Turkey is a country in a state of flux, swept along by an extraordinary process of change. In the last few years a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms has swept away much of the old order which ruled the country for so long. Some people call it a second Turkish revolution. But resistance to reform remains strong.


Pressure for change has come from ordinary people fed up with the old ways; it's also been motivated by the dominant issue of Turkish political life - the long pursuit of membership of the European Union. And yet Turkey remains a mystery to many outsiders; a complex country hard to understand. It's secular and Muslim, Western and Eastern, democratic and authoritarian, all at the same time.