Ayşe Zarakol
@AyseZarakol
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IR & historical sociology. Prof @Dept_of_POLIS, AE @IntOrgJournal. Istanbul-Middlebury-NYC-Madison-Chicago-VA-DC-Cambridge etc. Agent: Eric Henney (Brockman).
Joined December 2018
Regular Turks trying to work out how their government really works, based on YouTube revelations from (exiled) major organised crime boss who had a falling out with his state allies
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Erdoğan seems to have concluded -likely rightly-that the international environment is permissive enough for him to do whatever he wants. Pretence is no longer required.
JUST IN: Police in Turkey have detained Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main rivals.
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The 10YearsChallenge fad has generated a micro-trend in Turkish Twitter where women are sharing stories of how they abandoned the headscarf. Should be studied, given the fact that current political, economic and social climate reward the opposite (re both the act & the sharing).
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On the occasion of his 7th video today, I have decided to do a thread about the IR side of Sedat Peker's allegations. It will be a long thread but hopefully will convince observers to pay more attention to this developing story.
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Before the West is officially out today (I got my author's copies yesterday). Available as paperback or hardcover: (never mind that it still says pre-order). Use code ZARAKOL22 for a 20% discount.
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🙏.
We are so excited to announce that the winner of this year's Yale H. Ferguson Award is Professor Ayşe Zarakol (@AyseZarakol) for "Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders.". Congratulations to Professor Zarakol!
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Like Johnson I too studied classics in a prior life, so I appreciate his personal commitment to educate the public of major concepts in Greek tragedy such as peripeteia (ironic reversal of fortunes) and hamartia (tragic character flaw which brings one’s downfall, e.g. hubris).
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𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭 is about a year old now. To mark the anniversary, I thought I'd do a pinned tweet with some news from the last 12 months for any potential readers and syllabus makers . (Everyone else, please ignore/mute).
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Heather(@h_m_webb) and I became good friends during the 1997/8 academic year a @Middlebury. And now we are both promoted to Grade 12 Professors at Cambridge at the same time, 25 years later! 🙂🎉
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Delighted to celebrate the 2nd birthday of Before the West by announcing it will be receiving the 2024 ISA John Ruggie Annual Best Book Award (Given that I would never have set on this path if not for "Territoriality and Beyond" I am especially touched)
𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭 is about a year old now. To mark the anniversary, I thought I'd do a pinned tweet with some news from the last 12 months for any potential readers and syllabus makers . (Everyone else, please ignore/mute).
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I wonder if I am the only Turkish person living abroad who wears seatbelts in the back seat everywhere else in the world, but does not when in an Istanbul taxi, the place where one needs it most, because the driver would be offended. Definition of irrationality. 😀.
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My grandmother Sueda Gelgün left us today. She was a very special person. Loved to travel. Really knew her own mind. May she rest in peace (1924-2021). Allah rahmet eylesin. [Photo is from my PhD graduation in Madison which she traveled to from Istanbul as an 80+]
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Personal thread. Today is the 5th anniversary of my father's passing: Cihan Zarakol (19/09/49 - 10/03/16). He was an artist and a collector, but above all, a student of history. When he died, very suddenly, I was on research leave, about to start drafting my next book (1/7)
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Dear prospective PhD students: if you can’t be bothered to write an email without the help of AI, what makes you think you will be happy doing a PhD? If you don’t have sth genuine to say to the potential supervisor, generic emails are worse than no contact.
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Very honoured 🙏.
The British Academy is delighted to welcome 86 new Fellows!. We are first and foremost a Fellowship organisation, going all the way back to our founding by Royal Charter in 1902 - our Fellows truly are the heartbeat of the Academy.
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Onur duydum - beyond chuffed!.
Bu akşam düzenlenen tören ile 2023 yılı Koç Üniversitesi Rahmi M. Koç Bilim Madalyası, tarihsel sosyoloji ve uluslararası ilişkiler kesişiminde Doğu-Batı ilişkileri, dünya düzen(ler)inin tarihi ve geleceği, modernite ve egemenlik konularında insani bilimlere yaptığı yenilikçi ve
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Very pleased to pick up the 2024 ISA John Ruggie Best Book award together with Jordanna Matlon
Delighted to celebrate the 2nd birthday of Before the West by announcing it will be receiving the 2024 ISA John Ruggie Annual Best Book Award (Given that I would never have set on this path if not for "Territoriality and Beyond" I am especially touched)
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Before the West is the recipient of the 2023 Alan Sharlin Memorial Award from the Social Science History Association. Hard to celebrate anything in these depressing times but I am grateful for the recognition and hope this is the first of many wins for historical IR…
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Ruggie’s towering influence will be rightly claimed by most IR subfields, but his legacy for hist IR theory can’t be overestimated. This is probably the article I’ve most reread in my life (for insight & as a how-to). Don’t think I’m alone in that. RIP
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I can attest from personal experience that Yeni Raki's ad campaign targeting a certain segment of Turkish diaspora is 100% effective advertising 🎯.
