Since coming to power in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has overseen a radical transformation of Turkey. The initial drive to deepen democratic rule, human and minority rights, sustained by the aspiration to join the EU, has given way to a one-man rule. Once a pillar of the Western alliance, Turkey now sees itself as a self-standing power poised between Russia, on the one hand, and Europe and the US, on the other.
The launch of Dimitar Bechev’s Turkey under Erdoğan traces the country’s political trajectory from the era of reform and prosperity in the 2000s to the effects of the war in neighboring Syria, and to the genesis of the populist-nationalist regime led by an all-powerful president. The panel debated the political and economic challenges Turkey faces ahead of the crucial elections in 2023 as well as the sources of democratic resilience within its society.
Meet our speaker, discussants and chair
Dimitar Bechev (@DimitarBechev) is the Russian and Eastern European Studies (REES) Affiliate at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. His research interests are the politics of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey as well as Russian foreign policy. Amongst his recent books are Turkey under Erdoğan (Yale University Press, 2022), Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (Rowman, 2019), Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe (Yale University Press, 2017) and co-editor of Russia Rising: Putin's Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomsbury, 2021). He is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was senior fellow at the Centre for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2016-20) and before that senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and held visiting fellowships at Harvard's Centre for European Studies, the London School of Economics and Political Science and Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Dimitar holds a DPhil in International Relations from Oxford.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu (@ulu_manitu) is a Lecturer in Politics of the Middle East at SOAS, University of London. Previously, he was a visiting scholar at the University of São Paulo and a lecturer at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), convening courses on International Development and Middle East in Global Politics. His research interests include comparative politics of democratisation and autocratisation, regime guardianship, civil-military relations and Turkey’s foreign policy. His latest publications are “The Five Phases of Turkey's Foreign Policy under the AKP” (Social Research, 2021) and “Brazil’s Stealth Military Intervention” (Journal of Politics in Latin America, 2022). His forthcoming monograph is titled Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey: Tutelary Consolidation, Popular Contestation (Edinburgh UP, 2023). Karabekir has a BA in History from Brown University, MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Government from LSE.
Amberin Zaman (@amberinzaman) is a senior correspondent reporting from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe exclusively for Al-Monitor. Zaman has been a columnist for Al-Monitor for the past five years, examining the politics of Turkey, Iraq and Syria and writing the daily Briefly Turkey newsletter. Prior to Al-Monitor, Zaman covered Turkey, the Kurds and conflicts in the region for The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times and the Voice of America. She served as The Economist's Turkey correspondent between 1999 and 2016, and has worked as a columnist for several Turkish language outlets.
Kevin Featherstone is the Director of the Hellenic Observatory at LSE.
More about this event
LSEE (@LSEE_LSE ) was officially launched at the start of the 2009-10 academic year as a research unit established within LSE's European Institute. Over the last several years LSEE has developed the School's expertise on South East Europe, drawing on the strength of existing and new academic expertise at the LSE.
A book sale counter was be set up outside the venue with Dr Dimitar Bechev's Turkey under Erdoğan: How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West available for purchase.
Online attendance is unavailable for this event. The event will not be recorded.
The twitter Hashtag for this event is: #LSEETURKEY