Who were the Sephardic Jews of the Ottoman Empire? What lasting lessons does their spiritual life provide for future generations? "How did the Judeo-Spanish-speaking Jews of the Ottoman Empire manage to achieve spiritual triumph? To answer this question, we need to have a firm understanding of their historical experience... We need to be aware of the dark, unpleasant elements in their environments; but we also need to see the spiritual, cultural...

Located at the intersection of Asia, Africa, and Europe, Turkey is the only nation in the world to occupy land on three different continents. Readers will discover how Turkish culture blends influences from all three continents, resulting in a unique blend of tradition, language, and cuisine that can't be found anywhere else. They will also learn about Turkey's history, find out how its government works, and tour some of its most incredible sights. Provides...

A century has now gone by, yet the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-16 is still infamous as arguably the most ill conceived, badly led and pointless campaign of the entire First World War. The brainchild of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, following Turkey's entry into the war on the German side, its ultimate objective was to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in western Turkey, thus allowing the Allies to take control of the eastern Mediterranean...

Special Prosecutor Kamil Pasha encounters his most ruthless adversary to date: Vahid, head of a special branch of the secret police, who has convinced the sultan that a socialist commune is leading a secessionist movement and should be destroyed--along with surrounding villages. Kamil must stop the massacre, but he finds himself on the wrong side of the law, framed for murder and accused of treason.

In the first edition of this widely praised book, Stephen Kinzer made the convincing claim that Turkey was the country to watch -- poised between Europe and Asia, between the glories of its Ottoman past and its hopes for a democratic future, between the dominance of its army and the needs of its civilian citizens, between its secular expectations and its Muslim traditions. In this newly revised edition of Crescent and Star, he adds much important...

As a child in Izmir, Turkey in the 1980 and 90s, Ozge Samanci watched as her country struggled between its traditional religious heritage and the new secular westernized world of brand-name products and television stars. In Ozge's own family, she struggled to figure out the place where she belonged, too. Her older sister was a perfect student, and her dad hoped Ozge would study hard, go to good schools, and become an engineer to find stability in...

Sultan Mehmet II, known to his countrymen as 'the Conqueror' and to much of Europe as 'the Terror of the World,' was once Europe's most feared and powerful ruler. Now, Turkey's most beloved American scholar, John Freely, brings to life this charismatic hero of one of the richest histories in the world. Mehmet was barely twenty-one when he conquered Byzantine Constantinople, which became Istanbul and the capital of his mighty empire. Mehmet reigned...