History of Modern Turkey

Episode 413 with Nathalie Clayer, Fabio Giomi, and Emmanuel Szurek hosted by Andreas Guidi Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Our latest podcast in collaboration with The Southeast Passage examines how Kemalism as a political category has been used widely and often ambiguously throughout the history of the Turkish Republic in public discourse as well as in historiography. In this episode, we discuss Kemalism from an innovative transnational perspective. The making of Kemalism was embedded in hybridity and circulations involving other regions of the post-Ottoman space. Practices of governance, material objects, new conceptions of the body and gender roles, and scientific debates created a convergence of Islam and modernity which was influenced by external references but also attracted observers from surrounding countries such as Albania, Yugoslavia and Egypt. « Click for More »

Episode 411 Produced and Narrated by Chris Gratien Episode Consultant: Devin Naar Series Consultant: Emily Pope-Obeda Script Editor: Sam Dolbee with additional contributions by Devi Mays, Claudrena Harold, Victoria Saker Woeste, Sam Negri, and Louis Negri Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Leo lived in New York City with his family. Born and educated in the cosmopolitan Ottoman capital of Istanbul, he was now part of the vibrant and richly-textured social fabric of America's largest metropolis as one one of the tens of thousands of Sephardic Jews who migrated to the US. Though he spoke four languages, Leo held jobs such as garbage collector and shoeshine during the Great Depression. Sometimes he couldn't find any work at all. But his woes were compounded when immigration authorities discovered he had entered the US using fraudulent documents. Yet Leo was not alone; his story was the story of many Jewish migrants throughout the world during the interwar era who saw the gates closing before them at every turn. Through Leo and his brush with deportation, we examine the history of the US as would-be refuge for Jews facing persecution elsewhere, highlight the indelible link between anti-immigrant policy and illicit migration, and explore transformations in the history of race in New York City through the history of Leo and his family. This episode is part of our investigative series Deporting Ottoman Americans. « Click for More »

Episode 398 with Şevket Pamuk hosted by Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud What forces have governed Turkey's economic growth over the past two centuries? In this episode we speak with Şevket Pamuk about development in Turkey since 1820. In the late Ottoman period, low barriers to trade, agrarian exports, and European financial control defined the limits of economic expansion, while the transition from Empire to Republic brought more inward-looking policies aimed at protecting domestic industries. From the 1980s until the present, the Turkish government came to embrace the set of policy recommendations now called the Washington Consensus, defined by trade liberalization, privatization, and de-regulation. We discuss key moments during each of these periods, comparing Turkey to other countries around the world. We also discuss broader historical debates about Islam in economic history as well as approaches to the economic as an object of study. « Click for More »

Episode 387 with Nefin Dinç hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Antoine Köpe was never a prominent politician or public figure, but he was witness to extraordinary events. Born in late Ottoman Istanbul to French and Hungarian parents, Antoine was there to celebrate the 1908 Young Turk revolution, fight in the First World War, live under an Allied occupation, and experience the emergence of the national resistance and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Driven by an irresistible instinct to document, he produced writings, drawings, audiovisual recordings, and a 10-volume memoir of his unusual life. In this episode, our guest filmmaker Nefin Dinç shared more about the life of Antoine Köpe, which is the subject of a documentary project titled "Antoine the Fortunate." « Click for More »

Episode 386 with Suzy Hansen hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Turkey is a country that most Americans know little about, and yet the United States has played an extraordinary role in the making of modern Turkey. In this podcast, we explore this disparity of awareness and the role of the US in the history of the Middle East through the lens of an American journalist's slow realization of her own subjectivity and the myriad ways in which the US and Turkey have been intertwined. In this conversation with Suzy Hansen about her award-winning book "Notes on a Foreign Country," we critically examine the formation of journalistic and scholarly expertise, and we discuss reactions of readers and reviewers to Hansen's work. « Click for More »

Bölüm 376 Rita Ender Sunucular: Işın Taylan ve Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Mesleğiniz tarih sayfalarından silinirse ne hissedersiniz? İstanbul'da yüzlerce meslek artık yok ve yok olmaya devam ediyor. Bu bölümde, Rita Ender ile Kolay Gelsin kitabı üzerine konuşuyoruz. Kolay Gelsin Agos Gazetesi’nde 2012 - 2014 yılları arasında Meslekler ve Mekanlar adıyla yayınlanmış söyleşilerden oluşuyor ve her bir söyleşi İstanbul tarihine, esnaflığa, değişen yeme-içme kültürlerine, demografik değişikliklere ve kültür tarihine ışık tutuyor. « Click for More »

