Turkey is a country in a state of flux. In the last few years, far-reaching political and economic reforms have swept away much of the old order that ruled the country for so long. Pressure for change has come from ordinary people; it has also been motivated by the dominant issue of Turkish political life—the long pursuit of membership in the European Union. And yet Turkey remains a mystery to many outsiders, a complex country hard to fathom: secular and Muslim, Western and Eastern, democratic and authoritarian.
