This volume analyses the key orientation dilemma of Turkey in the early 21st century. Should Turkey continue to follow its Euro-Atlantic policy which aims at Western modernisation and seeks to join the West at all costs? Or, should it return to its Oriental roots and follow an alternative path of development? Turkey, as Huntington says, is a torn country with a Muslim culture yet with a legal system and efforts that make it shift towards the Western civilization. In the Cold War period, Turkey fostered strong connections with the West and received external support, but after the end of the Cold War, the issue of Turkey’s real identity was raised again. The Kemalist model, based on secular fundaments and seeking to adopt the Western pattern, is being augmented or replaced by an emerging ideology of modernisation that is based on Islam yet – as opposed to ideas of Islamist fundamentalists – does not basically reject the Western model.
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