I wanted to ask you, I think we'll probably have to come back to this central theme of secularism and

Islamic

identity as a

red herring in your analysis.

But there was another

disabling dimension it seems to me for the emergence of a progressive left in Turkey,

or at least a problem that it hasn't successfully overcome that also is important

that you discuss somewhat in the book, but I'd be very interested to hear more about

which is the problem of nationalism, of Turkish nationalism and Turkish identity.

The circumstances in which a multi-ethnic, multinational kind of polity like the Ottoman Empire

is transformed into a nation-state with Turkishness as its core

kind of ethno-national identity has created such huge problems with the Kurdish question,

Armenian, you know, ethno-religious difference. The transfer of populations between, you know,

Greeks to Greece and Turks have to be repatriated to Turkey. But you know, at the turn of the

century, as you point out in the book, these people didn't think of themselves as Turks in the

way that we think of them now. So people had to become Turks and then the way in which they

became Turks seems to have had big consequences that have not been really resolved in Turkey's

politics. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how people became Turks and why

this has been so difficult to resolve the Kurdish question and other what we might think of as

ethno-ethnic questions because of Turkey's nationalism. Yeah, that is really a core question,

especially today actually, which cripples democracy in Turkey, the ethno-national issue.

And as crippled the left, as you say, and as crippled by extension of democracy. Now,

...