New Book About Turkey To Be Published in September
Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York

"CRESCENT AND STAR: TURKEY BETWEEN TWO WORLDS"

by Stephen KINZER

This exciting book, written by the journalist who opened the Istanbul bureau of the New York Times, will bring Turkey to the attention of many Americans who know little about the country.  There will be chapters about Ataturk's legacy, human rights, the role of the army, Islamic politics, Greek-Turkish relations, and the 1999 earthquake.

"Light Millenium" has obtained the following summary of the book:

For centuries, no terror was more vivid in the Christian imagination than fear of 'the Turk.'  To this day many people think of Turkey as exotic and fascinating, but at the same time repressive, wild and vaguely dangerous.

Stephen Kinzer provides an intimate view of this mysterious country, pulling aside the veil that has long hidden its wonders from the outside world.  He traces its development into a modern state and explains the great dilemma it now faces: whether to continue hiding behind its fears, remaining only half-free and fulfilling only half of its great potential, or to yield to the pressure of a new generation and join the ranks of the worldís most powerful and prosperous democracies.

Kinzer lived in Turkey for years and came to know it intimately, and he was captivated by the many delights of Turkish life.  He describes the pleasures of smoking water pipes, searching for the ruins of lost civilizations, watching camel fights, discovering the countryís greatest poet, swimming across the fabled Bosphorus and even hosting a blues program on an Istanbul radio station.  He also recounts his arrest by Turkish soldiers while he was trying to uncover the secrets of their long campaign against Kurdish guerrillas.

With the Cold War over, Turkey suddenly finds itself at the middle of the world.  It is the great bridge between Europe and Asia, or to put it another way, the barrier that protects Europe from surging currents of political chaos and religious fundamentalism.  If Turkeyís leaders can overcome a handful of deep-seated complexes, their country will finally complete its march toward freedom, pull other Muslim countries toward democracy and exert a powerful influence over the Middle East, the Balkans and the new nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Young Turks, like their ancestors a century ago, are impatient for change.  If they succeed in their modernizing mission, Kinzer asserts, they can make Turkey "the most audaciously successful nation of the twenty-first century."

E-mail to Stephen Kinzer> kinzer@nytimes.com

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