale University (2003) on Turkish nationalism, and has taught courses at Yale, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and Smith College on the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe. His spring 2003 course on modern Turkish history was the first offered by Yale in three decades. From 2006 to 2007, he was Ertegun Professor at Princeton Universitys Department of Near Eastern Studies. He is the recipient of numerous honors, grants, and chairs, among them the Smith Richardson, Mellon, Rice, and Leylan fellowships.

This is a brave and balanced narrative of Turkeys mercurial President Erdogan. Soner Cagaptay explains how the new sultan built a modern and prosperous Turkey, but how his autocratic, illiberal side undermined these achievements and throttled democracy. Turkey is now at a crossroads, and Cagaptay provides a clear roadmap. Nobody tells Erdogans story better or more honestly.

David Ignatius, columnist, Washington Post

My most challenging mission in a 35-year diplomatic career was dealing with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Along with Bibi Netanyahu and Supreme Leader Khamenei, Erdogan has been one of the three Middle Eastern leaders of consequence in the twenty-first century. Cagaptays book captures both the man and his state; I wish Id read it before serving as ambassador to Turkey.

James F. Jeffrey, former ambassador to Turkey

Published in 2017 by
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Copyright 2017 Soner Cagaptay

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ISBN: 978 1 78453 826 2
eISBN: 978 1 78672 236 2
ePDF: 978 1 78673 236 1

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To the loving memory of my mother