This panel will present a conversation about the current political context in Turkey, in the wake of popular protests (Gezi and its follow-ups), parliamentary and presidential elections (which have strengthened the hand of the ruling AK Party), and regional politics (particularly the horror of Syria and the rise of ISIS).

Panelists:

Burcu Baykurt is a PhD candidate in Communications at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she studies how technological change is affecting cultures of policymaking, journalism, and politics. She has written about and worked with citizen journalist networks in Turkey such as 140journos.

Ayça Çubukçu is Assistant Professor in Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Previously, she taught for the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University and the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at The Graduate Center. She is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya’s Turkey Page.

Aslı Iğsız is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Her teaching and research interests include cultural representation and cultural history, narratives of war and displacement, and dynamics of heterogeneity in late Ottoman and contemporary Turkish contexts.

Duygu Parmaksizoglu is a PhD candidate in the anthropology department at The Graduate Center. She recently conducted a year-long field study of urban redevelopment/gentrification in Istanbul. While doing research, she actively participated in the Gezi demonstrations of June 2013, and in the aftermath, she served as one of the spokespersons of the Urban Movements Istanbul Organization.

Cihan Tekay is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at The Graduate Center. Her research interests include gender and the labor movement, secularism and nationalism within the left, and the history of social movements in Turkey. She has been active in various social movements in the US and in Turkey, including antiracist, feminist, ecological, anticapitalist, and international solidarity work. She is a contributor to the Turkish daily Radikal and to Mashallah News, and is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya’s Turkey Page.

Emrah Yildiz is a Joint PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. His research interests include historiography and ethnography of borderlands, anthropology of Islam and pilgrimage, political economy and contraband commerce, as well as studies of gender and sexuality in the Middle East. He is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya’s Turkey Page, and co-editor of the collection “Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey.