History

The Ottoman past

A candid examination

by Hans-Lukas Kieser •

October 2025, no. 480

The Shortest History of Turkey by Benjamin C. Fortna

Black Inc., $27.99 pb, 256 pp

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History

The Ottoman past

A candid examination

by Hans-Lukas Kieser •

October 2025, no. 480

Can a ‘shortest history’ of Turkey, including the expansive history of the Ottoman Empire, work? As well as covering imperial grandeur, it must address complex and sensitive issues such as the Kurdish conflict, the Armenian genocide, Islamism, slavery, and autocracy. Benjamin C. Fortna, a Middle Eastern historian, successfully combines sympathy and interest in Turkey with a candid examination, including of darker aspects of its past.

Hans-Lukas Kieser

Hans-Lukas Kieser is an honorary associate professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and a retired professor from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. An independent historian, he is the author or editor of numerous books on the Modern Middle East, among them Turkey’s Violent Formation: New Social Contracts at the End of the Ottoman Empire (2024), When Democracy Died: The Middle East’s Enduring Peace of Lausanne (2023), Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide (2018) and Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East (2010). His I.B. Tauris Handbook of the Late Ottoman Empire: History and Legacy, co-edited with Khatchig Mouradian and featuring contributions from forty-five authors, is due to be published in autumn 2025.