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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Turkey Book Talk #241 – Berk Esen, political scientist at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, on whether Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest heralds Turkey’s shift from competitive authoritarianism to autocracy.
The conversation addresses the dynamics driving the intensifying crackdown, the international context for this escalation, and the critical choices facing the country’s embattled opposition.
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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.
Orçun Selçuk on populist polarisation in Turkey and Latin America
October 22, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #230 – Orçun Selçuk, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Luther College, on “The Authoritarian Divide: Populism, Propaganda, and Polarization” (University of Notre Dame Press).
The book compares what Selçuk calls “affective leader polarisation” in Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, and Ecuador under Rafael Correa. It shows that Turkey’s experience under the AKP can often be more usefully compared with examples in Latin America than cases of right-wing populism in Europe or Islamism in the Middle East.
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Turkey Book Talk #218 – Emre Toros, professor of political science and dean of the communications faculty at Ankara’s Hacettepe University, on “Electoral Integrity in Turkey” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book weighs up the country’s democratic credentials after over two decades of rule by Erdogan’s party, both in terms of its electoral system and its broader institutional framework. It ultimately describes today’s Turkey as being in an ambiguous grey zone, neither straightforwardly democratic nor conventionally authoritarian.
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Turkey Book Talk #216 – Seda Demiralp, professor of political science at Istanbul’s Işık University and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, on what the recent surprise local election results mean for Turkish politics.
The conversation takes in what the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) did right, what Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) did wrong, the emerging challenge to the AKP posed by the hardline Islamist Yeniden Refah Party, the performance of the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, and the impact of Turkey’s economic woes.
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Turkey Book Talk #208 – Berk Esen, associate professor of political science and international relations at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, on the troubled future of Turkey’s democracy and the challenges facing its opposition parties heading into 2024.
Berk is a prolific commentator and sophisticated scholar of Turkish politics, recently co-authoring “Turkey’s New Regime: Competitive Authoritarianism” (Iletisim) along with Hakan Yavuzyilmaz and Sebnem Gumuscu.
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Turkey Book Talk #195 – Political communications strategist Derin Koçer on Turkey’s critical recent presidential and parliamentary elections.
The conversation addresses how economic woes may actually have helped Erdogan’s campaign, why the main opposition CHP repeatedly fails, whether nationalism is the real winner to emerge from the ballot boxes, and what awaits Turkey in the next five years.
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Turkey Book Talk #192 – Tezcan Gümüş of the University of Melbourne on “Turkey’s Political Leaders: Authoritarian Tendencies in a Democratic State” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book shows how almost all major political leaders throughout Turkey’s multi-party history have demonstrated authoritarian and undemocratic traits, reflecting and fostering the various failings of Turkey’s democratic system.
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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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Elise Massicard on muhtars, the state and society in Turkey
October 25, 2022
Turkey Book Talk #179 – Elise Massicard, senior researcher at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po, on “Street-Level Governing: Negotiating the State in Urban Turkey” (Stanford University Press).
The book takes a deep dive into the world of the muhtar, the lowest rung of the administrative ladder in Turkey, looking first-hand at how they operate and chart a course between local residents and higher authorities in the country.
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Soner Çağaptay on the crises facing Turkey’s Erdoğan
September 14, 2021
Turkey Book Talk episode #150 – Soner Çağaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, on “A Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey’s Uncontrollable Forces” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).
The book describes the myriad political challenges facing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at home and abroad, and speculates about his potential response.
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A PDF of the book is available for free download via the Washington Institute’s website.
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Turkey Book Talk episode #120 – Berk Esen, assistant professor of international relations at Ankara’s Bilkent University, on his paper “Why did Turkish democracy collapse? A political economy account of the AKP’s authoritarianism”, co-authored with Şebnem Gümüşçü for the journal Party Politics.
Esen also recently published “Praetorian Army in Action: A Critical Assessment of Civil–Military Relations in Turkey” in the journal Armed Forces and Society.
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