Mustafa Kutlay on Turkey’s middle power dilemmas
July 22, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #249 – Mustafa Kutlay, senior lecturer in comparative politics at City St George’s University of London, on his recent Foreign Affairs article “Turkey’s Middle-Power Dilemma”.
Turkey is widely cited as one of the increasingly influential players in the emerging world order, with greater appetite and greater capacity to play a bigger role in its region and elsewhere.
Mustafa’s article focuses on the successes and failures of the Turkish government’s bid to carve out that greater role in the name of “strategic autonomy”. It also underlines the risks posed by this new world of increasingly ambitious, competitive powers clashing and cooperating with each other.
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Salim Çevik on Turkey’s Middle East reset
November 5, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #231 – Salim Çevik, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), on his recent paper “Turkey’s Reconciliation Efforts in the Middle East: Ambitions and Constraints in a Changing Regional Order“.
The piece examines Erdogan’s shift away from trying to overthrow the established regional order by supporting Muslim Brotherhood allies, and towards rapprochement with the ruling regimes in Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Syria and others.
Our conversation weighs up the successes and failures of this initiative, how it has been impacted by Israel’s Gaza war, and how it could be affected by the results of the US presidential election.
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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.
Ezgi Başaran on the new spirit of Islamism
October 8, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #229 – Ezgi Başaran, journalist and academic at St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford, on “The New Spirit of Islamism: Interactions Between the AKP, Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood” (IB Tauris).
The book looks at the aspirations of Islamist actors in Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab Uprisings from 2011 to 2013. Based on interviews with dozens of officials in all three countries at that time, it seeks to understand what motivated them, how they viewed each other, and whether they prioritised pragmatism or religious ideology.
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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 #217 – Christopher Phillips, professor of international relations at Queen Mary, University of London, on “Battleground: Ten Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East” (Yale University Press).
The conversation explores the region’s fiendishly complicated geopolitical rivalries, as well as how Turkey’s push for greater influence in Syria, Iraq and Libya has reverberated on its ties with numerous other ambitious powers.
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Sinem Adar on Turkey’s dilemmas amid the Israel-Gaza war
November 28, 2023
Turkey Book Talk #207 – Sinem Adar, associate at the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, on Turkey’s response to the Israel-Gaza war.
The conversation builds on her recent article for War on the Rocks arguing that the crisis shows the limits of Turkey’s regional influence. She also co-wrote a piece for the Middle East Institute with Hamidreza Azizi, looking at how Turkey and Iran’s interests converge and diverge on this and other issues.
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Galip Dalay on the nuances of Turkey’s Middle East reset
September 13, 2022
Turkey Book Talk # 176 – Galip Dalay, associate fellow at Chatham House and non-resident senior fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, on his recent paper “Turkey’s Middle East Reset: A Precursor for Reescalation?”
The article looks in depth at Turkey’s bid to mend fences with previously bitter rivals including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, toning down its revisionist zeal in order to return to something like the pre-Arab Spring status quo. Dalay looks at the push and pull factors behind this initiative, the challenges it faces, and some of the possible exceptions.
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Birol Başkan on Islamism and Turkish foreign policy
April 12, 2022
Turkey Book Talk episode 165 – Birol Başkan, non-resident scholar at The Middle East Institute, on “The Nation or the Ummah: Islamism and Turkish Foreign Policy” (SUNY Press), co-written with Ömer Taşpınar.
The book examines Turkey’s foreign policy during the Arab Spring era, when Ankara threw its weight behind protest movements seeking to overthrow established regimes around the Middle East. This period was distinct from the early years of Erdogan’s government, as well as more recent times when Turkey has sought to patch things up with regional adversaries such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
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Murat Erdoğan on Syrian migrants’ future in Turkey
February 16, 2021
Turkey Book Talk episode #135 – Murat Erdogan, director of Turkish German University’s Migration and Integration Research Centre, on the future of Syrians in Turkey.
Erdoğan oversees “Syrians Barometer”, an annual UNHCR-supported research project tracking the views and tendencies of Syrians in Turkey, as well as Turkish citizens’ views of Syrians.
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Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get extras: Exclusive access to a 30% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman history books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, English and Turkish transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
Turkey Book Talk episode #132 – Omer Taşpınar, professor at the US National War College and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on “What the West is Getting Wrong about the Middle East: Why Islam is Not the Problem” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury)
The book argues that the US and Europe often fundamentally misunderstand social and political trends in the Middle East, overemphasising the importance of Islam at the expense of more important economic, governance and institutional factors. It makes this case by examining the examples of Turkey, the Sunni-Shia divide and the emergence of ISIS.
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Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get extras: English and Turkish transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics. We are also currently working on a 2021 update to the discount deal on books in IB Tauris/Bloomsbury’s Turkey/Ottoman history category, so stay tuned for that.
Mustafa Menshawy on the Muslim Brotherhood in exile in Turkey
December 8, 2020
Turkey Book Talk #130 – Mustafa Menshawy, associate professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and associate fellow at University of Westminster, on “Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood: Self, Society and the State” (Palgrave).
The interview addresses how the migration of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and members from Egypt to Turkey in recent years has changed the group.
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Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get loads of extras: A 35% discount on any of over 100 books in IB Tauris/Bloomsbury’s excellent Turkey/Ottoman history category, English and Turkish transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
Sinem Adar on the militarisation of Turkey’s foreign policy
August 18, 2020
Turkey Book Talk episode #122 – Sinem Adar, associate in the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies at the SWP think tank in Berlin, on the hardening of Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East, the East Mediterranean and Europe, as well as the Turkish government’s soft power investments.
Download the episode or listen below
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Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get loads of extras: A 35% discount on any of over 100 books in IB Tauris/Bloomsbury’s excellent Turkey/Ottoman history category, English and Turkish transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
Turkey Book Talk episode #117 – Oya Dursun-Özkanca, professor of political science at Elizabethtown College, on her book “Turkey-West Relations: The Politics of Intra-Alliance Opposition” (Cambridge University Press) and Ankara’s grand ambitions for the post-coronavirus world.
Download the episode or listen below.
Listen to Turkey Book Talk : iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / Spotify / RSS
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Remember to check out Raziye Akkoç and Diego Cupolo’s excellent Turkey Recap weekly newsletter
Become a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get loads of extras: A 35% discount on any of over 100 books in IB Tauris/Bloomsbury’s excellent Turkey/Ottoman history category, English and Turkish transcripts of every interview upon publication, transcripts of the entire archive of episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
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