Turkey Book Talk #237 – Brett Wilson, associate professor of history and public policy at Central European University, on his translation of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu‘s 1922 novel “Nur Baba” (Routledge).
The book’s account of a debauched Bektashi Sufi lodge caused a sensation at the time, raising eyebrows with its scandalous depiction of an immoral, even degenerate religious community in turn-of-the-century Istanbul.
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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.
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Zozan Pehlivan on climatic shifts behind late Ottoman conflicts
January 7, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #235 – Zozan Pehlivan, assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, on “The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century” (Cambridge University Press).
The book explores how extreme climate disruptions played into socioeconomic shifts and became a major underlying factor behind rising tensions between Christian Armenian peasants and Muslim Kurdish pastoralists in eastern Anatolia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Samuel Hirst on a century of Ankara-Moscow cooperation
December 17, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #234 – Samuel J. Hirst, historian and assistant professor of international relations at Bilkent University, on “Against the Liberal Order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and Statist Internationalism, 1919-1939” (Oxford University Press).
The book examines crucial but sometimes overlooked decades of close cooperation between the young Republic of Turkey and the Soviet Union on key political, industrial and cultural projects. The conversation also discusses later episodes of collaboration between Ankara and Moscow in the 1960s and 70s, as well as the bromance between Erdogan and Putin today.
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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.
Ralph Hubbell on Turkish literary giant Oğuz Atay
December 3, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #233 – Ralph Hubbell on translating Oğuz Atay‘s “Waiting for the Fear” (New York Review Books).
Atay is widely seen as one the great Turkish fiction writers of the 20th century, but he has largely yet to appear in English until now. “Waiting for the Fear” is made up of eight short stories and was first published in Turkey in 1975. At under 200 pages, it’s a relatively slender work – a striking contrast with Atay’s most celebrated novel, the sprawling “Tutunamayanlar” (The Disconnected).
The conversation talks about Oğuz Atay’s exploration of paranoia, alienation and absurdity, the humour in his work, as well as his life and the notorious difficulty of translating his fiction.
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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.
Jennifer Hattam on Istanbul’s shifting cultural landscape
November 19, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #232 – Jennifer Hattam reflects on a decade-and-a-half of reporting on Turkey’s environmental, political and cultural agenda, as well as wrenching changes in journalism and staying afloat amid Istanbul’s relentless urban upheaval.
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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.
Salim Çevik on Turkey’s Middle East reset
November 5, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #231 – Salim Çevik, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), on his recent paper “Turkey’s Reconciliation Efforts in the Middle East: Ambitions and Constraints in a Changing Regional Order“.
The piece examines Erdogan’s shift away from trying to overthrow the established regional order by supporting Muslim Brotherhood allies, and towards rapprochement with the ruling regimes in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Syria and others.
Our conversation weighs up the successes and failures of this initiative, how it has been impacted by Israel’s Gaza war, and how it could be affected by the results of the US presidential election.
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Orçun Selçuk on populist polarisation in Turkey and Latin America
October 22, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #230 – Orçun Selçuk, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Luther College, on “The Authoritarian Divide: Populism, Propaganda, and Polarization” (University of Notre Dame Press).
The book compares what Selçuk calls “affective leader polarisation” in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, and Ecuador under Rafael Correa. It shows that Turkey’s experience under the AKP can often be more usefully compared with examples in Latin America than cases of right-wing populism in Europe or Islamism in the Middle East.
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Ezgi Başaran on the new spirit of Islamism
October 8, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #229 – Ezgi Başaran, journalist and academic at St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford, on “The New Spirit of Islamism: Interactions Between the AKP, Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood” (IB Tauris).
The book looks at the aspirations of Islamist actors in Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab Uprisings from 2011 to 2013. Based on interviews with dozens of officials in all three countries at that time, it seeks to understand what motivated them, how they viewed each other, and whether they prioritised pragmatism or religious ideology.
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Samim Akgönül on 100 years of Turkish-Greek relations
September 24, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #228 – Samim Akgönül, director of the Department of Turkish Studies at the University of Strasbourg, on “One Hundred Years of Greek-Turkish Relations: The Human Dimension of an Ongoing Conflict” (Edinburgh University Press).
Based on over two decades of research in Turkey and Greece, the book examines popular conceptions of the other in both countries, showing how lived experience complicates straightforward historical narratives.
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Karabekir Akkoyunlu on religion and democracy in Turkey and Iran
August 27, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #226 – Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at SOAS, on “Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey: Tutelary Consolidation, Popular Contestation” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book makes the case that the political systems under the clergy in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the military in the Republic of Turkey have had surprising similarities – as well as important differences.
The conversation also considers how the two systems have transformed in recent decades, as well as how present-day social and political power struggles are shifting the landscape in both countries.
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Turkey Book Talk #225 – Eugene Rogan, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford, on “The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World” (Allen Lane).
The book examines how in July 1860 Damascus exploded in communal violence, when a mostly Muslim crowd tried to exterminate the Christian community – a shocking eruption of violence after hundreds of years of relative peace and coexistence. It looks at why tensions built up in the decades before 1860, as well as how the Ottoman authorities oversaw recovery of the region in the aftermath.
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Become a member on Substack or Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and links to articles related to each episode.
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