History of Modern Turkey

Episode 413

with Nathalie Clayer, Fabio Giomi, and Emmanuel Szurek

hosted by Andreas Guidi

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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.

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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

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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.

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Episode 398

with Şevket Pamuk

hosted by Matthew Ghazarian

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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.

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Episode 387

with Nefin Dinç

hosted by Chris Gratien

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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."

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Episode 386

with Suzy Hansen

hosted by Chris Gratien

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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.

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