Seçil Daǧtaș on religious difference in Turkey’s Hatay
November 25, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #258 – Seçil Daǧtaș, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo, on “Under the Same Sky: Everyday Politics of Religious Difference in Southern Turkey” (University of Pennsylvania Press)
The book is an ethnographic study of what Dagtas describes as “the social reproduction of religious differences” in Turkey’s uniquely diverse Hatay province.
The conversation also addresses the impact of the deadly 2023 earthquakes that devastated the region, as well as over a decade of war in neighbouring Syria.
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Turkey Book Talk #257 – Senem Aydın-Düzgit, professor of international relations at Sabanci University and director of the Istanbul Policy Centre, on her article “Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics in Populist Competitive Authoritarianism: The Case of the May 2023 Elections in Turkey,” published in the journal South European Society and Politics.
The conversation looks at how Erdogan uses foreign policy, defence policy and strongman diplomacy to burnish his reputation and reinforce public backing for the regime in Turkey. This strategy comes amid greater opportunity, as growing geopolitical uncertainty opens doors for ambitious players to reshape the international system based on raw power politics.
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Please support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Nora Fisher Onar on Turkish political history beyond binaries
October 28, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #256 – Nora Fisher Onar, Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies at University of San Francisco, on “Contesting Pluralism(s): Islamism, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond” (Cambridge University Press).
The book aims to “challenge the received wisdom that a binary contest between ‘Islam’ and ‘secularism’ is the driving force in Turkey’s politics”. It voices the same scepticism about other binary divides often used to explain Turkey’s political history, instead proposing an alternative theory of alliances between pluralist and non-pluralist forces that shift over time.
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Please support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Mustafa Kutlay on Turkey’s middle power dilemmas
July 22, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #249 – Mustafa Kutlay, senior lecturer in comparative politics at City St George’s University of London, on his recent Foreign Affairs article “Turkey’s Middle-Power Dilemma”.
Turkey is widely cited as one of the increasingly influential players in the emerging world order, with greater appetite and greater capacity to play a bigger role in its region and elsewhere.
Mustafa’s article focuses on the successes and failures of the Turkish government’s bid to carve out that greater role in the name of “strategic autonomy”. It also underlines the risks posed by this new world of increasingly ambitious, competitive powers clashing and cooperating with each other.
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Please support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Bilge Yabancı on Turkey’s civil society under siege
July 8, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #248 – Bilge Yabancı, Ikerbasque Fellow and Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, on “Civil Society and Authoritarianism: Co-optation, Repression and Contestation in Turkey” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book examines the transformation of NGOs, activist groups, businesses, charities, religious groups, and others, under pressure from authoritarianism. It is published amid an escalating crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition CHP, which may ultimately shift the country to a new post-democratic regime, devoid of electoral competition.
This latest political crackdown comes after years of the government monopolising institutions and chipping away at democratic checks and balances. However, during this time the number of civil society organisations has also risen significantly, while the scale of issues under debate has expanded. Through on-the-ground research with groups across the political spectrum, the book seeks to explain this paradoxical situation.
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Turkey Book Talk #245 – David Tonge on “The Enduring Hold of Islam in Turkey: The Revival of the Religious Orders and Rise of Erdogan” (Hurst).
The book meticulously explores the political, economic and social influence of major Islamic orders in the country over the last few decades, including the flourishing of several key groups under Erdogan’s AKP.
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Turkey Book Talk #243 – Fiona Mullen, director of the Nicosia-based Sapienta Economics consultancy, on uncertainty around the future of the decades-long Cyprus divide amid mounting geopolitical uncertainty and regional competition.
Fiona recently wrote that informal UN-brokered talks over the island suggest that the Cyprus paradigm may be changing. Ankara has in recent years pushed for a formal split on the island between Turkish and Greek sides, but shifting regional dynamics make calculations on all sides increasingly unpredictable.
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Bilge Yesil on Turkey’s narrowing media landscape
April 15, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #242 – Bilge Yesil, professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and author of “Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order” (University of Illinois Press), returns to the podcast.
The conversation addresses Turkey’s narrowing media landscape and internet crackdown amid political turbulence, protests and mounting pressure on critics.
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Turkey Book Talk #241 – Berk Esen, political scientist at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, on whether Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest heralds Turkey’s shift from competitive authoritarianism to autocracy.
The conversation addresses the dynamics driving the intensifying crackdown, the international context for this escalation, and the critical choices facing the country’s embattled opposition.
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Support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Turkey Book Talk #239 – Selim Koru, analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in US, on “New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury)
The book dives deep into the stark worldview driving Turkey’s regime change over the past couple of decades, and its profound implications for the country’s domestic and foreign policy.
It places Erdogan’s “New Turkey” in the context of a global trend of civilisation-fixated, far-right movements thriving in the US, Russia, India, Hungary and elsewhere – a pioneer of the emerging anti-liberal world order.
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Check out Selim’s Substack Kulturkampf
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Claudia Liebelt on cosmetic surgery and perceptions of beauty in Turkey
February 18, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #238 – Claudia Liebelt, professor of social and cultural anthropology at the Free University of Berlin, on “Istanbul Appearances: Beauty and the Making of Middle-Class Femininities in Urban Turkey” (Syracuse University Press).
Hair transplants, dental implants, botox, nose jobs, lip fillers, eye lifts… Turkey has become almost synonymous with the booming cosmetic sector among international “health tourists” in recent years.
Liebelt’s book is based on extensive research in beauty salons and cosmetic surgery centres across Istanbul, speaking to customers, workers and surgeons to explain the sector’s extraordinary growth among locals and foreigners.
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Read a transcript of the interview on Substack
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Support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
Omar Kadkoy on the future of Syrian migrants in Turkey
January 21, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #236 – Omar Kadkoy, foreign policy, security and migration program coordinator at Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s Istanbul office, on the future of Turkey’s Syrian migrant population after the fall of Assad.
Developments in Syria have raised expectations that the millions of Syrians in Turkey will now return home. While some have already returned, the issue is very complex and poses major social, political and economic dilemmas for both Ankara and Damascus.
Download the episode or listen below:
Read a transcript of the interview on Substack
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Support Turkey Book Talk as a member on either Substack or Patreon. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, access to transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.
