Turkey Book Talk

Cihan Tuğal, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, chats about "The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism" (Verso), charting how Turkey went from a model "Muslim democracy" for the Middle East to an increasingly authoritarian state.

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Editor Judith Saryan on a new edition of Zabel Yessayan's account of a trip to Adana in the aftermath of pogroms targeting Armenians there in 1909. "In the Ruins: The 1909 Massacres of Armenians in Adana, Turkey" (AIWA) is the first full English edition of the book to be published. 

You can support the podcast via Patreon. Many thanks to current supporter Sera Aleksandra Marshall.

Mustafa Gürbüz chats about his book “Rival Kurdish Movements in Turkey: Transforming Ethnic Conflict” (Amsterdam University Press), on how internal dynamics are key to understanding Turkey's Kurdish question.

Şakir Dinçşahin discusses his book "State and Intellectuals in Turkey: The Life and Times of Niyazi Berkes, 1908-1988" (Rowman).

Frederike Geerdink on "The Boys are Dead: The Roboski Massacre and the Kurdish Question in Turkey" (Gomidas), discussing her time as a journalist in the Kurdish-majority city Diyarbakır and the troubled history/present of the issue.

Ryan Gingeras discusses his new biography of the Turkish Republic's founding father, "Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: Heir to an Empire" (Oxford University Press).

Novelist Kaya Genç talks about "An Istanbul Anthology" (AUC Press) a new selection of classic writing on Istanbul that he has edited.

This week's podcast is with Nilgün Önder, author of "The Economic Transformation of Turkey: Neoliberalism and State Intervention." The book details some of the paradoxes of the economic reforms passed after the military coup of 1980, the effects of which continue to resonate in Turkey today.

Markus Dressler on his book "Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam," which examines how the idea of Alevism is an almost entirely modern concept, formed since the 19th century as part of efforts to integrate disparate Anatolian religious groups into the Turkish and Muslim nation.

Cengiz Şişman discusses his new book on the little-known history of the Dönmes, a crypto-religious sect that first developed around professed messiah Sabbatai Sevi in cities around the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century.

Michael Gunter on his book "Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War," which charts the Syrian Kurds’ rise to international prominence since 2011 from a “sleepy unimportant backwater in the Kurdish struggle.”

Ozan Özavcı discusses "Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in Turkey" (Brill), on one of the prominent intellectuals bridging the late Ottoman/early republican eras. Read a review at HDN.

Diana Darke, the author of “My House in Damascus: An Inside View of the Syrian Revolution” (Haus), describes her experiences after buying a 17th century courtyard house in Damascus 10 years ago and her first-hand perspective of Syria’s descent into bloody civil war after 2011.

Toni Alaranta discusses his new book “National and State Identity in Turkey: The Transformation of the Republic’s Status in the International System” (Rowman).