Ali Yaycıoğlu on the Ottoman Empire in the ‘age of revolutions’
September 30, 2016
Ali Yaycıoğlu joins Turkey Book Talk to discuss “Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions” (Stanford University Press), examining the extraordinary upheavals in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the conversation he talks about the long-term effects of these upheavals and what the period can tell us about contemporary Turkey’s turbulent political landscape.
Download the podcast or listen below:
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Here’s my review of the book.
Many thanks to current supporters Özlem Beyarslan, Steve Bryant, Andrew Cruickshank and Aaron Ataman.
Michael Wuthrich on the history of elections in Turkey and the future of Turkish democracy
September 17, 2016
New Turkey Book Talk episode with Michael Wuthrich, chatting about “National Elections in Turkey: People, Politics and the Party System” (Syracuse University Press).
This really is an excellent book that overhauls much conventional wisdom about Turkish politics shared by right and left.
Unlike the deceptively boring title of the book, this episode’s title is stupidly ambitious. But we do cover a lot of ground. I’m really pleased with it – hope you enjoy/learn from it.
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Facebook / RSS
Here’s my review of the book in HDN.
Many thanks to current supporters Özlem Beyarslan, Steve Bryant, Andrew Cruickshank and Aaron Ataman.
Bilge Yeşil on the Turkish media, past and present
August 20, 2016
Turkey Book Talk is back after a one month hiatus.
We return with a good one: Bilge Yeşil speaks about her book “Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State” (University of Illinois Press).
Download the episode or listen below:
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Facebook / RSS
Here’s my review of the book.
If you like Turkey Book Talk and want to support independent podcasting, you can make a small or large monetary donation to the show via Patreon. Many thanks to current supporters Özlem Beyarslan, Steve Bryant, Andrew Cruickshank and Aaron Ataman.
Cem Emrence on ‘remapping the Ottoman Middle East’
July 15, 2016
Cem Emrence speaks to Turkey Book Talk about his book “Remapping the Ottoman Middle East: Modernity, Imperial Bureaucracy and Islam” (IB Tauris).
The book looks at Ottoman modernization through the 19th and early 20th centuries using an original model of “three-trajectories”: The coast, the interior, and the frontier, which each followed distinct paths to modernity.
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Facebook / RSS
Here’s my review of the book at Hürriyet Daily News.
If you like Turkey Book Talk and want to support independent podcasting, you can make a small or large monetary donation to the show via Patreon. Many thanks to current supporters Özlem Beyarslan, Steve Bryant and Andrew Cruickshank.
Maureen Freely joins to discuss the tragic life of author Sabahattin Ali and her translation of his classic 1943 novel “Madonna in a Fur Coat,” just published in a first ever English edition by Penguin.
Download the episode or listen below:
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Facebook / RSS
Check my review of the book at Hürriyet Daily News, previously published in the Times Literary Supplement.
Support the Turkey Book Talk podcast with a per episode donation via Patreon – Many thanks to current supporters Özlem Beyarslan, Steve Bryant and Andrew Cruickshank.
Cihan Tuğal on the fall of the ‘Turkish model’
April 16, 2016
Cihan Tuğal, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, chats about “The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism” (Verso), charting how Turkey went from a model “Muslim democracy” for the Middle East to an increasingly authoritarian state.
Download the podcast or listen below:
Subscribe: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Facebook / RSS
Here’s my review of the book at Hürriyet Daily News.
Support the Turkey Book Talk podcast via my Patreon account. You can help me keep producing the podcast by making a monetary donation, big or small, on a per episode basis! Many thanks to current supporters Sera Aleksandra Marshall and Andrew Cruickshank.
The latest podcast is with Judith Saryan, who edited a new English edition of Zabel Yessayan’s account of a trip to Adana in the aftermath of pogroms targeting Armenians there in 1909.
