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Turkey Book Talk

William Armstrong

Conversations with journalists, academics and writers on Turkey and its region. A new episode is posted every two weeks. Latest links:

Episodes

20 of 261 episodes

Nefise Kahraman on bringing overlooked Turkish classics to new readers

Nefise Kahraman discusses Translation Attached, which brings lesser known Ottoman and Turkish literary gems to an English-reading audience....

32:16Oct 13, 2026

Dimitar Bechev on Turkey, Russia, China and the 'scramble for Europe'

Dimitar Bechev, Director of the Dahrendorf Programme at St Antony’s College, University Oxford and Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe, on “The...

30:34Sep 29, 2026

Marc Sinan Winrow on Turkey and the liberal international order

Marc Sinan Winrow, post-doctoral research assistant at the London School of Economics, on “Turkey and the Liberal International Order: Hegem...

39:24Sep 15, 2026

Benjamin Fortna on change and continuity in Ottoman and Turkish history

Benjamin Fortna, professor of history at the University of Arizona, on “The Shortest History of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turki...

41:40Sep 1, 2026

Işılay Gürsu on archaeology and public perceptions in Turkey

Işılay Gürsu, assistant director at the British Institute in Ankara, on “Public Dialogues in Archaeology: New Methodologies from Turkey” (Bl...

35:14Aug 18, 2026

Onur İnal on the rise of late Ottoman İzmir

Onur İnal of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna on “Gateway to the Mediterranean: An Environmental History o...

26:34Aug 4, 2026

Sinem Adar on Turkey's role in a fracturing Western alliance

Sinem Adar, head of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, returns to the pod...

38:51Jul 21, 2026

Hannah Lucinda Smith on Turkey, Russia and Europe's hinterlands

Hannah Lucinda Smith on “Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers” (Profile Books). The book is based on vivid reporting...

45:19Jun 23, 2026

Doruk Erhan on the limits of Turkey's shift to autocracy

Doruk Erhan, doctoral candidate at Yale Law School and visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Pri...

36:10Jun 9, 2026

Jennifer Hattam on writing the Lonely Planet guide to Turkey

Long-time Istanbul-based journalist Jennifer Hattam on her work updating the Lonely Planet travel guide to Turkey. The conversation touches...

33:59May 26, 2026

Brett Wilson on the myth and reality of modern Turkey's religious reforms

Brett Wilson, associate professor of history and public policy at Central European University, on his article ”Sufi Leaders in the early Tur...

39:56May 12, 2026

Suzy Hansen on Turkey and an Istanbul neighborhood in the age of Erdoğan

Suzy Hansen on “From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The book focuses...

48:57Apr 28, 2026

Faisal Devji on the crisis of 'global Islam' in Turkey and elsewhere

Faisal Devji on “Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam” (Yale University Press). The book argues that in the late 19th and earl...

34:22Apr 14, 2026

Ryan Gingeras on organised crime in Turkey's modern history

Ryan Gingeras, author of “Mafia: A Global History” (Simon & Schuster) and “Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey” (Oxford...

38:40Mar 31, 2026

Mustafa Aksakal on World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire

Mustafa Aksakal, associate professor of history at Georgetown University, on “The War that Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of...

38:44Mar 17, 2026

Michelle Lynn Kahn on Turkish migration to Germany

Michelle Lynn Kahn on “Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration and Turkish-German History” (Cambridge University Press). Please s...

30:01Mar 3, 2026

Murat Yıldız on the Ottoman world of sports, modernisation and minorities

Murat Yıldız, associate professor of history at Skidmore College, on “The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities...

42:19Feb 17, 2026

Berin Gür on the conquest of Istanbul in the Islamist-nationalist imagination

Berin Gür on “The Conquest of Istanbul and the Manipulation of Architecture: The Islamist-Nationalist Rhetoric of Conquest and Melancholy” (...

30:15Feb 3, 2026

Adnan Khan on the human toll of Turkey's importing of Europe's waste

Journalist Adnan Khan on the spectacular growth of Turkey's plastic waste imports and the role of migrant labour in the sector. His work pai...

37:41Jan 20, 2026

Burcu Karahan on sexual freedom and women in late Ottoman fiction

Burcu Karahan on her translation of “One Thousand and One Kisses: The Most Joyous and Flirtatious Stories” (Translation Attached). The book...

32:19Jan 6, 2026