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I do appreciate the effort by my adopted country to make me feel at home since I arrived in 2013 by electing worse and worse PMs, tanking the economy, devaluing the currency etc. Not quite there yet but it's the thought that counts 🙃.
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Today I got to participate in a vaccine trial! It is rare that my self-interest, personal ethics and various ideological stances all converge so harmoniously in one act, and it is very satisfying 🙂
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Today is the day - our team starts at @IntOrgJournal. (Many thanks to @ErikVoeten and the outgoing team!).Look forward to working with @thwillow, @BAshleyLeeds and @PeterRosendorff to carry on the IO traditions and perhaps even creating some of our own. .
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I was the last social scientist from Turkey who had not weighed on the upcoming elections, but no more 🙂 Wrote about how people of Turkey deserve credit for never giving up the fight for democracy, with no support from the international community.
If the Turkish opposition wins more votes than President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the credit will belong wholly to the citizens of Turkey, who have demonstrated their dogged belief in democracy, says @AyseZarakol.
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Today is the centennial of the Republic of Turkey (Image from the 1st parliament, (re)formed in Ankara in 1920 when the Ottoman one was dissolved during Istanbul’s occupation after WWI. It abolished the Ott. monarchy in 1922 and proclaimed the republic 100 years ago today)
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Another accessible one this Monday in an Asia-Pacific friendly time zone (2 pm Beijing time). Love the poster.
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I've been elected a member of The Academy of Europe (@academiaeuropea) - many thanks to @antje_wiener for the nomination! @Dept_of_POLIS @EmmaCambridge .
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Very much looking forward to working with @BAshleyLeeds, @thwillow and @PeterRosendorff at @IntOrgJournal from July 2022. One of my/our goals will be to further globalise the reach of the journal.
Important announcement: Starting July 1st a new editorial team will take charge of @IntOrgJournal. @BAshleyLeeds & @thwillow will be Editors-In-Chief and @AyseZarakol & @PeterRosendorff will be associate editors for the next five years! @CUP_PoliSci
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The British Academy Knowledge Frontiers stream has funded our two year project to bring IR & History together to study global periods of historical disorder globally (2023-2025) 🙂@Dept_of_POLIS @HistoryIr
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So many things going on in this 5 second video.
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A new professorial quintet at Polis 🙂(Cambridge upgraded our titles, official October 1st)
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Will be at Yale September 11-15, doing three talks. This is one of them (the other two on newer projects)
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I enjoy the word inshallah (god-willing) and miss it in English, not because I am religious (never meant it literally), but because it is a symbolic recognition that all plans are contingent on forces beyond one's control. It is a reminder that agency depends on structure.
The inshallah/mashallah belt. (Though in the Balkans outside Turkey, it's mostly mashallah) . Source:
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New article alert (on why I prefer ‘world order’ over ‘international order’). The forum it is in —‘Rethinking International Order’ — was organised by Ian Hurd and features many great articles .
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I think I may have written this chapter even before my book, but here it is freshly out in The Oxford Handbook of History and International Relations 🙂 (eds. Mlada Bukovansky, Edward Keene, Christian Reus-Smit, Maja Spanu, 2023) .
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My father would have turned 73 today. It makes me very happy that he is still reaching new people in a way. İyi ki doğdun baba…
Personal thread. Today is the 5th anniversary of my father's passing: Cihan Zarakol (19/09/49 - 10/03/16). He was an artist and a collector, but above all, a student of history. When he died, very suddenly, I was on research leave, about to start drafting my next book (1/7)
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Americans should remember that if they came this close to ‘Turkey’ etc., ‘Turkey’ etc is also this close to the US. Our countries also have people fighting for democracy, getting votes counted, free press etc & they have been holding it together for much longer than 4 years.
just for a couple days i implore pundits to avoid this liberal version of "we're not some shithole country"
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Our wonderful undergraduates at @Dept_of_POLIS have a peer-reviewed journal for undergraduates (from anywhere in the world). They have recently published their 8th issue and are seeking submissions for Issue 9. Do let your students know!.
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Others may think they are under a pressure to publish but imagine working with a Head of Department who publishes great books at a rate faster than most of us publish articles! Joking aside, this looks excellent @APhillipsIntRel (& TwitterLess Jason). Cannot wait to read it!
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There is nothing yet comparable to Twitter for publicising academic events and new publications. If it goes down fully and is not replaced it will be a real loss, especially in IR. It may be particularly bad for junior scholars and those at less nodal institutions 🙄.