Download the podcast or listen below:
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Read my Hurriyet Daily News review of “In the Ruins: The 1909 Massacres of Armenians in Adana” (AIWA).
Here’s an interview from last year with translator Jennifer Manoukian, discussing Yessayan’s remarkable life and work.
Here’s another piece I wrote last year for Al Monitor from a crumbling station on the Armenian side of the closed Turkey-Armenia border. The immediate political dynamics have changed since then but it may still be an interesting read. View photos I took of the station here.
Finally, let me flag up my newly opened Patreon account – Through it you can support the Turkey Book Talk podcast by making a monetary donation, large or small, on a per episode basis. Check it out. Many thanks to my first supporter Sera Aleksandra Marshall.
Mustafa Gurbuz on ‘rival Kurdish movements in Turkey’
March 12, 2016
The latest Turkey Book Talk podcast is with Mustafa Gürbüz, the author of “Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict” (Amsterdam University Press).
Apologies for the delay in dropping this latest pod. I’ve had a technical nightmare.
Download the podcast or listen below.
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Here’s my review of the book at Hürriyet Daily News. Here’s the interview in written form.
Here’s another interview I did with him from last year about his research on the outlawed Kurdish Islamist militant group Hizbullah.
Finally, reposting my recent podcast with Frederike Geerdink discussing the Kurdish issue.
Şakir Dinçşahin on the life and times of Niyazi Berkes, 1908-1988
February 20, 2016
Here’s my conversation with Şakir Dinçşahin about his book on the life and times of Turkish intellectual Niyazi Berkes.
Download the podcast, or listen below:
You can also now subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast on Stitcher. Alternatively subscribe via iTunes or via PodBean.
Here’s my review of “State and Intellectuals: The Life and Times of Niyazi Berkes” (Rowman) at the Hürriyet Daily News.
If the issues discussed are your thing, check out this interview from last year with Andros Lamprou, who wrote an interesting book on the People’s Houses.
Also worth plugging this piece I wrote a couple of years ago on Mahmut Makal and his book “Bizim Köy” (Our Village), on his experiences as a teacher at a Village Institute in the 1940s.
Frederike Geerdink on Turkey’s Kurdish question
February 5, 2016
This week’s podcast is with Frederike Geerdink, author of “The Boys are Dead: The Roboski Massacre and the Kurdish Question in Turkey” (Gomidas).
We chat about her time as a journalist in the Kurdish-majority city Diyarbakır, her deportation from Turkey last year, and the troubled history/present of the issue in the wake of the collapse of the peace process last summer.
Download the podcast, or listen below:
Here’s my review of the book at Hürriyet Daily News.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast via iTunes or via PodBean.
Follow Frederike Geerdink on Twitter.
Added bonus: I’ve dug out this interview from last year with sociologist Cem Emrence, co-author of “Zones of Rebellion: Kurdish Insurgents and the Turkish State” – quite a thought-provoking book.
Ryan Gingeras on ‘Atatürk: Heir to an Empire’
January 23, 2016
This week I spoke to author Ryan Gingeras on his new biography of Turkey’s founding father, “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: Heir to an Empire” (Oxford University Press).
Or just listen here:
Here’s an edited transcript of the interview.
And here’s my review of the book (which is highly recommended).
As I mentioned in the podcast, here’s a link to an interview I did with Ryan last year about another of his books, “Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey.”
Subscribe to the Turkish Book Talk Podcast via PodBean, or via iTunes.
Kaya Genç talks Istanbul writing
January 9, 2016
Happy New Year!
First Turkey Book Talk pod of the year is with novelist Kaya Genç, the editor of “An Istanbul Anthology” (AUC Press), a new selection of classic writing on Istanbul by classic names including Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
Happily, I’ve finally picked up a decent mic so the podcasts should now be more listenable. Hooray!
Here’s text of interview at the Hürriyet Daily News.
And here’s my review of the book.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast via iTunes or PodBean.
Turkey Book Talk 