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.
Nilgün Önder on the economic transformation of Turkey since 1980
December 12, 2015
This week’s podcast is with Nilgün Önder of the University of Regina, who joined to discuss her new book “The Economic Transformation of Turkey: Neoliberalism and State Intervention” (IB Tauris).
It’s a great and detailed book on some of the paradoxes of the economic reforms passed after Turkey’s military coup of 1980 – rather than rolling back, the authority of the state was substantially deepened by the reforms.
Download the podcast here. Or listen/subscribe via PodBean.
Here’s a transcript of the interview at Hürriyet Daily News.
And here’s my review of the book.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast via iTunes, PodBean, or Soundcloud.
Thanks for listening!
Lastly, apologies for the dodgy sound quality in these first few podcasts. I’ve got a new mic in the post so that should go some way to sorting it out.
Markus Dressler on the ‘making of Turkish Alevi Islam’
November 28, 2015
This week’s interview/podcast is with Markus Dressler, author of the book “Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam.” The book examines how the idea of Alevism is an almost entirely modern concept, formed towards the end of the Ottoman Empire as part of efforts to integrate disparate Anatolian religious groups into the Turkish and Muslim nation.
Download a podcast of our conversation.
Here’s a transcript of the interview at the Hürriyet Daily News.
Here’s my review of the book.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast via iTunes, PodBean, or Soundcloud.
NB – I’ve also just created a Facebook page for the podcast, where I’ll be posting new episodes. Check it out here.
Cengiz Şişman on the Dönmes of Turkey
November 14, 2015
This week I spoke to Cengiz Şişman about his new book on the history of the Dönmes, a crypto-religious sect that first developed around Jewish messiah Sabbatai Sevi in cities around the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century.
Download a podcast of our conversation. Or listen below:
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast via iTunes, PodBean, or Soundcloud.
Read an edited transcript of the interview at the Hürriyet Daily News.
And read my review of Şişman’s book, “The Burden of Silence: Sabbatai Sevi and the Evolution of the Ottoman-Turkish Dönmes.”
Ozan Özavcı on liberalism in Turkey
October 10, 2015
This week I spoke to Ozan Özavcı about his book “Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in Turkey” (Brill), on the life of one of the most prominent intellectuals bridging the late Ottoman/early republican years.
Download the podcast of the interview here.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk Podcast via iTunes, via Podbean, or via Soundcloud.
Here’s an edited version of the interview at HDN.
And here’s my review of the book.
If you’re interested in the subject, here’s my interview with Ankara University’s Alexandros Lamprou from earlier this year, discussing social engineering in the early Turkish Republic.
Finally, a shout out to my brother James Armstrong, who has designed the terrific icon for my podcast above. Follow him on Twitter and check out his great work at his website.
I should say that the two things in the title are unrelated.
My interview this week was with Toni Alaranta of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, discussing his new book “National and State Identity in Turkey: The Transformation of the Republic’s Status in the International System” (Rowman). In the book, Alaranta traces how the entrenchment in power of authoritarian political Islam in Turkey after 2002 was critically aided by the West’s misguided search for a “moderate Muslim democracy” after the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 terror attacks.
Read the interview at the Hürriyet Daily News here.
And read my review of the book here.
This also marks my first step into the world of podcasting. From now on I’ll be publishing these author interviews in audio as well as written form, through my new podcast “Turkey Book Talk.” The podcast will include some extra parts that didn’t make the written edit, as well as some fancy music, etc.
Click here to listen to the first episode (a work in progress as I’m still figuring out the best host, player, etc).
To subscribe to the feed, visit my PodBean page.
Please spread the word to anyone you think may be interested, and do get in touch with any suggestions on how I can improve the podcast!
Turkey’s LGBT crackdown
July 31, 2015
I’ve been walking in north Wales so haven’t had chance to post this piece I wrote on Turkey’s nervous LGBTIs and the “perils of visibility.” Clouds have darkened in recent weeks for LGBTIs in Turkey after last month’s police crackdown on the annual Pride March and a broader uptick in violent incidents and homophobic rhetoric.
The paradox I try to explain in the article is that this has accompanied an increasingly vocal LGBT rights activism that has flourished in the country over the past couple of decades:
“Yeşim Başaran, who works at LGBTI rights group Lambda Istanbul, agrees that a ‘conservative resistance’ has arisen in response to the campaign for recognition. ‘The two things have happened at the same time. The issue of LGBTI rights has become more visible in the media and activists have become more vocal. Opposition parties have nominated gay candidates in elections and have LGBTI people working in their party organizations. That would not have happened a few years ago,’ she says. ‘Life for LGBTIs in Turkey was never easy. They already were subject to attacks in public and within their families. They were at risk of being fired from their jobs or committing suicide. But in the last few weeks it has become more concrete.'”
Read the whole piece at Balkanist.
Istanbul’s 2013 Pride March, in happier times. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
It was particularly interesting to meet the pro-Erdoğan AK-LGBTI group. Many people assumed they were trolls, but I can confirm that they are serious and in the process of becoming a legally recognised “dernek” (association). Turkey is certainly full of surprises.
I’ve written a piece for Politico about Turkey’s critical general election. Specifically, the article looks at the shift by President Erdoğan and the government in recent months from emphasising economic competence to peddling bombastic conspiracy theories:
“While signs of this paranoiac shift have long been evident, the AKP’s earlier years in power mostly focused on making an economy-based pitch to voters. Economic competence and extending services to the poorer sections of society – along with an appeal to the conservative religious values held by many Turkish citizens – proved a winning combination for a string of crushing election victories. But while the party still pledges to spur development, its rhetoric leading up to Sunday’s election has tilted decisively in favor of a combination of conspiracy theories laced with historic posturing about reconnecting Turkey with the glory of the Ottoman Empire. When you’re on a glorious path, the AKP’s leaders suggest, you will inevitably have enemies.”
Read the whole thing over at Politico.
Ahead of next week’s commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian genocide, I spoke to Carnegie Endowment scholar Thomas de Waal about his new book exploring relations between Turks and Armenians in the years since 1915.
And here’s my review of de Waal’s “Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide.” 
Unfortunately our conversation took place before Pope Francis’ remarks over the weekend. Neither could I ask de Waal about Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
This week I spoke to Eugene Rogan, the author of an authoritative new history “The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920.”
Rogan is director of the Middle East Centre at the University of Oxford and also penned a major recent book on the history of the modern Arab world, so I was really happy to speak with him. The conversation was wide-ranging and stimulating, touching on some of the biggest issues around the war – resolved and unresolved – and the continued resonance of the Ottoman Empire’s collapse almost 100 years ago.
Click here to read the interview with Professor Rogan.
Read my review of the book here.
And here’s some footage of Istanbul in 1915 from the British Pathé archives, showing the historic peninsula and various warships heading up the Bosphorus:
PS. I hope my Turkey-based followers can see this post, as WordPress keeps being blocked and unblocked here.
Turkey Book Talk 