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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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.
Turkey Book Talk #251 – Özgür Özkan, visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, on the domestic and regional implications of Turkey’s push for the Kurdish militant group’s dissolution. The conversation digs into issues raised by his article “Turkey’s Dangerous Illusion of Peace with the PKK”.
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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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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.
Talin Suciyan on Armenians in Turkey after World War Two
June 10, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #246 – Talin Suciyan, Associate Professor of Turkish Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University, on “Armenians in Turkey after the Second World War: An Archival Reader of USSR Consular Documents” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).
The book highlights reports from the Soviet consulate in Istanbul in 1945-46, particularly focusing on the oral testimonies of thousands of Armenians in Turkey who registered for a campaign encouraging Armenians around the world to migrate to Soviet Armenia.
This campaign led to many Armenians from across the world moving to Soviet Armenia, but its Turkey chapter was ultimately cancelled for reasons still not clear today. Nevertheless, the book sheds fascinating light on Turkish politics and society at the time, pre-Cold War geopolitical dynamics, and the sentiments of Armenians from villages and towns across Turkey about their lives and why they wanted to emigrate.
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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 #244 – Richard Calis, assistant professor in cultural history at Utrecht University, on “The Discovery of Ottoman Greece: Knowledge, Encounter, and Belief in the Mediterranean World of Martin Crusius” (Harvard University Press).
The book examines the life and impact of Martin Crusius. Born in Bavaria in 1526, Crusius became celebrated as Europe’s preeminent expert on the Greek world past and present, as well as the Orthodox Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. In his seminal work Turcograecia, he wrote the period’s richest record of Greek life under Ottoman rule, which served for centuries as a key source of knowledge on the Ottoman Empire itself.
The conversation addresses how Crusius’s work affected European views of the Ottoman Empire and the deep chasm between the Christian and Muslim worlds that his perspective reflected.
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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 #240 – Cuma Çiçek, author of “The Kurds of Turkey: National, Religious and Economic Identities” (IB Tauris), on the dynamics behind Ankara’s latest push to put an end to over four decades of the PKK’s insurgency.
The conversation discusses jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s call for the group’s disarmament, the implications for affiliated forces in Iraq and Syria, and what it means for Turkish politics.
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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.
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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.
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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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.
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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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.
Umit Kurt on Gaziantep’s forgotten Armenian past
July 30, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #224 – Umit Kurt, assistant professor of history at the University of Newcastle, Australia, on ”The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province” (Harvard University Press).
The book draws on Armenian, Ottoman, Turkish, British and French archives, memoirs, personal papers, oral accounts and property liquidation records to detail the dispossession of Antep’s historic Armenian community and the transfer of their wealth and resources to Ottoman and later Turkish Muslim elites.
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Turkey Book Talk #221 – Istanbul-based photojournalist Bradley Secker discusses his work on migration, LGBT+ asylum seekers in the Middle East and Europe, the difficulties of practicing journalism in Turkey and the broader state of photojournalism.
Bradley recently launched a Substack, in which he tackles various aspects of his work and the challenges of working in the industry.
Download the episode or listen below:
Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.
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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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