Turkey Book Talk

Hannah Lucinda Smith on “Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers” (Profile Books). The book shows how Eastern Europe, the East Mediterranean and the Caucasus are becoming geopolitical hotspots as revisionist powers like Russia and Turkey look to secure a greater share of the pie. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Tu...

Doruk Erhan on the crackdown on Turkey's main opposition party. Judicial operations on the CHP have led pundits to warn the country is shifting to a post-democratic system of arbitrary rule, but in recent articles for the Verfassungsblog, Erhan makes a relatively optimistic case for the opposition's path forward. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% disc...

Istanbul-based journalist Jennifer Hattam on her work updating the Lonely Planet guide to Turkey. The conversation touches on the immense amount of work and miles that go into updating the guide, as well as how Turkey has changed since she first did the job. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by Bl...

Brett Wilson on his article "Sufi Leaders in the early Turkish Republic: Profession, Privilege, and Persecution (1925-1950)". The piece studies the impact of the 1925 outlawing of Islamic religious orders, challenging the traditional idea of harsh secularist persecution. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books pu...

Suzy Hansen on “From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The book focuses on Istanbul's Karagumruk to explore the everyday impact of geopolitical upheaval, economic turbulence and the arrival of Syrian migrants in Turkey. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman...

Faisal Devji on “Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam” (Yale University Press). The book argues that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Islam in countries including Turkey transformed into a modern ideological system like capitalism or communism, but this process has now reached its end. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount...

Ryan Gingeras, author of “Mafia: A Global History” (Simon & Schuster) and “Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey” (Oxford University Press), on the influence of criminal organisations in Turkey's political and economic life over the decades. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published...

Mustafa Aksakal, associate professor of history at Georgetown University, on “The War that Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire” (Princeton University Press) Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, and links to artic...

Michelle Lynn Kahn on “Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration and Turkish-German History” (Cambridge University Press). Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to each episode.

Murat Yıldız, associate professor of history at Skidmore College, on “The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul” (University of Texas Press) Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, and links t...

Berin Gür on “The Conquest of Istanbul and the Manipulation of Architecture: The Islamist-Nationalist Rhetoric of Conquest and Melancholy” (Routledge). The book explores how the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul is remembered in Turkey's mainstream official narrative and how architecture contributes to this. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on al...

Journalist Adnan Khan on the spectacular growth of Turkey's plastic waste imports and the role of migrant labour in the sector. His work paints a grim portrait of how the EU-Turkey migration deal and China's banning of plastic waste imports have helped the industry flourish in Turkey - with deadly human consequences. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35%...

Burcu Karahan on her translation of “One Thousand and One Kisses: The Most Joyous and Flirtatious Stories” (Translation Attached). The book brings together 65 stories blending humour and eroticism, published anonymously in 1923-24. The stories are a fascinating time capsule of a vanished age, but much remains unknown about who was behind them. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Subst...

Mehmet Gurses on his article “Turkey's Kurdish Conflict Transformed”, published in the Current History journal. The conversation places the PKK's emergence and transformations in a historical context over the past five decades, also weighing up shifts that may be triggered by its current dialogue process with Ankara. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35%...

Reuben Silverman on “The Rise and Fall of Turkey's Democrat Party: The Cold War and Illiberalism, 1945–60” (Cambridge University Press). Today's AKP government is often placed in the lineage of the Democrat Party, in power for 10 years before being overthrown in a coup in 1960. But as the book shows, the line from the Democrat Party to today is "neither as straight nor as flattering as Erdogan wou...

Seçil Daǧtaș on “Under the Same Sky: Everyday Politics of Religious Difference in Southern Turkey” (University of Pennsylvania Press). The book is an ethnographic study of “the social reproduction of religious differences” in Turkey's uniquely diverse Hatay province. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books publis...

Senem Aydın-Düzgit on her article “Foreign Policy as Domestic Politics in Populist Competitive Authoritarianism,” published in the South European Society and Politics journal. The conversation looks at how Erdogan uses foreign policy, defence policy and strongman diplomacy to reinforce public backing for the regime in Turkey.  Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters...

Nora Fisher Onar on “Contesting Pluralism(s): Islamism, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond” (Cambridge University Press). The book challenges the common belief that a binary contest between "Islam" and "secularism" is the driving force behind Turkey's modern history. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman Histor...

Sean Mathews on “The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East” (Hurst). The book examines Greece's comeback as a regional player, arguing that this has been triggered in large part by neighbouring Turkey's own increasing assertiveness. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB...

Perin Gurel on “Türkiye, Iran, and the Politics of Comparison: America's Wife, America's Concubine” (Cambridge University Press). The book explores the cultural history of Turkey–Iran comparisons in the West, from Cold War-era modernisation theory to post-9/11 studies of “moderate Islam”. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoma...

Gokhan Bacik on his article “ Selling Citizenship in Turkey: Political Parties, Pragmatism, and Polarization ,” recently published in the journal “Nationalism and Ethnic Politics”. The article examines the government's Citizenship By Investment scheme, its economic and social consequences, and the way it has been discussed – or avoided – in the national political debate. Please support Turkey Book...

Amy Marie Spangler on the late great author Leyla Erbil's What Remains. First published in 2011, the book is a multilayered narrative that sweeps from the Byzantine Empire to 20th century Turkey. It is also a dark elegy to the Istanbul of eras past and all that has been lost in its transformation.  Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Tur...

Özgür Özkan, visiting scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, on the domestic and regional implications of Turkey's push for the Kurdish militant group's dissolution. The conversation digs into issues raised by his recent article “Turkey's Dangerous Illusion of Peace with the PKK”. Please support Turkey Book Talk on  Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% dis...

Christopher Dole on “Living On: Psychiatry and the Future of Disaster in Turkey” (Stanford University Press). The book examines the psychiatric response to the deadly 1999 Marmara Earthquake, examining the legacy of the earthquake in the lives of its survivors and the Turkish mental health professionals who responded to it. Please support Turkey Book Talk on Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get...

Mustafa Kutlay on his recent Foreign Affairs article “ Turkey's Middle-Power Dilemma ”, examining the successes and failures of Ankara's bid to carve out a greater role in the emerging multipolar world. Please support Turkey Book Talk on Patreon  or  Substack . Supporters get a 35% discount on all Turkey/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every interview, and l...