The story of Turkey’s history is one of epic proportions, featuring big characters such as Genghis Khan, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and Kemal Attaturk. It is the story of a country that once had a vast empire and of a country in which east meets west, religion meets secularism and tradition meets modern values.  Norman Stone, a former professor of modern history at the University of Oxford and a former foreign policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher, has lived in Turkey since 1997. He examines the reasons for the decline of the Ottoman Empire, showing how it led to today’s Turkish republic and helping us to understand what it feels like to be Turkish today.