SEATTLE/ Conservative Monitor -- Crescent and Star is a book about Turkey. It attempts to describe Turkey as it is today and works hard to help us understand how it got here.

Turkey is endowed with a large population and considerable national resources. It is possessed of the most powerful army in the Middle-East. It has a democratically elected government that is heavily influenced by the military. It is a nation with Moslem fundamentalists vying with Kemalist secularists to control the state and the culture.

It is a nation experiencing the centrifugal forces of the politics of diversity even as it struggles to find a place among the powers of the world.

"Crescent and Star" delves into Turkey's recent past, describing its roots in the Ottoman Empire, its struggles in a war of independence, the rise of Kemal Ataturk, the rise to prominence of the army and the struggle with the Kurds.

Mr. Kinzer does a good job in showing how Turkey is poised between Europe and Asia, between the 20th and 21st centuries, between the third world and the first world. The book has insights into recent events and points the way toward future events.

Even so, these insights are often, unfortunately, weighed down heavily with Mr. Kinzer's own attitudes on Turkey's history and institutions. Any author of a work of history should be granted some leeway in expressing their opinions on current events. However, Mr. Kinzer crosses the line on occasion, making second guesses that seem based more on a naive ideology than a practical view of conditions in Turkey. He takes pot shots at groups he does not like in a rather gratuitous manner. Here is a sample from Chapter 1:

"The ruling elite, however, refuses to embrace this new nation or even admit that it exists. Military commanders, prosecutors, security officers, narrow-minded bureaucrats, lapdog newspaper editors, rigidly conservative politicians and other members of this sclerotic cadre remain psychologically trapped in the 1920s."

Mr. Kinzer's choice of derogatory adjectives reveals a certain bias that pervades the entire book. Although this detracts somewhat from the reading and makes us questions some of his assumptions about what is best for Turkey, we find that he has an absorbing style and still manages to convey a lot of interesting information about the people and government of Turkey.

Mr. Kinzer spent considerable time in Turkey and some of the book is devoted to his personal experiences there. This seems to be partly an effort to relate by anecdote proofs backing up certain of his assumptions. Whether this effort is successful is open to question. Nevertheless, the anecdotes are interesting and each, taken on its own, lends a certain insight that those of us who have not journeyed to Turkey will not find elsewhere.

With the advent of the Terrorist War, this book should be of considerable interest. Turkey is one of the lynchpin countries of the Middle East. It has much to educate us on the politics and mindset of a region that is both volatile and vital to the world economy. I recommend this book with a few reservations in the hopes that readers will sift through the information given, take what is valuable and consider the validity of Mr. Kinzer's sincere opinions.