The Passenger: Turkey

The Passenger

• Publisher: The Passenger
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781609456566
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Turkish culture and history is explored in the wide-ranging series that is "like a literary vacation" ( Publishers Weekly ). The birth of the "New Turkey, " as the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called his own creation, is an exemplary story of the rise of "illiberal democracies" through the erosion of civil liberties, press freedom, and the independence of the judicial system. Turkey was a complex country long before the rise of its new sultan: Born out of the ashes of a vast multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire, Turkey has grappled through its relatively short history with the definition of its own identity. Poised between competing ideologies, secularism and piousness, a militaristic nationalism and exceptional openness to foreigners, Turkey defies easy labels and categories. Through the voices of some of its best writers and journalists—many of them in self-imposed exile— The Passenger: Turkey tries to make sense of this fascinating, maddening country, analyzing how it got to where it is now, and finding the bright spots of hope that allow its always resourceful, often frustrated population to continue living, and thriving. In this volume: The Big Dig by Elif Batuman A Story of Dust and Light by Burhan Sönmez An Author Recommends by Elif Shafak Plus: the thirty-year coup and the dam that is washing away 12, 000 years of history, and more.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Turkey
• Contents
• Turkey in Numbers
• The National Obsession — Kaleydoskop
• The Icon: Bülent Ersoy — Kaleydoskop
• The Big Dig — Elif Batuman
• Don’t Call Them Soap Operas — Fatima Bhutto
• Turkey’s Thirty-Year Coup — Dexter Filkins
• Business à la Turca — Alev Scott
• Eros and Thanatos at the Restaurant — Sema Kaygusuz
• Of Jinns and Light — Burhan Sönmez
• The Roots of Turkish Nationalism — Gerhard Schweizer
• Washing Away History: Hasankeyf and the Ilısu Dam — Ercan y Yılmaz
• ‘I Rap Istanbul’: From Kreuzberg to Turkey and Back — Begüm Kovulmaz
• The Sharp End of the Pencil: Satire in the Age of Erdoğan — Valentina Marcella
• Ultras United: How the Gezi Park Protests Brought the Fans Together — Stephen Wood
• A Sign of the Times — Kaleydoskop
• An Author Recommends — Elif Shafak
• The Playlist — Açık Radyo and Kaleydoskop
• Explore Further
• Copyright