"Angry Book" could also accurately describe Kerem Öktem's provocative and invaluable account of contemporary Turkish history, in particular of the role and the misdeeds of the country's "guardian state." The book strikes an angry tone from the start, with the preface citing the "chilling absence of humaneness and judiciousness in many court decisions" as one of the "defining characteristics of politics in Turkey."In the preface, Öktem also notes the impact of Turkey's coups and political repression on his own family, including the torture of his aunt. The blame for "the sorry times" that Öktem describes as having dominated Turkey's recent history is pinned largely on "the non-elected 'guardians of the republic' — the military high command, the high judiciary and the bureaucracy — that have been shaping Turkey's politics since at least the 1950s." The political impact of these actors on Turkey's recent history is the key theme of the book.

Angry Nation is part of Zed Books' Global History of The Present series, which offers histories of a range of countries "since 1989." However, the book actually focuses on Turkish history between 1980, the year of Turkey's last outright military coup, and late 2010. It concludes with the September 12, 2010, referendum on constitutional change that, among other things, stripped the 1980 coup leaders of immunity from prosecution. Öktem convincingly justifies his choice to widen the focus of the book to include the 1980s by arguing in the introduction that in the case of Turkey, "the year 1980 constitutes the key traumatic rupture": "Many of the momentous changes that are often ascribed to the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe… were anticipated in Turkey in the 1980s."

Following the brief preface, the book begins with an introduction, a large part of which is devoted to defining and expanding on the concept of the "guardian state." Öktem regards the guardian state as "a reincarnation of the Kemalist one-party state (the Republican People's Party) and a result of the country's incomplete transformation to democracy" following the end of one-party rule in 1946," as well as being "an amorphous power structure within the state hierarchy, which is upheld by interpersonal contact at the highest levels." While others have viewed the guardian state as motivated by loyal adherence to Kemalist ideals, Öktem suggests its principal drive may simply be to retain power. Öktem's conception of the guardians is broad; for example, at the beginning of the book he uses the terms "guardian state" and "deep state" interchangeably, whereas others have posited the "deep state" as more of a nexus between elements of the Turkish government and security forces — including politicians and police figures who are not necessarily members of the guardian state — with Turkish organized crime.

Öktem sees the guardian state's primary modus operandi as one of divide and rule, setting ethnic, religious and political communities against each other in order to marginalize whomever the state considers its most important enemies (variously leftists, Islamists and Kurdish nationalists) and, when "necessary," to precipitate violence that allows for the military to intervene.

The first chapter is an informative and fascinating overview of the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the first 50-odd years of the Turkish republic, in which Öktem sets the scene for his contemporary history, finding numerous precursors of issues in more recent Turkish history and of the deep state in particular. He writes that "much of the state ideology of the early republic and the period after the military coup of 1980 comes from the political heritage of the Committee of Union and Progress and its roots in manipulative 'behind-the-scenes' politics"; in particular, he sees the "Special Organization" (Teşkilat-ı mahsusa) of the Committee of Union and Progress "an early harbinger of the many secret organizations that would come to play a role in the politics of modern Turkey), such as the overall guardian state and the "special teams" that carried out extra-judicial killings in the southeast in the 1990s. The chapter focuses heavily on the darker episodes of the period, especially those that until recently have received limited historical attention, with particular emphasis on the campaign of violence by the state against the Zaza Alevis tribes in the province of Dersim/Tunceli in 1937-38.

Subsequent chapters respectively cover the rule of Prime Minister and later President Turgut Özal, the "lost decade" of the 1990s, the first term of AKP rule (2002-07) and the first three years of its second term — up to September 2010 — after which Öktem briefly offers three plausible scenarios for how Turkey will develop politically in the coming years. While covering all the political history of these periods — including party politics, cultural issues, economic development and Turkey's relations with the European Union — the key focus throughout remains on the role of the guardians, their machinations and their gradual transformation into "not much more than an empty shell" under the second term of the AKP.

While presumably a general feature of the Global History of the Present series and beyond Öktem's control, it is nonetheless a shame that such a frequently revealing scholarly book does not contain any specific references or citations (it does contain a bibliographical list of sources at the end). There were many interesting points that this reviewer would have liked to follow up. In some cases, references would also bolster Öktem's case on controversial issues, as when he claims it is now "an established fact" that anti-Alevi violence in Kahramanmaraş in 1978 was "planned by groups within the army." Given that any such conspiracies will almost always be associated with claims and counterclaims and the number of instances in which Öktem blames developments on clandestine guardian state action, references to the evidence for such established facts would have been welcome.

The behind-the-scenes and often highly controversial nature of the manipulations on which the book focuses presents challenges, particularly when dealing with near-contemporary events. In the introduction to the chapter on the first years of the AKP's second term, Öktem writes that "it is close to impossible to distinguish truth from fiction and fact from manipulation" when examining issues such as the Ergenekon and other conspiracy investigations, which AKP opponents claim are politically motivated witch hunts. Despite this, at times he seems to sometimes take the truth of still hotly disputed claims for granted. He writes that "a continuous media campaign of misinformation led many to believe that most of the [Ergenekon] charges were fabricated," something that Öktem (unavoidably, given the scope and complexity of the case) does not actually show to be false and which many observers would still argue to be more or less true with respect to some of its more controversial charges (though he also usefully points out instances where the case has shone light on abuses in the south-east in the 1990s that have often been forgotten in the focus on the case's charges against the enemies of the AKP). Öktem also describes the "revelations" of the "cynical blueprints of plots" in the alleged Kafes and Balyoz plots to have been "shocking for even critical observers," not giving space to the fact that many Turkey observers continue to argue that important elements of the Balyoz case, in particular, are crude fabrications.

This is not to say that the book is biased in favour of the AKP; Öktem also writes of the Ergenekon and other conspiracy trials: "There is little doubt that the government used the judiciary… in order to settle political scores." Nor is the issue that Öktem's interpretation of these developments is necessarily wrong. However — short of offering conclusive evidence to settle such debates — a fuller acknowledgement that the authorship of such plots remains the subject of considerable controversy might have been more judicious.

Irrespective of such debates, which are nearly inevitable when dealing with the highly polarized world of contemporary Turkish politics and which are of course impossible to satisfactorily resolve in the restricted space of an introduction to contemporary Turkish history, Angry Nation is to be highly recommended. The book is well-structured and very readable, partly thanks to the fascinating subject matter, but also to Öktem's lively and impassioned style. The chapter on the 1990s and its section on deep state violence in the southeast is particularly vivid and fascinating in its description of how the conflict both divided Turkey into "two distinct territories with different legal and administrative arrangements" while simultaneously corrupting individuals and institutions in the west of the country. The author does an excellent job of synthesizing the major political, economic and social trends of the period, offering a clear vision of how certain threads have persisted and evolved throughout different periods, while also providing detailed and fascinating examinations of key events. Angry Nation is an excellent introduction to modern Turkey for general readers that will also be of great interest to specialists. Few other up-to-date books on general contemporary Turkish political history and the role of the guardians are available in English, fewer still with the analytical insight and passion that Öktem brings to the topic.