ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the experiments in Westernization during the Ottoman period and the formulation of the Turkish Model by Kemal Ataturk between the years 1923 and 1938. It provides the development of the Turkish model from 1938 to the early 1990s when the struggle for democracy continued, and Turkey's closeness to the West was strengthened by its membership of major Western institutions such as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Council of Europe, and its economic transformation from a centrally controlled economy to the market economy took place. The chapter also outlines Military coups, Kurdish separatism and Alawite discontent as the outstanding problems of the Turkish model. The inability of the Turkish Model to construct a civil society, undermines the position of Turkey as a Western democratic state and the Turkish Model's supposed main characteristic as a 'multi-party system'. Kurdish separatism dominates Turkish domestic policy and it has significant effects on Turkish foreign policy.