Episode 358 with Hikmet Kocamaner hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Discourses surrounding the family and morality have played an important role in modern political debates. In this episode, we discuss the politics of family in Turkey and its relationship to both religion and government policy. Our guest Hikmet Kocamaner discusses how the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs--the Diyanet--oversees a range of activities concerning the family as part of the project of a "New Turkey" championed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). In particular, we discuss family-oriented television programming related to Diyanet. While distinctively Islamic in their rhetoric, these programs in fact serve as a fascinating meeting point for various expert approaches to social issues and the family, demonstrating the complex entanglement of Islamic and secular institutions in modern Turkey. « Click for More »

Episode 342 with Selcen Coşkun Lorans Tanatar Baruh and Seda Kula Say hosted by Nilay Özlü, Susanna Ferguson and Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we discuss the history of Beyoğlu's Emek Cinema from its construction in 1884 to its 2013 destruction, which sparked major opposition among Turkish intellectuals, writers, researchers, members of the film industry, and lovers of cinema and of Beyoğlu, many of whom fought to keep this piece of Istanbul's cultural and architectural heritage. Through a wide-ranging discussion with architects and historians, this episode shows how the history of one building can speak to trajectories of urban development, violence, and transformation in Istanbul from Ottoman times until today. « Click for More »

Episode 341 with Sara Rahnama hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Seçil Yilmaz Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we explore debates about aesthetics, headwear, and dress in interwar Algeria and Turkey. Why did hats and hijabs generate so much debate among Algerian thinkers, both men and women? How did expectations about what men would wear on their heads carry different political connotations than similar debates about women's head coverings? This episode takes up the role of dress and comportment in shaping Algerian conversations about colonialism, feminism, and Islamic reform, as well as the importance of a "Turkish model" in interwar Algerian debates. « Click for More »

Episode 337 with Kalliopi Amygdalou hosted by Michael Talbot Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud During the late Ottoman period, the diverse and vibrant Aegean ports of Izmir (Smyrna) and Thessaloniki (Salonica) experienced rapid growth and transformation through the increased interconnection of the Mediterranean world and the rise of maritime trade. But in the tumultuous final decade of the Ottoman period, both cities witnessed political and demographic upheaval as well as outright destruction by fire. With Thessaloniki permanently incorporated into Greece and Izmir into the new Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two cities seemed destined to follow different paths. Yet as our guest Kalliopi Amygdalou explains, interesting comparisons and parallels between the development of Izmir and Thessaloniki endured even after they ceased to be part of a unified Ottoman polity. In this episode, we follow the story of urban and architectural transformation in Izmir and Thessaloniki after the decade of war between the Balkan Wars (1912-13) and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey and the period that followed in the two cities under a transition from empire to nation-state. « Click for More »

Episode 321 with Peter McMurray hosted by Nir Shafir and Huma Gupta Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud What is the aural possibility of Islamic life in European cities today? This special episode begins with a ten-minute segment from an audio composition crafted by our guest, musicologist Peter McMurray, from recent field recordings and ethnographies he conducted among various Turkish communities in Berlin. As the discussion progresses we weave in and out of two discussions. First, we look at the means by which Turkish migrants from the Alevi, Shi’i, and Sufi communities use the different private and public spaces of the city as a stage for their religiosity. We add to this a second discussion of how ethnography, aesthetics, and the aural intersect in scholarship today. « Click for More »

Episode 299 with Angela Andersen hosted by Chris Gratien and Shireen Hamza Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we approach the religious architecture of the Alevis, to examine how practice shapes architectural space and how socioeconomic change transforms such spaces. Many of our episodes on Ottoman History Podcast have focused on how monumental architecture, such as mosques and other buildings of religious significance, are tied to political transformation and expressions of political power and ideology. Taking a different perspective, our guest, Angela Andersen, researches the history and development of Alevi architectural forms in Turkey and abroad. Historically, Alevi religious practice and cem ceremonies took place in homes and other multi-purpose buildings, which could be configured as ad hoc meeting places for local communities during the communal cem ceremony. But with Alevi urban migration to cities in Turkey, Germany, and elsewhere, the creation of a "permanent address" for Alevis has emerged in the form of community centers providing a number of services, including designated rooms or halls for the cem. In this episode, we trace the genealogy of the modern cemevi to older contexts of Alevi religious practice and consider the role played by the cemevi in Turkey's new political landscape. « Click for More »

Episode 293 with Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal hosted by Nir Shafir featuring additional material by Samuel Dolbee Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud The Opium Wars and the massive trade in opium between South Asia and China over the nineteenth century attest to the prominent role of opium within the history of colonialism and globalization. But it is less well known that in the early twentieth century, the Republic of Turkey became the largest exporter of opium in the world. In this episode we speak with Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal about how and why opium became an export commodity in Turkey and how Turkish citizens smuggled the substance out once it became formally illegal. Along the way we gain a glimpse into the economic history of the young republic, the legal life of its citizens abroad, and how these smuggling operations built new forms of cosmopolitanism from the ground up as the Turkish republic became less and less accommodating for non-Muslims. « Click for More »

