Turkey Archives - Public Seminar

Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey

AI offers an opportunity for protest in a political environment where even seemingly innocuous content can carry risks

June 18, 2025 • by Selin Bengi Gümrükçü

The ongoing protests in Turkey, triggered by the detention of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, following the annulment of his university diploma by Istanbul University, constitute the largest cycle of political mobilization Turkey has witnessed since the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Even though the mayor was in prison, his party, ...

Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey

Democracy

What Is Illiberal Democracy?

Scholars discuss Trump, Modi, and Erdoğan

February 20, 2025 • by Senem Aydin-Düzgit, Mark Frazier, Jeffrey C. Isaac and Pratap Bhanu Mehta

In November 2024, the India China Institute at The New School hosted the online panel "Trajectories of Authoritarianism in Democratic Regimes," which featured scholars Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Senem Aydin-Düzgit, and Jeffrey C. Isaac in conversation with moderator Mark W. Frazier about patterns of takeover, decay, and distrust of political institutions ...

Democracy

From Erdoğan’s Turkey to Trump’s America

What we can learn from a parallel history

February 7, 2025 • by Phyllis Jeffrey

In 2002, voters in Turkey—reeling from an economic crisis that halved the value of the Turkish lira and produced a 7.5 percent drop in GDP—elected a new party by a plurality: 34.3 percent of the vote. Though hardly a resounding mandate, the margin enabled the party, an Islamist offshoot led by ...

From Erdoğan’s Turkey to Trump’s America

Democracy

The 2023 Turkish Elections—A Roller Coaster Ride between Hope and Despair

The opponents of Erdogan feel “ghosted” by their leaders

June 14, 2023 • by Selin Bengi Gümrükçü

About a week after the runoff of the Turkish presidential elections in 2023, I had a vivid dream. In this dream, the elections extended to a third round, scheduled for a few weeks later, and the dates for diaspora voting were yet to be released. As a diaspora voter myself, ...

The 2023 Turkish Elections—A Roller Coaster Ride between Hope and Despair

Social Research

Conspiracy Thinking, the New Issue of Social Research

The New School journal introduces its latest issue

November 10, 2022 • by Social Research

The Fall 2022 issue of Social Research tackles the subject of conspiracy thinking, from ungoverning to elective affinity....

Conspiracy Thinking, the New Issue of <em>Social Research</em>

Democracy

How the Republic Of Letters Was Killed In Turkey

Democracies are not just dying in the world; they are being killed deliberately in order to contain resistance and lengthen the life span of corrupt regimes

January 31, 2022 • by Ayşe Kadıoğlu

On a mellow Oxford evening in 2005, my colleague from Nuffield College wanted to show me some Oxford architectural gems after a concert at the Sheldonian Theatre. We walked towards the entrance to the Proscholium of the Bodleian Library in the Schools Quadrangle, where I saw for the first time ...

How the Republic Of Letters Was Killed In Turkey

Democracy

Turkey’s Final Exam on Freedom

Boğaziçi University fights the authoritarian regime

January 12, 2022 • by Berna Turam

In September 2010, several years before serving as the prime minister of Turkey (2014–16), Ahmet Davutoğlu visited Boston. At that time, he was Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs and a member of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP). Upon his arrival, he invited a small ...

Columnists

In Defense of Democracy

From Israel to Peru, there are lots of moving pieces in the world right now

June 14, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ President Joe Biden is currently in England, participating in a meeting of the G7, an informal group of wealthy democracies including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The participants have issued a statement reinforcing their shared commitment to “democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of ...

Politics

The Struggle at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Attacks on higher education tighten the grip of the AKP’s hegemonic project

April 1, 2021 • by Birgan Gokmenoglu

_____ Late at night on January 1, 2021, by presidential decree, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed new rectors to five universities in Turkey. One was Professor Melih Bulu, who became rector of the prestigious Boğaziçi University. This liberal and pluralist institution hosts dissident students and faculty, including many connected to Academics for Peace, ...

The Struggle at Turkey’s Boğaziçi University

Democracy

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately

February 3, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Our effort to create and nourish a “world-wide committee of democratic correspondence” began long before the coronavirus laid waste to our world. And as a world-wide network, our efforts have always involved a strong online component. For the web affords our far-flung group many opportunities for the sharing of ideas ...

Confronting the World Wide Threat of Right Wing Authoritarianism

Democracy

The Seamy Side of the Politics of Small Things

Turkey Poland, China, the United States and beyond

December 22, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I recognized that the reviewer had a point and decided to answer the question by adding a chapter: “2004: The Church, the Right and the Politics of Small Things.” In it, I showed how micro-politics, politics in the details of social interaction, in churches with links to the Republican Party, ...

The Seamy Side of the Politics of Small Things

Democracy

On Repression and Resistance

December 8, 2020 • by Aysen Candas

I would like to start by thanking the New University in Exile Consortium, particularly the Consortium's marvelous director, Prof. Arien Mack. Thanks to Arien's persistent efforts, uprooted academics from all over the world find their voice in a new community of like-minded scholars. I would also like to thank Prof. ...