The Invention of Turkey

Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

The Invention Of...

Documentaries

Factual: History

Factual: Politics

Misha Glenny investigates the histories and the people that make nations what they are.

Misha Glenny investigates the borders, the histories and the people that make different nations what they are.

BBC Radio 4 FM

The Invention Of...: Turkey: A Balancing Act

Turkey

A Balancing Act

BBC Radio 4 - The Invention Of..., Turkey, A Balancing Act

Misha Glenny on the birth of Turkey from the ruins of the old Ottoman Empire in 1923.

Why did the Ottomans support Germany in the First World War, and what are the consequences today?

Misha Glenny and Miles Warde take a ride over the Bosphorus to see the old Hyderpasha railway station - the Asian bulkhead of the Berlin to Baghdad railway which opened in 1909. The Ottoman alliance with Germany had implications for the Middle East that are still being felt to this day.

"This was a place of intrigue, spies and glamour. For four and half centuries Istanbul had been the centre of the empire, right up until the end of the first world war. At which point the empire was divided up, broken up, partitioned into mandates – Syria and Lebanon under the French, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq to the British, this based on the famous Sykes-Picot line agreed in 1916. The Ottoman empire had joined the wrong side in the war, and was going to pay. You could say this region is still paying, such has been the failure of those lines drawn in the sand."

Contributors include Soli Ozel of Kadir Has University; Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans; and Suzy Hansen whose Notes on a Foreign Country was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

The Invention Of...: Turkey

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Misha Glenny on the creation of Turkey from the old Ottoman Empire, 100 years ago in 1923.

Misha Glenny is on location in Istanbul, Belgrade and Vienna to tell the story of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent emergence,100 years ago in 1923, of the Turkish Republic

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Invention Of...

Turkey

A Balancing Act

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4