Ertugrul Tuzcu: Turkey finds itself between two worlds
Article by: ERTUGRUL TUZCU
Updated: June 1, 2012 - 6:23 PM
Reforms and economic growth have helped build a rising regional power straddling Europe and the Middle East.
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When I came to the University of Minnesota as a graduate student in 1976 from Istanbul, the Turkey I left was very different from the Turkey of today. Then, 75 percent of Turks lived in the countryside; today, that percentage lives in the cities. One of the consequences of this major population shift is that Turkey now has a middle class, which contributed to the election of the center-right conservative Adalet ve Kalknma Party (AKP) in 2002.
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