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Continuing the spelling theme of the day, a supposedly international organisation still cannot spell names with nonstandard Latin letters correctly, despite it being the year 2020 and the age of computers and what not.
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I am proud of the book I ended up writing as a result but naturally this is bittersweet. Last week I got word from CUP that the book is officially forthcoming, and I wanted to make the news public on this day to honour the memory of my father (3/7)
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Embarrassing for us all. Cambridge professor remains in post despite plagiarism
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Our new symposium out in International Theory on Global IR and how it can avoid the essentialism trap (tl;dr we recommend more global history! On that I also had a nice chat with @GlendaSluga and @HeidiTworek which should be out from @ToynbeePrize soon).
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A Defence of Macro-History in International Relations (adapted from Before the West)
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This Friday - Oxford - presenting the current (and hopefully exciting) version of a paper @JonAskonas and I have been working on for a long time, on IR theory and the concept of nature. Looking forward.
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History and IR meet again in Florence to discuss order and disorder in the 19th century . (
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'Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million North Caucasian Muslims sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. This resettlement of Muslim refugees from Russia changed the Ottoman state. Circassians, Chechens, Dagestanis, and others established hundreds of refugee villages'.
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Tonight I got a chance to see my wonderful PhD students together, in person, for the first time since early March. Times are tough for ECR networking, with cancelled 'everything', so I thought I'd say a word to (re)introduce them.
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Happy to report that Cambridge IR & History Working Group is still going on strong. On Friday we’ll have an *in person* recovery conference to make up for the 2 we had to cancel. We will be welcoming new @Dept_of_POLIS of colleagues and reuniting with friends beyond Cambridge.
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‘They found it in Turkey, an unusual candidate among the sellers of citizenship. With a population of 80 million and a powerful military, it is one of the 20 strongest economies in the world. Yet today it welcomes more than half of the world’s citizenship buyers.’.
Interesting piece on the global industry of selling citizenship. In Turkey, tens of thousands of people every year purchase Turkish citizenship in return for buying real estate worth at least $400,000.
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Our article for IO 75th year special issue is now online & free access until March 2021. @RebAdlerNissen @Dept_of_POLIS ‘Struggles for Recognition: The Liberal International Order and the Merger of Its Discontents’
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Verified: in-person conference are a million times better than zoom conferences
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I've tried to collect the photos I've seen shared (and they are shared widely). Some of the women say first they fought the headscarf ban (now lifted) and then fought the headscarf. Fascinating local appropriation of a global social media trend.
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Turkish opposition leader Özel criticises Starmer for silence over İmamoğlu’s arrest, says they will block Labour’s readmission to Socialist International.
Özgür Özel:. "İngiliz İşçi Partisi şimdi 'Demokrasiden yanayız' diye açıklama yapıyor. Şimdi o İşçi Partisi, bu darbeye sessiz kalmanın karşılığını Sosyalist Enternasyonal'e girmek istediğinde benden görecek. O zaman sen bana hesap vereceksin."
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I will happily watch the Napoleon movie but let's note that there are many more figures in Asian history who better embody the tagline 'He came from nothing. He conquered everything' 🙂 In fact, Napoleon himself identified with Nader Shah (r. 1737-47) .
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Global IR section honouring Barry Buzan, Christina Rojas and Shiping Tang (@ShipingTang) as distinguished scholars
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And here is the workshop flier! A great group of IR scholars and historians will be discussing disorder and order in the 19th century…
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Good things still happen: my PhD student Jaakko Heiskanen was examined today by Jens Bartelson (via Skype) and David Sneath, and passed without corrections. This is a rare of photo of him smiling.
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England, I’m very fond of you most of the time, but this is simply unacceptable on May 8
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We started writing this article in 2017, while I was visiting in Copenhagen. Many twists & turns since then but I think the core argument holds up really well. Also very grateful for the constructive feedback we've received along the way. .
Yay! @AyseZarakol and I are super happy that our article "Struggles for Recognition: The International Liberal Order and the Merger of its Discontents" is accepted in @IntOrgJournal with a pre-print posted here:
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Istanbul with the ontological security crowd for the first time thanks to Bahar Rumelili and Dmitry Chernobrov (Jelena and Brent didn’t make the group photo)
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The aim of this workshop is to investigate the full spectrum of agency beyond the West. To apply, please send an abstract of no more than 350 words and a short bio to: beyondthewest23@gmail.com.
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My thanks to @samhaselby for the opportunity to reach a wider audience (I often use aeon essays as texts to discuss during college admissions interviews).
