London Met’s Ahmet Erdi Ozturk co-edited the largest English-language volume covering a wide array of perspectives on contemporary Turkey.
Date: 29 September 2023
In his new book co-edited with George Mason Professor Alpaslan Ozerdem, Senior Politics Lecturer Ahmet Erdi Ozturk brings together rigorous, original scholarship from over 60 contributors from different disciplines and from around the globe. The reference volume examines Turkey’s evolution from the early days of the Republic to the present time and on to its potential futures, offering a critical portrait of a vibrant county at a crossroads.
In the book, which was published to coincide with Turkey’s Centennial, Ozturk and Ozerdem explore of Turkey’s various aspects from political ideologies to economic development, and from foreign policy to society and culture. “Since its birth in 1923, modern Turkey is a nation that has experienced paramount transformation: politically, socially, economically, institutionally and structurally. The changes over the last century have sent – and continue to send – ripples throughout the wider Middle East, the Balkans, Europe, Asia and the Arab World.”, says Dr Ozturk.
According to the London Met lecturer, there are no easy causal explanations for the social, economic, political and institutional transformations experienced by Turkey since 1923 and they can only be explained by employing both interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary mindsets. In this regard, this book builds the backbone of its focus and argument from an interdisciplinary perspective and this has been applied throughout all chapters in order to explain the transformations of Turkey via its structures, values and norms.
Although a focus on the politics of each topic and issue is the main commonality between chapters, there is also be a great deal of openness to sociological, psychological and anthropological approaches and methods. As this work combines many different disciplines jointly, every single chapter is a unique contribution to the wider literature on this subject. The book aims to shed light on what tomorrow holds for Turkey by delving into a comprehensive framework of transformations from yesterday to today and in the future.
Dr. Ozturk, who joined London Metropolitan University in 2019, is an award winning and a prolific scholar. He has published over 30 academic peer-reviewed research articles and six books, and has won numerous academic awards such as Outstanding Early Career Researcher Award of London Metropolitan University in 2021, Exceptional Performance Award of Coventry University in 2022 and distinguished Emerging Scholar Award of ISA in 2022.
