Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Turkey: The land a dictator turned into a democracy
He who loves the rose should put tip with its thorns.
—Old Turkish saying
ONE day in 1853, Nicholas I, Czar of all the Russias, peered southward over his aristocratic nose and voiced the opinion that Turkey was indeed "the sick man of Europe." Exactly 100 years later, an astute and wealthy Texan named George McGhee, at the time U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, looked out over the green plains of Anatolia and said: "You know what this country reminds me of? It's got the stuff, the git up and go, and it's rolling. Why,...
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