When I was about that age, NATO was in the process of bombing Serbia. The Balkans has receded a bit from the headlines, but today, Turkey remains critically imp

When I was about that age, NATO was in the process of bombing Serbia. The Balkans has receded a bit from the headlines, but today, Turkey remains critically important to the relationship between the West and the Muslim world. The ongoing struggle between the secular and Islamic forces may be crucial to determining the fate of the Islamic world over the next decades. And of course most of Turkey's other neighbors: Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria are in varying states of crisis. Something like 100,000 people have died in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Lebanon is in perpetual crisis. Georgia fought a war with Russia only a few years ago. Iraq and Iran need no further explanation. So maybe we should be teaching our 8th graders exactly where Turkey is on the map?