Turkey Book Talk #263 – Berin Gür, professor of architecture at Ankara’s TED University, on “The Conquest of Istanbul and the Manipulation of Architecture: The Islamist-Nationalist Rhetoric of Conquest and Melancholy” (Routledge)
The book explores how the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Istanbul is remembered in Turkey’s mainstream official narrative and how architecture contributes to this. It dives deep into the weaponisation of historical memory in the country today, while also considering how Greeks remember the same historical event.
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Umut Azak on Hagia Sophia and the future of Turkey’s religious nationalist status quo
October 13, 2020
Turkey Book Talk #126 – Umut Azak of Okan University on this summer’s conversion of the Hagia Sophia from museum to mosque, the history of calls on Turkey’s religious right to take that step, and the future of the country’s religious nationalist status quo under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
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