Turkey Book Talk episode 169 – Murat Metinsoy, professor of political science and international relations at Istanbul University, on “The Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923-38” (Cambridge University Press).
The book takes a bottom-up approach to examine how ordinary people’s reaction to Kemalist reforms shaped, modified or softened how those reforms were implemented on the ground.
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Turkey Book Talk episode 162 – York Norman, professor of history at Buffalo State College, on “Celal Nuri: Young Turk Modernizer and Muslim Nationalist” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury).
The book examines the life of Celal Nuri, a journalist and politician whose career spanned the late Ottoman and early republican periods.
Download the episode or listen below:
Listen to Turkey Book Talk: iTunes / PodBean / Stitcher / Acast / Spotify / RSS
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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 title included in 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 weekly newsletter.
Turkey Book Talk episode #89 – Reuben Silverman, author of “Turkey’s Ever Present Past: Stories from Republican Turkish History” and “Politics in Turkey: Parties, Politicians and the Struggle for Power” (Libra Books), talks about his wide-ranging research on contemporary Turkish history.
Unfortunately, after yesterday’s election board decision to re-run the Istanbul mayoral election the first part of the conversation is slightly out of date. But hopefully the rest is enlightening!
Download the episode or listen below.
Do check out Reuben’s excellent blog, a real treasure trove of articles.
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Join as a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get a load of extras: A 35% discount on any of over 400 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 80+ episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
Sign up as a member to support Turkey Book Talk via Patreon.
One more head’s up – Friends of the podcast, the Bosphorus Review of Books, have published a book containing a number of their pieces since launching. “The Two Currents” anthology can be bought online at the locations listed here, so do check it out.
Selda Tuncer on women and public space in Ankara, 1950 to 1980
February 26, 2019
Turkey Book Talk episode #84 – Selda Tuncer, assistant professor at Yüzüncü Yıl University in Van, on “Women and Public Space in Turkey: Gender, Modernity and the Urban Experience” (IB Tauris).
The book is based on dozens of interviews with mostly middle-class women who lived in Ankara between 1950 and 1980, comparing their experiences of the Turkish capital in the middle of the 20th century.
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If you enjoyed this episode, you may also be interested in episode #69 from July 2018: Amy Spangler on the late author Sevgi Soysal and her great novel Noontime in Yenişehir.
Join as a member to support Turkey Book Talk and get a load of extras: A 35% discount on any of over 400 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 80+ episodes, and an archive of 231 reviews written by myself covering Turkish and international fiction, history, journalism and politics.
Sign up as a member to support Turkey Book Talk via Patreon.
Begüm Adalet on the Cold War origins of Turkey-US ties
October 30, 2018
Turkey Book Talk episode #76 – Begüm Adalet on “Hotels and Highways: The Construction of Modernization Theory in Cold War Turkey” (Stanford University Press).
The book looks at Turkey in the aftermath of World War Two, the early years of its alliance with the United States at the advent of the Cold War. Ankara was a major recipient of aid as part of the Truman Doctrine, which knitted it into the Western alliance against the Soviet Union and reshaped its economic preferences. The 1950s was also an era when Turkey started to be put forward as a “model” for various other countries, particularly in the Middle East.
Download the episode or listen below.
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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.
Hale Yılmaz on social transformation in Turkey, yesterday and today
January 27, 2017
In this new Turkey Book Talk episode Southern Illinois University associate professor of history Hale Yılmaz speaks about her book “Becoming Turkish: Nationalist Reforms and Cultural Negotiations in Early Republican Turkey, 1923-1945” (Syracuse University Press).
Download the episode or listen below.
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Background reading:
- Alexandros Lamprou discusses his book on the People’s Houses: “Nation-Building in Modern Turkey: The People’s Houses, the State and the Citizen”.
- A visit to Mahmut Makal on the 60th anniversary of his autobiographical book “Bizim Köy” (Our Village), describing the tough life of a village teacher in early republican Turkey.
If you enjoy or benefit from the podcast and want to support it, click here to make a small or large donation to Turkey Book Talk via Patreon.
Many thanks to my current supporters Özlem Beyarslan, Steve Bryant, Celia Jocelyn Kerslake and Aaron Ataman.
Şakir Dinçşahin on the life and times of Niyazi Berkes, 1908-1988
February 20, 2016
Here’s my conversation with Şakir Dinçşahin about his book on the life and times of Turkish intellectual Niyazi Berkes.
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You can also now subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast on Stitcher. Alternatively subscribe via iTunes or via PodBean.
Here’s my review of “State and Intellectuals: The Life and Times of Niyazi Berkes” (Rowman) at the Hürriyet Daily News.