Episode 290 with Emmanuel Szurek   hosted by Chris Gratien and Aurélie Perrier   featuring Seçil Yılmaz and Nir Shafir Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud National language politics and the transformation of literacy have effected major changes in both spoken and written language over the course of the last century, but few languages have changed as dramatically as modern Turkish. The reform of the language from the 1920s onward, which not only replaced the Ottoman alphabet with a new Latin-based alphabet but also led to a radical transformation of the lexicon and grammar, has been described by Geoffrey Lewis as "catastrophic success" due to the extreme but unquestionably successful nature of this attempt to revolutionize language in Turkey. In this episode, we talk to Emmanuel Szurek about his research on the politics of the alphabet change, the language reforms, and the surname laws of the early Republican period. Our extended interview is followed by a brief conversation in French about the history of French Turcology. Release Date: 4 January 2017 « Click for More »

with Lerna Ekmekçioğluhosted by Chris Gratien, Nir Shafir, and Eda Çakmakçı Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud After facing the destruction of their community during the First World War, former Ottoman Armenians set about rebuilding in Turkey first during a period of relative optimism under the Allied occupation of Istanbul and later as non-Muslim citizens of new Turkish nation-state. In her new work entitled Recovering Armenia, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu explores the changes and continuities in the identity of Istanbul's Armenian community during this transformative period. In this interview, we explore Armenian collective politics, feminist movements, and expressions of loyalty through the Armenian press and through the writings of women in particular, and we examine the issue of Armenian belonging in Turkey through the lens of "secular dimmitude" among non-Muslim citizens of a predominantly Muslim but secular republic. « Click for More »

with Kishwar Rizvihosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud As spaces fundamental to Muslim religious and communal life, mosques have historically served as sites of not just architectural but also ideological construction. As our guest Kishwar Rizvi argues in her latest book entitled The Transnational Mosque (UNC Press 2015), states operating in transnational contexts have taken a leading role in the building of mosques and in doing so, they forge political, economic, and architectural networks that span the globe. In this episode, we discuss the architectural exports of the four states covered in Prof. Rizvi's monograph: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to situating and comparing transnational mosques of different states, we give special attention to the rise of Neo-Ottoman architecture in modern Turkey and its role in re-branding Turkey's image on the global stage. « Click for More »

with Sarah-Neel Smithhosted by Nicholas Danforth Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud Although artistic production occurs in a political context, art and politics are often studied as separate fields of historical inquiry. Our guest in this episode, Dr. Sarah-Neel Smith, offers a reflection on the close relationship between art and politics in Turkey through a discussion of her research on the figure of Bülent Ecevit. As a politician, Ecevit is remembered for his four stints as Prime Minister of Turkey and his prominent positions in the Republican People's Party (CHP) and later in the Democratic Left Party (DSP). Yet during the early years of his career, Ecevit was also extremely active in intellectual pursuits as a writer and art critic. In this episode, Dr. Smith explores the intellectual life of Bülent Ecevit and the link between debates about art and culture and the development of democratic politics in Turkey during the 1950s. « Click for More »

with Sylvia Wing Önder hosted by Chris Gratien and Seçil Yılmaz Download the episode Podcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud The subject of health in the modern period is often discussed as a transition from traditional to scientific medicine and what Foucault has called "the birth of the clinic." Such perspectives view medicine and healing through the lens of changing methods, forms of knowledge, and types of authority. In this podcast, our guest Sylvia Wing Önder offers a slightly different approach to the subject in a discussion of her monograph "We Have No Microbes Here (Carolina Academic Press, 2007)," looking at continuities in the centrality of households and women in making decisions about medical care within a Black Sea village. « Click for More »

with Nazan Maksudyan hosted by Susanna Ferguson Download the episode Podcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud In the 1920s and 1930s, politicians, intellectuals, and members of the public joined a lively debate about the issue of female suicide in Turkey. While we cannot know whether the rates of female suicide were actually skyrocketing during this period, the fact that so many public figures began to treat this issue as a central concern tells us a lot about the relationship between the modernizing state of Early Republican Turkey and the women whom it governed. In this episode, Nazan Maksudyan explores what might have provoked this debate, what it might say about the state and its relationship to women, gender, and the female body, and how women themselves might have used suicide as a means of asserting their agency. « Click for More »

with Aslı Iğsız hosted by Chris Gratien and Nicholas Danforth Countries, much like companies, must seek to present a certain image to the outside world in order to achieve political and economic goals. As our guest, Aslı Iğsız, demonstrates, this self-presentation can take the form of full-fledged marketing campaigns. In this episode, we explore the marketing policies and strategies adopted in Turkey and the broader Middle East during the past two decades and reflect on how they various match, contradict, and intersect with politics in practice. « Click for More »