Erdoğan holds key to Turkey's future, Hillary Clinton writes in memoir

Hillary Clinton's new memoir, “Hard Choices,” which many observers interpret as an unofficial kickoff of her prospective 2016 presidential campaign, dishes out a lot about key world leaders, but Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a special place in the 656-page book published June 10.
 
From Cyprus to Armenia, Turkey is portrayed in the book as a difficult actor in negotiations in which Clinton often set the tone as Washington’s top diplomat who visited 112 countries in her tenure.
 
"None of our relationships in Europe needed more tending than Turkey, a country of more than 70 million people, overwhelmingly Muslim, with one foot in Europe and one in Southwest Asia," Clinton wrote.
 
"The Turkish military, which saw itself as the guarantor of [Mustafa Kemal] Atatürk’s vision, intervened a number of times over the years to topple governments it saw as too Islamist, too left-wing, or too weak. Maybe that was good for the Cold War, but it delayed democratic progress,” she said.
 
Clinton complained in her book that popular approval of her country had collapsed to just 9 percent in Turkey by 2007. "Unfortunately the Bush years took a toll on our relations," Clinton wrote, reminding that she visited Turkey as part of her first trip to Europe as secretary of state to connect with Turkish society, especially women.
 
Clinton described Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the man who "held the key to the future of Turkey and of our relationship."
 
"I first met him when he was mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. He was an ambitious, forceful, devout, and effective politician," Clinton wrote, stressing that Erdoğan "managed to gain a tighter grip on power than any of...