The book by William Hale on Turkish foreign policy covers a gap in Greek literature, as it is the first to study comprehensively and over a long historical period an issue that concerns every Greek internationalist. The period it covers, from the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca to the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to power, allows the reader to observe the continuities and discontinuities of Turkey's foreign policy from the Ottoman to the Republican era, and from the collapse of the 19th-century European Agreement to the Cold War era and the first two post-Cold War decades. At the same time, the book attempts to analyze all the "fronts" in which Turkish foreign policy has been active, such as Turkey's relations with the United States, Europe, Greece, Russia, and the Middle East. Thus, it manages to highlight the interconnections between various issues, such as the way in which the Cyprus issue affected US-Turkish relations, for example. Finally, the book reveals the influence not only of international but also of domestic political developments on the exercise of Turkish foreign policy, attempting a broader reading of Turkey's modern history, with an emphasis on its relations with the outside world.
A valuable work that presents the historical background, with the help of which it is possible to understand recent events as well as the prospects for the future, and which can contribute to the development and, why not, the upgrading of the discussion on Turkey in our country.
