Turkey Book Talk

Turkey Book Talk #281 – Kenan Orhan on his Booker Prize longlisted novel “The Renovation” (Penguin).

The novel tells the story of a woman who has recently moved with her family from Turkey to a small town in Italy, where one day she discovers that her bathroom has been re-modelled into a cell in Istanbul’s notorious Silivri Prison.

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Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #280 – Nefise Kahraman discusses Translation Attached, which brings lesser known Ottoman and Turkish literary gems to an English-reading audience. 

The conversation also addresses Translation Attached’s seventh book, “Beneath the Handkerchief, and Other Tales”, a volume of 25 humorous and socially observant short stories by the late author and diplomat Memduh Sevket Esendal (1883-1952). Translated by Etkin Hanson, it is the first selection of Esendal’s work to appear in English and gives readers a flavour of a distinctive voice from 20th century Turkish letters.

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Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #279 – Dimitar Bechev, Director of the Dahrendorf Programme at St Antony’s College, University Oxford and Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe, on “The Scramble for Europe: Russia, China, and Turkey Challenging Regional Order” (Oxford University Press)

The book questions whether Turkey can be placed alongside Russia and China as a direct competitor to the EU, with a fundamentally different view on the challenges posed by an increasingly unstable world. As Bechev writes: “The argument is straightforward: Whereas formerly the trio was on the receiving end of order-building from the EU, it is now in the business of reshaping and rearranging power hierarchies, institutions, and norms in Europe.”

The conversation asks what has changed since the formal launch of Turkey’s EU accession process in the 2000s, and whether the current situation of low-expectation, pragmatic engagement – with fundamental disputes left unresolved – was always inevitable.

Download the episode or listen below:

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #278 – Marc Sinan Winrow, post-doctoral research assistant at the London School of Economics, on “Turkey and the Liberal International Order: Hegemony, Contestation and the Politics of Articulation Since 1919” (Agenda Publishing, Edinburgh University Press)

The conversation addresses Turkey’s position on the edge of the Western-led international order over the past century, as well as Ankara’s view of the threats and opportunities posed by today’s mounting turbulence.

Download the episode or listen below:

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #277 – Benjamin Fortna, professor of history at the University of Arizona, on “The Shortest History of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic” (Old Street Publishing)

In just over 200 pages, the book spans the emergence of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. The interview addresses the challenges of trying to fit so much into such a compressed form, appealing to a popular readership, and the recurring themes that emerge over the course of so many centuries.

Download the episode or listen below:

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #276 – Işılay Gürsu, assistant director at the British Institute in Ankara, on “Public Dialogues in Archaeology: New Methodologies from Turkey” (Bloomsbury Academic). 

The book explores the Turkish public’s views of the country’s rich archaeological heritage, the hunt for hidden treasure at historic sites across the country, and efforts to repatriate ancient artefacts that were pilfered generations ago.

Download the episode or listen below:

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #275 – Onur İnal of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna on “Gateway to the Mediterranean: An Environmental History of Late Ottoman Izmir” (Cambridge University Press).

The book describes how the cosmopolitan coastal city of Izmir, often known in Europe at the time as Smyrna, flourished in the second half of the 19th century, becoming a major connection between the Ottoman Empire, Europe and the rest of the world.

It shows how settlers, migrants and investors exploited the natural resources in the hinterland of Western Anatolia to create a transportation hub of people and goods in Izmir.

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Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #274 – Sinem Adar, head of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, returns to the podcast.

The conversation takes stock of Turkey’s international profile and domestic political trajectory after its recent hosting of the NATO summit in Ankara.

Download the episode or listen below:

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

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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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #273 – Hannah Lucinda Smith on “Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers” (Profile Books).

The book is based on vivid reporting from Eastern Europe, the East Mediterranean and the Caucasus, as places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Karabakh, Transnistria, Crimea and Cyprus become geopolitical hotspots with ambitious revisionist powers like Russia and Turkey looking to secure a greater share of the pie.

Download the episode or listen below:

https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/dukac5xyghiw9ve3/273_Hannah_Lucinda_Smith_on_Turkey_Russia_and_Europe_s_hinterlands6z4tu.mp3

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Bluesky

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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.

Turkey Book Talk #272 – Doruk Erhan, doctoral candidate at Yale Law School and visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, on the crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition CHP.

The conversation is based on Doruk’s recent articles for the Verfassungsblog, including his recent assessment of the legal and political impact of cases against jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, published on the first anniversary of his arrest.

Since then the crackdown has escalated, with the judicially engineered return of Kemal Kilicdaroglu as its chair. These manoeuvres have led pundits to warn Turkey is shifting to a post-democratic system of arbitrary rule, in which elections are essentially meaningless.

The articles makes a relatively optimistic case for Turkey’s opposition, and the interview also weighs up potential future scenarios and the international context that has facilitated the crackdown.

Download the episode or listen below:

https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/6bzdeiwr8jbhdqx3/272_Doruk_Erhan_on_Turkey_s_shift_to_autocracyb1r40.mp3

Read a transcript of the interview on Substack.

Listen to Turkey Book Talk : Apple / Spotify / PodBean / Stitcher / PlayerFM / Listen Notes

Follow : Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Bluesky

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 Bloomsbury Academic, access to transcripts of every interview, and links to articles related to the subject of every episode.