ABSTRACT
Turkey's geographical assets include not only its location in the geopolitically Anatolian power center but also its control of the strategic Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits. Facing imperial Russia, later the Soviet Union, and now the successor republics across the Black Sea and in the Caucasus, it has been in more wars with Russia over the past five hundred years than has any other nation. This chapter focuses on two quite different, quite large countries, first Turkey and then Iran. Although both are Muslim, each practices Islam differently from the other and in many respects differently from the Arab countries. Certainly, Turkey makes a startling contrast with the state just considered, Egypt. For clarity in nomenclature, "Turkey" refers to the Republic of Turkey, including the 3 percent of its territory in Europe. "Asia Minor" refers to the peninsula that lies between the Black Sea and the northeastern Mediterranean east of the Aegean.
