S07E01: Ulrike Flad­er on Turkey at the Crossroads

This episode explores the far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions of the recent Turk­ish elec­tions. In a close­ly con­test­ed elec­tion, Pres­i­dent Erdoğan has won a third term in office, dash­ing hopes of a return to a lib­er­al, sec­u­lar, pro-Euro­pean gov­ern­ment in Turkey. What led to this result espe­cial­ly after the impact of the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake and plum­met­ing val­ue of the Turk­ish lira? And what aspects of soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism play a role in the country’s cur­rent polit­i­cal conditions?

Guest fea­tured in this episode: 

Ulrike Flad­er is a lec­tur­er in social anthro­pol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men. She’s also a post­doc­tor­al researcher in the research group on soft author­i­tar­i­an­ism. Ulrike earned her Ph.D. at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and has worked on, but also worked in Turkey for many years. She lost her posi­tion at a pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty in Istan­bul in ear­ly 2016 due to the repres­sion towards the aca­d­e­mics for peace. Her research inter­ests are in polit­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy, focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on the anthro­pol­o­gy of the state, gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty, cit­i­zen­ship, polit­i­cal sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, social move­ments and the every­day. Her main area of exper­tise is Turk­ish pol­i­tics and soci­ety, and among her pub­li­ca­tions, let me men­tion two: “Know­ing the State and Coun­ter­ing Assim­i­la­tion” which is in print, and “Build­ing Alter­na­tive Com­mu­ni­ties With­in the State: The Kur­dish Move­ment, Local Munic­i­pal­i­ties, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Auton­o­my” which came out in 2019 togeth­er with Çetin Gürer.