Turkey Book Talk

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 to articles related to each episode.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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 would have it be".

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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 published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcri...

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. 

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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 History books published by IB Tauris/Bloomsbu...

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 Tauris/Bloomsbury, transcripts of every...

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/Ottoman History books published by IB Tauri...

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.

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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 Turkey/Ottoman History books published by ...

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”.

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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.

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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 links to articles related to each episod...

Bilge Yabancı on “Civil Society and Authoritarianism: Co-optation, Repression and Contestation in Turkey” (Edinburgh University Press). The book examines the transformation of civil society groups under pressure from mounting authoritarianism.

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 i...

Erik-Jan Zürcher on the uses and abuses of nostalgia for empire in contemporary Turkey and the UK. The conversation is based on Zurcher's recent lecture at the Istanbul Policy Center, “The Poison of Nostalgia”, which compared neo-Ottomanist tendencies in Turkey with the view of empire in Britain's Brexit debate.

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Talin Suciyan on “Armenians in Turkey after the Second World War: An Archival Reader of USSR Consular Documents” (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury). The book examines the oral testimonies of Armenians who registered to migrate to Soviet Armenia.

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...