The earthquake of August 1999 struck Turkey very hard, and did so at a time that could not have been worse-at three o'clock in the morning during a summer holiday, when homes were crowded with visiting relatives. But it also struck at a desperately unfortunate moment for Turkey as a whole: the point at which it was at last becoming a First World country. This fact occurred to some of the international teams who came in to help sift through the rubble: with some surprise, they acknowledged on television that Turkey actually did have earth-moving equipment and life-saving devices on hand. The earthquake set the economy back some way, of course, but as economic modernity these days is really a matter of knowledge and organization rather than of material goods, the country will no doubt continue on a promising path.
The list of positive trends is impressive. Turkey is a NATO ally, with a substantial army of proven efficiency. It is a crucial friend of both the United States and Israel, and is just about the only Islamic country with fair elections. It wields far more economic power than any of its Arab neighbors to the south (and does so despite having no oil to speak of). The Bosporus is a chief conduit for oil tankers, and the chief proposed pipeline for Caspian oil will pass substantially through eastern Turkey. Turkey's foreign trade, approaching $100 billion annually, may well overtake Russia's in the next five years, even though the country has little in the way of raw materials. The twelve million Turks of 1923 have now become sixty-five million, and, as the demographic pressure is at last easing, there will be eighty-five million by 2020.
