Turkey Book Talk #261 – Burcu Karahan of Stanford University on her translation of “One Thousand and One Kisses: The Most Joyous and Flirtatious Stories” (Translation Attached).
The collection brings together 65 stories blending risque humour and bold eroticism, first published anonymously in weekly instalments in 1923-24. The stories are a fascinating time capsule of a vanished age, but much remains unknown about who was behind them and the circumstances of their publication.
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Mehmet Gurses on the transformation of Turkey’s Kurdish issue
December 23, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #260 – Mehmet Gurses, director of Kurdish Studies at the University of Central Florida, on his article “Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict Transformed”, recently published in the journal Current History.
The article places the PKK’s emergence and transformations in a historical context over the past four decades, also weighing up shifts that may be triggered by its current dialogue process with Ankara.
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Reuben Silverman on the rise and fall of Turkey’s Democrat Party
December 9, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #259 – Reuben Silverman on “The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Democrat Party: The Cold War and Illiberalism, 1945–60” (Cambridge University Press).
It is an excellent book about a fascinating period in Turkish history. But it is a one that is often misremembered or misinterpreted in Turkey today.
Whether intended as criticism or praise, Erdogan’s AKP government is often placed in the lineage of the Democrat Party and Adnan Menderes, prime minister for 10 years before being overthrown in a military coup in 1960. However, as the book shows, “the line from the Democrat Party to the present day is neither as straight nor as flattering as Erdogan would have it be”.
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Please 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.
Seçil Daǧtaș on religious difference in Turkey’s Hatay
November 25, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #258 – Seçil Daǧtaș, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo, on “Under the Same Sky: Everyday Politics of Religious Difference in Southern Turkey” (University of Pennsylvania Press)
The book is an ethnographic study of what Dagtas describes as “the social reproduction of religious differences” in Turkey’s uniquely diverse Hatay province.
The conversation also addresses the impact of the deadly 2023 earthquakes that devastated the region, as well as over a decade of war in neighbouring Syria.
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Please 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 #257 – Senem Aydın-Düzgit, professor of international relations at Sabanci University and director of the Istanbul Policy Centre, on her article “Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics in Populist Competitive Authoritarianism: The Case of the May 2023 Elections in Turkey,” published in the journal South European Society and Politics.
The conversation looks at how Erdogan uses foreign policy, defence policy and strongman diplomacy to burnish his reputation and reinforce public backing for the regime in Turkey. This strategy comes amid greater opportunity, as growing geopolitical uncertainty opens doors for ambitious players to reshape the international system based on raw power politics.
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Please 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.
Nora Fisher Onar on Turkish political history beyond binaries
October 28, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #256 – Nora Fisher Onar, Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies at University of San Francisco, on “Contesting Pluralism(s): Islamism, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond” (Cambridge University Press).
The book aims to “challenge the received wisdom that a binary contest between ‘Islam’ and ‘secularism’ is the driving force in Turkey’s politics”. It voices the same scepticism about other binary divides often used to explain Turkey’s political history, instead proposing an alternative theory of alliances between pluralist and non-pluralist forces that shift over time.
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Amy Marie Spangler on Leyla Erbil’s dark vision of Istanbul’s history
September 2, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #252 – Amy Marie Spangler on the late great author Leyla Erbil’s What Remains. Amy co-translated the novel, along with Alev Ersan and Mark David Wyers, for an edition that will be published by Deep Vellum in October.
First appearing in Turkish in 2011, two years before Erbil passed away, What Remains is a multilayered narrative that sweeps the reader from the Byzantine Empire to 20th century Turkey. It is also a dark elegy to the Istanbul of eras past and all that has been lost in its transformation.
Amy is the co-founder of the AnatoliaLit literary agency, so our conversation also touches on broader trends in Turkey’s contemporary literary marketplace and the growing role of AI.
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Also check out Amy’s previous appearance on Turkey Book Talk in June 2022, discussing another Leyla Erbil novel, A Strange Woman.
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Please 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 #251 – Özgür Özkan, visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, on the domestic and regional implications of Turkey’s push for the Kurdish militant group’s dissolution. The conversation digs into issues raised by his article “Turkey’s Dangerous Illusion of Peace with the PKK”.
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Please 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.
Christopher Dole on psychiatry and disaster in Turkey
August 5, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #250 – Christopher Dole, professor of anthropology at Amherst College, on “Living On: Psychiatry and the Future of Disaster in Turkey” (Stanford University Press).
The book is an account of the psychiatric response to the August 1999 Marmara Earthquake, which killed over 20,000 people and left hundreds of thousands injured or displaced. It also examines the legacy of the earthquake in the communities and lives of its survivors and among the Turkish mental health professionals who responded to it.
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Please 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 #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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Talin Suciyan on Armenians in Turkey after World War Two
June 10, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #246 – Talin Suciyan, Associate Professor of Turkish Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University, on “Armenians in Turkey after the Second World War: An Archival Reader of USSR Consular Documents” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).
The book highlights reports from the Soviet consulate in Istanbul in 1945-46, particularly focusing on the oral testimonies of thousands of Armenians in Turkey who registered for a campaign encouraging Armenians around the world to migrate to Soviet Armenia.
This campaign led to many Armenians from across the world moving to Soviet Armenia, but its Turkey chapter was ultimately cancelled for reasons still not clear today. Nevertheless, the book sheds fascinating light on Turkish politics and society at the time, pre-Cold War geopolitical dynamics, and the sentiments of Armenians from villages and towns across Turkey about their lives and why they wanted to emigrate.
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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 #245 – David Tonge on “The Enduring Hold of Islam in Turkey: The Revival of the Religious Orders and Rise of Erdogan” (Hurst).
The book meticulously explores the political, economic and social influence of major Islamic orders in the country over the last few decades, including the flourishing of several key groups under Erdogan’s AKP.
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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 