Yigit Akin on the Ottoman home front during World War One
January 1, 2019
Happy New Year one and all.
Turkey Book Talk episode #80 – Yigit Akin of Tulane University on “When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire” (Stanford University Press).
The book is a richly researched study on the consequences of the First World War on everyday social life across Ottoman territories as the empire collapsed.
Download the episode or listen below.
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Alev Scott on ‘Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire’
November 27, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #78 – Alev Scott on “Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire” (Riverrun), her travelogue exploring the past and present of Turkey and the former territories of the Ottoman Empire.
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
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Don’t forget the new addition to Turkey Book Talk’s membership system: Members now get access to an archive of 231 book reviews originally written for the Hurriyet Daily News. That archive was still standing for a few months but it now seems to have been deleted from the HDN website.
The reviews cover a pretty diverse spread of subjects: Turkish and international fiction and poetry, history, journalism, politics, the Middle East and Europe.
Members also get full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 70 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Sign up as a member to support Turkey Book Talk via Patreon.
Avedis Hadjian on the ‘hidden Armenians’ of Anatolia
November 13, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #77 – Avedis Hadjian on “Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey” (IB Tauris).
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Follow Turkey Book Talk on Facebook or Twitter
Don’t forget the new addition to Turkey Book Talk’s membership system : Members now get access to an archive of 231 book reviews originally written for the Hurriyet Daily News. That archive was still standing for a few months but it now seems to have been deleted from the HDN website.
The reviews cover a pretty diverse spread of subjects: Turkish and international fiction and poetry, history, journalism, politics, the Middle East and Europe.
Members also get full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 70 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Sign up as a member to support Turkey Book Talk via Patreon.
Dogu Eroğlu on investigating ISIS networks in Turkey
October 16, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #75 – Doğu Eroğlu on “ISIS Networks: Radicalisation, Organisation, Logistics in Turkey,” published in Turkish by İletişim as “İŞİD Ağları: Türkiye’de Radikalleşme, Örgütleme, Lojistik.”
Eroğlu’s book is a forensic and unsensational account of ISIS operations in Turkey and grassroots radicalisation, based on years of on-the-ground reporting.
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Follow Turkey Book Talk on Facebook or Twitter
Don’t forget the new addition to Turkey Book Talk’s membership system : Members now get access to an archive of 231 book reviews originally written for the Hurriyet Daily News. That archive was still standing for a few months but it now seems to have been deleted from the HDN website.
The reviews cover a pretty diverse spread of subjects: Turkish and international fiction and poetry, history, journalism, politics, the Middle East and Europe.
Members also get full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 70 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Sign up as a member to support Turkey Book Talk via Patreon.
Turkey Book Talk episode #74 – Sinan Yıldırmaz on his book “Politics and the Peasantry in Post-War Turkey: Social History, Culture and Modernization” (IB Tauris). The book examines the transition to the multi-party system after the Second World War and the crucial importance of migration from rural to urban areas in shaping politics in the country up to today.
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Follow Turkey Book Talk on Facebook or Twitter
Consider joining as a member to support Turkey Book Talk. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 60 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris (again, including Yıldırmaz’s book).
Halil Karaveli on ‘why Turkey is authoritarian’
August 21, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #71 – Halil Karaveli, Senior Fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, on his stimulating new book “Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdoğan” (Pluto Press).
Against popular ideas that the division between secularism and Islam is the fundamental driver of Turkey’s modern history, Karaveli takes an uncompromisingly class-based perspective. He argues that the urge to protect dominant bourgeois class interests lies behind authoritarianism in its civilian and military guises.
Download the episode or listen below.
Read Halil’s most recent article at CACI’s Turkey Analyst: ‘Can Turkey Change?’
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Follow Turkey Book Talk on Facebook or Twitter
Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 60 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Dimitar Bechev on Turkey-Russia relations, past and present
August 7, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #70 – Dimitar Bechev on the past and present of Turkey-Russia relations, “rich in history, ambivalent, multifaceted and rich in nuance, blending fierce competition with cooperation.”
Bechev is a research fellow at the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of “Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe” (Yale University Press), and he has written extensively on Turkey, its policy in Europe and the Middle East, and its relationship with Russia.
Download the episode or listen below.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Follow Turkey Book Talk on Facebook or Twitter
Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 60 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Turkey Book Talk episode #69 – Amy Spangler on the life and work of Sevgi Soysal, whose classic 1973 novel “Noontime in Yenişehir” she translated into English. She also discusses co-founding the literary agency AnatoliaLit and her work on “Seher,” a collection of stories penned in jail by former HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş.
Download the episode or listen below.
Here’s my review of the (great) novel from a few weeks ago.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (over 60 conversations so far), and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Turkey Book Talk episode #64 – JOHN MCMANUS, post-doctoral fellow at the British Institute at Ankara, on “WELCOME TO HELL? IN SEARCH OF THE REAL TURKISH FOOTBALL” (W&N), a colourful exploration of what the beautiful game can tell us about a football-mad society and Turkey’s modern history.
Download the episode or listen below.
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Here’s my review of the book from last week.
Support Turkey Book Talk by becoming a member. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive, and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Turkey Book Talk episode #63 – VOLKAN YILMAZ, assistant professor of social policy at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, on “THE POLITICS OF HEALTHCARE REFORM IN TURKEY” (Palgrave Macmillan).
The book examines reforms in the country’s healthcare system under the AKP since 2003: What changed? What improved? What got worse? Who gained? Who lost?
Download the episode or listen below.
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Here’s my review of the book from a couple of weeks ago.
Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk. Membership gives you full transcripts in English and Turkish of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive, and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Turkey Book Talk #61 – DIANA DARKE on “THE MERCHANT OF SYRIA: A HISTORY OF SURVIVAL” (Hurst), which tells the story of Abu Chaker, a textile merchant from Homs who lived from 1921 to 2013.
The book traces Abu Chaker’s life in parallel with the story of the modern history of Syria, examining the social, cultural and political context that shaped him. It also touches on the emergence of the ongoing war, which Darke herself witnessed as she was living in a historical courtyard house in Damascus’ old town until a few years ago.
Download the episode or listen below.
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Here is Diana’s article on Afrin for the BBC that we mention in the conversation.
Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get extra content. Members get full transcripts (in English and Turkish) of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (in English) and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
Turkey Book Talk episode #59 – Ceren Baysan of University of California, Berkeley on her paper “Can More Information Lead to More Voter Polarization? Experimental Evidence from Turkey.” The study was based on voter surveys in the months before the April 2017 referendum on granting President Erdoğan more powers and also measured Turkish parties’ own polling operations.
Baysan measured Turkish voters’ opinions about various issues as well as the major parties’ own polling operations: How much they know about voters’ preferences and how they adapt their work in light of that information.
The report is full of interesting insights about the state of Turkish parties and the deep polarization that is only getting worse in the country.
Download the episode or listen below
Here’s a link to download/read the report itself.
The Kayhan Delibaş book mentioned in the episode is called “The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey: Urban Poverty, Grassroots Activism and Islamic Fundamentalism.” Here’s an interview with Delibaş on his research.
Subscribe to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / RSS
Consider supporting Turkey Book Talk and get extra content by becoming a member. Members get full transcripts (in English and Turkish) of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire Turkey Book Talk archive (in English) and access to an exclusive 30% discount on over 200 Turkey/Ottoman History titles published by IB Tauris.
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