Book boom reflects Turkish interest in military history
The growing popularity of military history publications over the past two years offers clues to a transformation in Turkish society.
A book fair I recently attended held a pleasant surprise for me: An abundance of Turkish military history books had been given the most prominent displays.
The annual event in the northern Aegean resort town of Edremit, Turkey, ran Aug. 13-16. The prevalence of those particular books seems to confirm a revived interest in Turkey's military past among a variety of readers.
Graduate sociology student Emrah Y. showed me a book he bought narrating the Kut battles in Iraq, which pitted the Ottoman army against the British army. “It's impossible to understand the new Turkey without understanding society’s popular interest in military history,” he said.
Hasan T., a veteran of Turkey's 1974 Cyprus operation, told me he came to the fair specifically to look at military history books. Writings on World War I, the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923) and the Korean War have increased, but there were no books on the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. “Many soldiers were writing their Cyprus memoirs," Hasan said. "I hope their families will show them to publishers.”
