Turkey: The 2016 Coup Attempt and Its Aftermath and Implications

A failed coup d’état in Turkey on July 15, 2016 made world headlines and left hundreds dead or injured. Nearly a month later, tens of thousands of military personnel, journalists, judges, prosecutors, professors, university administrators and teachers have been fired or forced to resign and some have been arrested. Continuing instability in Turkey has serious implications for the region, for U.S. policy in the Middle East, and Turkey’s relations with the U.S. In this lecture and discussion, Professor Reşat Kasaba will provide an overview of the political upheaval of this summer and put it in the context of modern Turkish history and politics.

Reşat Kasaba is Stanley D. Golub Chair of International Studies and the Director of The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He earned his PhD in Sociology in 1986. His research on the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey has covered economic history, state-society relations, migration, ethnicity and nationalism, and urban history with a focus on Izmir. He is the author of over fifty articles and eight books, including A Moveable Empire: Ottoman nomads, Migrants, and Refugees, Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. IV: Turkey in the Modern World (edited), and Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Coedited with Sibel Bozdoğan). His work continues to examine the social and economic history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey and state-society relations in the Middle East from a historical perspective. He is currently writing a book Turkey: A Modern History for Cambridge University Press.

Acknowledgement of Support: This event has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this event are the sole responsibility of The UNC Center for European Studies and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.