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 #243 – Fiona Mullen, director of the Nicosia-based Sapienta Economics consultancy, on uncertainty around the future of the decades-long Cyprus divide amid mounting geopolitical uncertainty and regional competition.
Fiona recently wrote that informal UN-brokered talks over the island suggest that the Cyprus paradigm may be changing. Ankara has in recent years pushed for a formal split on the island between Turkish and Greek sides, but shifting regional dynamics make calculations on all sides increasingly unpredictable.
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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.
Bilge Yesil on Turkey’s narrowing media landscape
April 15, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #242 – Bilge Yesil, professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and author of “Talking Back to the West: How Turkey Uses Counter-Hegemony to Reshape the Global Communication Order” (University of Illinois Press), returns to the podcast.
The conversation addresses Turkey’s narrowing media landscape and internet crackdown amid political turbulence, protests and mounting pressure on critics.
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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 #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.
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 #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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Dimitar Bechev on Turkey’s trajectory under Erdoğan
July 5, 2022
Turkey Book Talk episode 171 – Dimitar Bechev, lecturer at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford, on “Turkey Under Erdoğan: How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West” (Yale University Press)
The book gives a neat overview of how the country and Erdogan came to where they are today, covering domestic and foreign politics at this crucial point ahead of elections scheduled for next year.
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Check out Dimitar’s previous appearance on the podcast from back in August 2018.
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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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Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Members get a 30% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, and over 200 reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Turkey Book Talk episode #115 – Michael Wuthrich, assistant professor of political science at the University of Kansas, on “The Pushback Against Populism: Running on ‘Radical Love’ in Turkey”, co-authored with Melvyn Ingleby and published in the April 2020 edition of the Journal of Democracy.
The article examines the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) successful local election campaigns in major Turkish cities in 2019, when it applied sophisticated methods crafted by strategist Ateş İlyas Başsoy to counter the government’s populism.
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Here’s a link to the article.
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Nur Deriş on the epic life and times of Turkish journalist Sabiha Sertel
September 10, 2019
Turkey Book Talk episode #98 – Nur Deriş on the extraordinary life of journalist Sabiha Sertel (1895-1968).
Deriş is co-editor of “The Struggle for Modern Turkey: Justice, Activism and a Revolutionary Female Journalist” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).
The volume is the first ever appearance in English of Sertel’s autobiography “Roman Gibi” (Like a Novel), a fascinating window into an era covering the war of independence and Turkey’s entire single-party period until 1950.
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This book is one of over 400 books in IB Tauris/Bloomsbury’s Turkey/Ottoman history category, which you can get a 35% discount on if you sign up to become a Turkey Book Talk member. Members also get English and Turkish transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of 90+ episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
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