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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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 #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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Turkey Book Talk #184 – Gregory Goalwin, assistant professor and chair of the sociology department at Aurora University, on “Borders of Belief: Religious Nationalism and the Formation of Identity in Ireland and Turkey” (Rutgers University Press).
The book explores how religion – Catholicism in Ireland, Islam in Turkey – served as a fundamental building block of the two countries’ national identity throughout the 20th century.
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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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Sevgi Adak on anti-veiling campaigns in Turkey
September 27, 2022
Turkey Book Talk #177 – Sevgi Adak, associate professor at the International Aga Khan University, on “Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).
The book examines measures taken by the Turkish authorities against women’s veiling, as well as other forms of clothing, in the 1920s and 1930s. It complicates the rigid idea of sweeping official measures imposed from the centre onto a passive, traditional and resentful Turkish public, giving us a more nuanced and sophisticated account of dynamics between state and society.
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Jan-Markus Vomel on Islamism and masculinity in Turkey
August 30, 2022
Turkey Book Talk 175 – Jan-Markus Vomel, doctoral student at the University of Konstanz, on his article “Pathos and Discipline: Islamist Masculinity in Turkey, 1950-2000”, published in the journal Zeithistorische Forschungen (Studies in Contemporary History).
The article examines how political Islam in Turkey weaponised ideas of virility, manliness and strength to mobilise against what it saw as the emasculating forces of secularism and Westernisation.
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Check out Jan’s previous appearance on the podcast from November 2020.
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Turkey Book Talk episode 173 – Gönül Bozoğlu, Leverhulme Research Fellow at Newcastle University, on “Museums, Emotion and Memory Culture: The Politics of the Past in Turkey” (Routledge).
The book focuses on the Panorama 1453 Museum in Istanbul and the Atatürk and War of Independence Museum in Ankara to show how history in Turkey is often a battleground where contemporary identities clash for supremacy.
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Turkey Book Talk episode 169 – Murat Metinsoy, professor of political science and international relations at Istanbul University, on “The Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923-38” (Cambridge University Press).
The book takes a bottom-up approach to examine how ordinary people’s reaction to Kemalist reforms shaped, modified or softened how those reforms were implemented on the ground.
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Birol Başkan on Islamism and Turkish foreign policy
April 12, 2022
Turkey Book Talk episode 165 – Birol Başkan, non-resident scholar at The Middle East Institute, on “The Nation or the Ummah: Islamism and Turkish Foreign Policy” (SUNY Press), co-written with Ömer Taşpınar.
The book examines Turkey’s foreign policy during the Arab Spring era, when Ankara threw its weight behind protest movements seeking to overthrow established regimes around the Middle East. This period was distinct from the early years of Erdogan’s government, as well as more recent times when Turkey has sought to patch things up with regional adversaries such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
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Marc David Baer on the Ottomans as khans, caesars and caliphs
November 9, 2021
Turkey Book Talk episode #154 – Marc David Baer, professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science, on “The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs” (Basic Books).
The book makes the case that the Ottoman Empire is an inseparable part of European history – not as antithesis of the Christian West but as an intimate and active participant in the continent’s shifting cultural and political tides.
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Turkey Book Talk episode #147 – Nicholas Danforth, non-resident fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, on “The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire” (Cambridge University Press).
The book upends conventional wisdom about social and political shifts between 1945 and 1960, years when Turkey held its first multi-party elections and joined the NATO alliance under the conservative Democrat Party government of prime minister Adnan Menderes.
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Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Members get extras including exclusive access to a 30% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman history books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
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