Turkey Book Talk #247 – Erik-Jan Zürcher, professor emeritus of Turkish Studies at Leiden University, on the uses and abuses of nostalgia for empire in contemporary Turkey and the UK.
The conversation is based on a lecture that Zurcher delivered at the Istanbul Policy Center in May, “The Poison of Nostalgia”, which compared neo-Ottomanist tendencies in Turkey with the view of empire in Britain’s Brexit debate.
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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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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.
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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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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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.
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.
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 #219 – Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, on “Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State” (Stanford University Press).
The book explores the forced migration from the Russian Empire of around one million Muslims between the 1850s and World War One, their seeking of refuge in the Ottoman Empire, and the seismic demographic, economic, social and political impact this had.
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Turkey Book Talk #215 – Andrew Finkel on his novel “The Adventure of the Second Wife: The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and the Ottoman Sultan” (Even Keel Press).
Andrew is a veteran journalist based in Turkey for decades. His debut novel is a sprawling, playful narrative exploring the mystery of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II’s obsession with Sherlock Holmes stories.
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İlkay Yılmaz on the origins of the Ottoman Turkish security state
February 27, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #213 – İlkay Yılmaz, research associate in the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute at the Free University of Berlin, on “Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908” (Syracuse University Press).
The book examines how paranoia about nationalist, anarchist and revolutionary movements spread during the era of Abdulhamid II, prompting the introduction of various new methods to control and restrict subjects of the Ottoman state.
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Nilay Özok-Gündoğan on political authority in Ottoman Kurdistan
October 17, 2023
Turkey Book Talk #204 – Nilay Özok-Gündoğan, assistant professor of history at Florida State University, on “The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy and Privilege” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book narrates the rise and fall of the Kurdish nobility in the Ottoman Empire’s east, as well as how their autonomy was removed as the empire modernised and centralised from the 19th century.
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Pat Yale on travelling around Turkey in the footsteps of Gertrude Bell
September 5, 2023
Turkey Book Talk #201 – Pat Yale on “Following Miss Bell: Travels Around Turkey in the Footsteps of Gertrude Bell” (Trailblazer).
The book describes Pat’s experiences tracking the footsteps of archaeologist, writer and explorer Gertrude Bell, who travelled extensively throughout Anatolia from 1899 until the outbreak of the First World War.
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Become a member on 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, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #200 – Anthony Gad Bigio on “A Sephardi Turkish Patriot: Gad Franco in the Turmoil of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic” (Hamilton Books).
The book describes the turbulent and difficult life of Anthony’s grandfather, Gad Franco, a prominent journalist, social activist and lawyer in the late Ottoman and early republican eras. It also charts his gradual disillusionment after advocating Jewish integration into Ottoman and later Turkish society, which culminated in his imprisonment and impoverishment following the 1942 Wealth Tax.
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Become a member on 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, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
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