If the issues discussed are your thing, check out this interview from last year with Andros Lamprou, who wrote an interesting book on the People’s Houses.
Also worth plugging this piece I wrote a couple of years ago on Mahmut Makal and his book “Bizim Köy” (Our Village), on his experiences as a teacher at a Village Institute in the 1940s.
Ryan Gingeras on ‘Atatürk: Heir to an Empire’
January 23, 2016
This week I spoke to author Ryan Gingeras on his new biography of Turkey’s founding father, “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: Heir to an Empire” (Oxford University Press).
Or just listen here:
Here’s an edited transcript of the interview.
And here’s my review of the book (which is highly recommended).
As I mentioned in the podcast, here’s a link to an interview I did with Ryan last year about another of his books, “Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey.”
Subscribe to the Turkish Book Talk Podcast via PodBean, or via iTunes.
Markus Dressler on the ‘making of Turkish Alevi Islam’
November 28, 2015
This week’s interview/podcast is with Markus Dressler, author of the book “Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam.” The book examines how the idea of Alevism is an almost entirely modern concept, formed towards the end of the Ottoman Empire as part of efforts to integrate disparate Anatolian religious groups into the Turkish and Muslim nation.
Download a podcast of our conversation.
Here’s a transcript of the interview at the Hürriyet Daily News.
Here’s my review of the book.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk podcast via iTunes, PodBean, or Soundcloud.
NB – I’ve also just created a Facebook page for the podcast, where I’ll be posting new episodes. Check it out here.
Ozan Özavcı on liberalism in Turkey
October 10, 2015
This week I spoke to Ozan Özavcı about his book “Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in Turkey” (Brill), on the life of one of the most prominent intellectuals bridging the late Ottoman/early republican years.
Download the podcast of the interview here.
Subscribe to the Turkey Book Talk Podcast via iTunes, via Podbean, or via Soundcloud.
Here’s an edited version of the interview at HDN.
And here’s my review of the book.
If you’re interested in the subject, here’s my interview with Ankara University’s Alexandros Lamprou from earlier this year, discussing social engineering in the early Turkish Republic.
Finally, a shout out to my brother James Armstrong, who has designed the terrific icon for my podcast above. Follow him on Twitter and check out his great work at his website.
I should say that the two things in the title are unrelated.
My interview this week was with Toni Alaranta of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, discussing his new book “National and State Identity in Turkey: The Transformation of the Republic’s Status in the International System” (Rowman). In the book, Alaranta traces how the entrenchment in power of authoritarian political Islam in Turkey after 2002 was critically aided by the West’s misguided search for a “moderate Muslim democracy” after the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 terror attacks.
Read the interview at the Hürriyet Daily News here.
And read my review of the book here.
This also marks my first step into the world of podcasting. From now on I’ll be publishing these author interviews in audio as well as written form, through my new podcast “Turkey Book Talk.” The podcast will include some extra parts that didn’t make the written edit, as well as some fancy music, etc.
Click here to listen to the first episode (a work in progress as I’m still figuring out the best host, player, etc).
To subscribe to the feed, visit my PodBean page.
Please spread the word to anyone you think may be interested, and do get in touch with any suggestions on how I can improve the podcast!
Social engineering in Turkey from Atatürk to Erdoğan
May 30, 2015
This week I spoke to Alexandros Lamprou, discussing his new book “Nation-Building in Modern Turkey: The People’s Houses, the State and the Citizen.”
The People’s Houses (Halkevleri) were established in 1932 by Turkey’s single-party regime to plant roots for modernising and secularising reforms in towns across the country. Almost 500 Houses were opened until their closure in 1951, and the traditional view has tended to see them as homogeneous institutions propagating reforms strictly according to Kemalist state ideals. Lamprou’s research showed a far more ambiguous picture, with diverse local conditions across Turkey profoundly altering the work of the People’s Houses.
Here’s the interview with Lamprou in the Hürriyet Daily News.
And here’s my review of the book, in which I explore the limits of such social engineering campaigns – from the early Turkish Republic to today.
For those interested in these things, here’s a link to my interview from last year with Mahmut Makal in Bülent Journal. Makal worked as a teacher in a central Anatolian Village Institute, which like the People’s Houses were opened to accelerate the modernization of traditional society. Makal’s books on life as a village teacher describe the uphill struggle to spread reforms in the harsh conditions of rural Turkey in the 1950s, and he was actually jailed by the authorities at the time for painting too bleak a picture.
As a final note, the publisher I.B. Tauris have provided a discount code for online purchases of Lamprou’s book. Details are at the bottom of the review and the interview.
Turkey Book Talk 