Reuben Silverman on the rise and fall of Turkey’s Democrat Party
December 9, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #259 – Reuben Silverman on “The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Democrat Party: The Cold War and Illiberalism, 1945–60” (Cambridge University Press).
It is an excellent book about a fascinating period in Turkish history. But it is a one that is often misremembered or misinterpreted in Turkey today.
Whether intended as criticism or praise, Erdogan’s AKP government is often placed in the lineage of the Democrat Party and Adnan Menderes, prime minister for 10 years before being overthrown in a military coup in 1960. However, as the book shows, “the line from the Democrat Party to the present day is neither as straight nor as flattering as Erdogan would have it be”.
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Seçil Daǧtaș on religious difference in Turkey’s Hatay
November 25, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #258 – Seçil Daǧtaș, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo, on “Under the Same Sky: Everyday Politics of Religious Difference in Southern Turkey” (University of Pennsylvania Press)
The book is an ethnographic study of what Dagtas describes as “the social reproduction of religious differences” in Turkey’s uniquely diverse Hatay province.
The conversation also addresses the impact of the deadly 2023 earthquakes that devastated the region, as well as over a decade of war in neighbouring Syria.
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Please 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 #257 – Senem Aydın-Düzgit, professor of international relations at Sabanci University and director of the Istanbul Policy Centre, on her article “Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics in Populist Competitive Authoritarianism: The Case of the May 2023 Elections in Turkey,” published in the journal South European Society and Politics.
The conversation looks at how Erdogan uses foreign policy, defence policy and strongman diplomacy to burnish his reputation and reinforce public backing for the regime in Turkey. This strategy comes amid greater opportunity, as growing geopolitical uncertainty opens doors for ambitious players to reshape the international system based on raw power politics.
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Please 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.
Nora Fisher Onar on Turkish political history beyond binaries
October 28, 2025
Turkey Book Talk #256 – Nora Fisher Onar, Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies at University of San Francisco, on “Contesting Pluralism(s): Islamism, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond” (Cambridge University Press).
The book aims to “challenge the received wisdom that a binary contest between ‘Islam’ and ‘secularism’ is the driving force in Turkey’s politics”. It voices the same scepticism about other binary divides often used to explain Turkey’s political history, instead proposing an alternative theory of alliances between pluralist and non-pluralist forces that shift over time.
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Please 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 #239 – Selim Koru, analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in US, on “New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury)
The book dives deep into the stark worldview driving Turkey’s regime change over the past couple of decades, and its profound implications for the country’s domestic and foreign policy.
It places Erdogan’s “New Turkey” in the context of a global trend of civilisation-fixated, far-right movements thriving in the US, Russia, India, Hungary and elsewhere – a pioneer of the emerging anti-liberal world order.
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Check out Selim’s Substack Kulturkampf
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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.
Samuel Hirst on a century of Ankara-Moscow cooperation
December 17, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #234 – Samuel J. Hirst, historian and assistant professor of international relations at Bilkent University, on “Against the Liberal Order: The Soviet Union, Turkey, and Statist Internationalism, 1919-1939” (Oxford University Press).
The book examines crucial but sometimes overlooked decades of close cooperation between the young Republic of Turkey and the Soviet Union on key political, industrial and cultural projects. The conversation also discusses later episodes of collaboration between Ankara and Moscow in the 1960s and 70s, as well as the bromance between Erdogan and Putin today.
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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.
Ralph Hubbell on Turkish literary giant Oğuz Atay
December 3, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #233 – Ralph Hubbell on translating Oğuz Atay‘s “Waiting for the Fear” (New York Review Books).
Atay is widely seen as one the great Turkish fiction writers of the 20th century, but he has largely yet to appear in English until now. “Waiting for the Fear” is made up of eight short stories and was first published in Turkey in 1975. At under 200 pages, it’s a relatively slender work – a striking contrast with Atay’s most celebrated novel, the sprawling “Tutunamayanlar” (The Disconnected).
The conversation talks about Oğuz Atay’s exploration of paranoia, alienation and absurdity, the humour in his work, as well as his life and the notorious difficulty of translating his fiction.
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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.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu on religion and democracy in Turkey and Iran
August 27, 2024
Turkey Book Talk #226 – Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at SOAS, on “Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey: Tutelary Consolidation, Popular Contestation” (Edinburgh University Press).
The book makes the case that the political systems under the clergy in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the military in the Republic of Turkey have had surprising similarities – as well as important differences.
The conversation also considers how the two systems have transformed in recent decades, as well as how present-day social and political power struggles are shifting the landscape in both countries.
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Support Turkey Book Talk as a member on 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 #225 – Eugene Rogan, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford, on “The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World” (Allen Lane).
The book examines how in July 1860 Damascus exploded in communal violence, when a mostly Muslim crowd tried to exterminate the Christian community – a shocking eruption of violence after hundreds of years of relative peace and coexistence. It looks at why tensions built up in the decades before 1860, as well as how the Ottoman authorities oversaw recovery of the region in the aftermath.
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Turkey Book Talk #223 – Ozge Samanci, artist and associate professor at Northwestern University, on her new graphic novel “Evil Eyes Sea” (Uncivilized Books).
The semi-autobiographical story is a murder mystery centred on a group of students at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul in the 1990s. It follows up from her highly successful graphic novel “Dare to Disappoint”.
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Turkey Book Talk #222 – Sami Kent on “The Endless Country: A Personal Journey Through Turkey’s First Hundred Years” (Picador).
The book paints a portrait of Turkey by combining accounts of key events from previous decades with Sami’s personal reflections on growing up learning about his paternal homeland from afar, before coming to work in the country as a journalist.
Download the episode or listen below:
Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.
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Become a member on Substack or 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, and links to articles related to each episode.
Turkey Book Talk #215 – Andrew Finkel on his novel “The Adventure of the Second Wife: The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and the Ottoman Sultan” (Even Keel Press).
Andrew is a veteran journalist based in Turkey for decades. His debut novel is a sprawling, playful narrative exploring the mystery of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II’s obsession with Sherlock Holmes stories.
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