Tuğba Tekerek on the crisis in Turkish academia
January 30, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #211 – Tuğba Tekerek, journalist and author, on “Taşra Üniversiteleri: AK Parti’nin Arka Kampüsü” (Provincial Universities: The AK Party’s Backyard Campus), published by İletişim.
The book examines the impact of the government’s push to open over 100 universities across Turkey over the last two decades. It paints a picture of falling academic standards but increased outlets for the ruling party’s religious nationalist ideology.
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Timur Hammond on religion and change in Istanbul
January 16, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #210 – Timur Hammond, Assistant Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University, on “Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in Twentieth-Century Istanbul” (University of California Press).
The book is a sociological and historical study tracing the changing character of Istanbul’s Eyüpsultan district, its industrial and commercial history, and its role in the emergence of political Islam in Turkey.
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Turkey Book Talk #208 – Berk Esen, associate professor of political science and international relations at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, on the troubled future of Turkey’s democracy and the challenges facing its opposition parties heading into 2024.
Berk is a prolific commentator and sophisticated scholar of Turkish politics, recently co-authoring “Turkey’s New Regime: Competitive Authoritarianism” (Iletisim) along with Hakan Yavuzyilmaz and Sebnem Gumuscu.
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Spyros Sofos on Turkey’s many nationalisms
September 19, 2023
Turkey Book Talk #202 – Spyros Sofos, Assistant Professor in Global Humanities at Simon Fraser University, on “Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book delves into the nuances and ambiguities of the term “the people” from the late Ottoman era to today, and how religious, secularist, left-wing and right-wing projects have used it for different ends.
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Turkey Book Talk #198 – Şebnem Gümüşcü, associate professor of political science at Middlebury College, on “Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia” (Cambridge University Press).
The book looks in depth at how intra-party factional struggles were key in shaping the AKP’s authoritarian direction in Turkey, while also comparing this with Islamist parties that won elections in Egypt and Tunisia.
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Turkey Book Talk #197 – Constanze Letsch on “Territorial Stigmatisation: Urban Renewal and Displacement in a Central Istanbul Neighbourhood” (Transcript).
The book examines a controversial project to demolish and rebuild Istanbul’s historic, troubled Tarlabaşı neighbourhood, the impact it had on locals and what that tells us about today’s Turkey.
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Download the ebook for free via the Transcript website.
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Turkey Book Talk #195 – Political communications strategist Derin Koçer on Turkey’s critical recent presidential and parliamentary elections.
The conversation addresses how economic woes may actually have helped Erdogan’s campaign, why the main opposition CHP repeatedly fails, whether nationalism is the real winner to emerge from the ballot boxes, and what awaits Turkey in the next five years.
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Read and subscribe to Derin Koçer’s Substack.
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Turkey Book Talk #192 – Tezcan Gümüş of the University of Melbourne on “Turkey’s Political Leaders: Authoritarian Tendencies in a Democratic State” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book shows how almost all major political leaders throughout Turkey’s multi-party history have demonstrated authoritarian and undemocratic traits, reflecting and fostering the various failings of Turkey’s democratic system.
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Turkey Book Talk #191 – Paul Levin, director of Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies, on “Migration from Turkey to Sweden: Integration, Belonging and Transnational Community” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury), co-authored with Bahar Baser.
The conversation looks at the demographic profile of the Turkey-origin migrants in Sweden, the power dynamics of Turkish and Kurdish communities in the country, and the imbroglio over Ankara’s continued non-ratification of Stockholm’s Nato membership bid.
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Turkey Book Talk #189 – Doğan Gürpınar, historian at Istanbul Technical University, on “Apparatchiks and Ideologues in Islamist Turkey: The Intellectual Order of Islamism and Populism” (Palgrave Macmillan).
The book gives a sweeping overview of the public messaging that underpins support for the Erdogan government in Turkey’s popular media sphere, as well as some of the individuals and institutions that contribute to crafting of message in the pro-government media industrial complex.
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Derya Ozkul on Alevis in contemporary Turkey and abroad
December 20, 2022
Turkey Book Talk #183 – Derya Ozkul, Senior Research Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, on “The Alevis in Modern Turkey and the Diaspora: Recognition, Mobilisation and Transformation” (Edinburgh University Press), co-edited with Hege Markussen.
The book is a wide-ranging volume examining Alevi life in contemporary Turkey and overseas, the forces exerting influence on Alevi culture, beliefs and practices, and the impact of three decades of AKP rule.
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Gönül Tol on Erdogan’s wars at home and abroad
November 8, 2022
Turkey Book Talk #180 – Gönül Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, on “Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria” (Oxford University Press).
The book tells the story of how developments in Syria have played a unique role in Erdogan’s political strategy, helping him construct his identity, consolidate his base, and divide and eliminate his domestic rivals. He has done this by shifting shape, emphasising different shades of Islamist or nationalist ideology at different times.
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