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.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Spotify / Google Podcasts / PlayerFM / Listen Notes
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury (including the book from this episode), transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #197 – Constanze Letsch on “Territorial Stigmatisation: Urban Renewal and Displacement in a Central Istanbul Neighbourhood” (Transcript).
The book examines a controversial project to demolish and rebuild Istanbul’s historic, troubled Tarlabaşı neighbourhood, the impact it had on locals and what that tells us about today’s Turkey.
Download the episode or listen below:
Download the ebook for free via the Transcript website.
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #196 – Ci Demi on his photographs of Istanbul, which present an eerie, unflattering image of the city through depopulated landscapes, urban sprawl and surreal juxtapositions.
His latest photobook ”Sehri Fikri” (Notions of a City) was recently published by Onagöre.
Download the episode or listen below:
Check out Ci Demi’s work on Instagram.
Listen to the Spotify playlist “Something Is Missing”, created to accompany the “Sehri Fikri” photobook.
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury (including the book from this episode), transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
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.
Download the episode or listen below:
Read and subscribe to Derin Koçer’s Substack.
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #194 – Demet Aslı Çaltekin, assistant professor at Durham University’s Durham Law School, on “Conscientious Objection in Turkey: A Socio-legal Analysis of the Right to Refuse Military Service” (Edinburgh University Press).
The conversation addresses the ubiquity of militarism and nationalism in Turkey, and the impact on people who refuse to do their compulsory military service.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #193 – Aron Aji discusses the life and work of Turkish author Ferit Edgü
Aji’s translations of Edgü’s excellent, austere novellas “The Wounded Age” and “Eastern Tales” were recently published in a new single volume by New York Review Books.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
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.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #191 – Paul Levin, director of Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies, on “Migration from Turkey to Sweden: Integration, Belonging and Transnational Community” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury), co-authored with Bahar Baser.
The conversation looks at the demographic profile of the Turkey-origin migrants in Sweden, the power dynamics of Turkish and Kurdish communities in the country, and the imbroglio over Ankara’s continued non-ratification of Stockholm’s Nato membership bid.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury (including the book from this episode), transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent weekly newsletter Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #190 – Maureen Freely on the life and work of the late Tezer Özlü.
Her translation of Özlü’s 1980 novel “Cold Nights of Childhood” has just been published for the first time in English by Serpent’s Tail.
First published in 1980, the book follows a narrator whose life closely mirrors Özlü’s own, growing up in Istanbul before periods in Berlin and Paris, unhappy marriages, and tortuous stays in psychiatric institutions. Despite being set against the backdrop of a uniquely turbulent era in Turkey’s modern history, the book is also characterised by its sexual frankness and political ambivalence.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent weekly newsletter Turkey Recap.
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.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent weekly newsletter Turkey Recap.
Turkey Book Talk #188 – Nesi Altaras on “A Privilege That Cannot Be Bought: Jews of Turkey and Citizenship Restitution from Portugal and Spain” (Libra Books).
The book weighs up the practical and emotional motivations of Turkish Jews applying for Spanish and Portuguese passports in recent years, after the two countries allowed descendants of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula following 1492 to ”reclaim” citizenship.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Become a member on Patreon to support Turkey Book Talk. Members get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, transcripts of the whole archive, links to related content upon publication of each episode, and over 200 book reviews covering Turkish and international fiction, history and politics.
Check out and sign up to the excellent weekly newsletter Turkey Recap.
Selim Koru on Turkey’s earthquakes and their political aftershocks
February 21, 2023
Turkey Book Talk #187 – Selim Koru, analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey and fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, on the devastating recent earthquakes.
The conversation compares the earthquakes’ effect with the Marmara earthquake of 1999, as well as addressing the Erdogan government’s response, the potential social, political and economic consequences, and the possible impact on Turkey’s foreign policy.
Download the episode or listen below:
Check out (and subscribe to) Selim’s excellent Substack “Kulturkampf”.
Please consider supporting one of the trusted groups involved in post-earthquake relief measures in Turkey and Syria.
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Spotify / RSS
Turkey Book Talk 