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3 recent documentaries that I think can be used in IR teaching as supplementary resources: in its own way each is a connected history of global modernity. All weave personal stories with structural accounts. The combo would make for great discussion 🙂
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Cambridge and nearby folks: we have a great public event coming up on September 23. Register here (It's free):
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Repeat PSA: If you are asked to review something by a journal, just give an answer, yes or no. You are just holding everyone up (and especially ECRs) at least a week by ignoring the email. All you have to do is click a link! Saying no quickly is 100 times better than no answer.
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Have been fighting with a UK university for over a month to get my examiner's fee. Have had to jump through endless hoops to prove I have a 'right to work' in the UK as if me doing a viva for them is somehow them employing me (for £100!) rather than me doing them a favour 🙄.
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This Wednesday - looking forward to seeing friends in Montreal
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Congratulations to Dr Lucas Paes, who just passed his viva after a 3 hour grilling by Profs Nexon & Sharman. It was all jovial by the time I joined in. Lucas' thesis is on how network hierarchies shape regional and global orders & he has already started his new postdoc at NUPI!
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Save the date: 17 May 2019, Cambridge IR/History WG All day conference: Order and Disorder in International Politics. Registration is free.
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So many great books have been nominated for the 2024 APSA Jervis-Schroeder award
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Women’s International Thought: compelling reading even in the summer! @leverhulmewhit @Hkinsella6 @OrRosenboim @lucian_ashworth
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My hardcopy of @APhillipsIntRel’s marvellous How the East was Won has finally arrived. Get yours today (also available in pb) and pair it with Before the West like Ollie here @CUP_PoliSci
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Everybody who is claiming this is nature purposefully correcting itself for the excesses of modernity, technology or industry must have a great explanation for the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian also.
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Always proud of my mother @nzarakol who got a lifetime service award from the Turkish Journalism Association today (as a former journalist and also for her current PR work)
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Surprise ending: I told them to keep the fee but also that their behaviour was shameful, cc’ing the HoD, who then moved it up the chain. And now the pro-VC for research has apologised, promising a review of their viva payment procedures. A victory of sorts after all the hassle!.
The saga continues. The university now wants a copy of my payslip because they won’t believe my national insurance number is what I told them it is. Their theory must be that I conned my way into the UK and faked a job at Cambridge for 10 years so I can do a viva for £100 😒🙄.
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Videos have been watched (and are awaited) by millions, yet strangely there is no major international news coverage. The web of alleged corruption networks may be too complicated to explain to a foreign audience🤔 Line of Duty has nothing on Turkish politics. .
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If you've ever wondered what Anatolian cooking was before tomatoes, peppers (and most beans), here is a thread about Mesopotamia that can help us speculate. It seems leeks occupied a more central role! I assume they were first taken over by eggplants and much later by the tomato.
I blame lockdown but for some reason decided to cook Babylonian meal from the recipe tablet on the right; at 1750 BCE are the oldest recipes existing. Seemed to go down OK "Best Mesopotamian meal I have eaten". A thread 1/6
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I like that I’ve been upgraded to a world historian 🙂.
NEW EPISODE OUT NOW!. For our second episode on big historical counterfactuals, David talks to world historian @AyseZarakol about how the East might well have risen to global dominance before the West. Listen here. 🎧
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Rule of law had de facto ceased to exist, now it appears that even the pretence to any procedural hierarchy is also gone. Lower court disobeys (again) the highest court of the land because they/the govt do not want to release Gezi trial defendant who got elected as an MP in May.
Turkey’s Court of Cassation for the second time refuses to enforce a decision made by the Constitutional Court to release jailed parliamentarian Can Atalay. The Constitutional Court is supposed to be the highest in the country but evidently that is no longer the case.
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I'm increasingly convinced that having to register anew as a 'supplier' or 'vendor' anytime one gives a guest lecture in order to get reimbursed for expenses and/or to be paid an honorarium is something dreamt by universities to decrease payments we as academics are in fact due.
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I always hesitate to publicize these things because I hate hearing my own voice, but here’s a podcast I did with Turkey Book Talk’s William Armstrong. Discussed After Defeat and how it holds up in the Turkish context nearly a decade later. Check it out or their other podcasts!.
Episode #109 - Ayşe Zarakol (@AyseZarakol) on stigma and status anxiety in Turkey’s ties to the West.
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Very much looking forward to this triple book launch which we will hold in conjunction with the second BA 'Pathways from Disorder to Order' workshop (focused on the 19th century), Florence, March 20-22.
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The lesson in this is that if you can write with Jason, do so.
#OpenAccess to @apsrjournal . Global Slavery in the Making of States and International Orders - - J.C. SHARMAN & @AyseZarakol (both @Dept_of_POLIS). #FirstView
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Russian Superyachts Find Safe Haven in Turkey, Raising Concerns in Washington
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