Education /
Morning Lecture Platform
Week Eight — August 11-17, 2013
Turkey: Model for the Middle East?
Occupying a key geopolitical position at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Turkey has played an essential role in the western world — this week, Chautauqua examines its history, culture, internal and external politics. American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Michael Rubin introduces us to U.S.-Turkey relations on Monday. Ibrahim Kalin, chief adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, will speak Tuesday on his experiences in Turkish government leadership, interfaith relations in Turkey and his scholarship on Turkish perceptions of the West. Award-winning Turkish journalist Nedim Şener will join Reuters columnist David Rohde in a conversation on Wednesday on internal Turkish politics and freedom of expression and the press. On Friday, to finish the week, Kemal Kirişci, director of the Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, will lecture on how Turkey can be held up as an example to the Middle East, and on the state of its relationship with the U.S. and Europe.
Confirmed Lecturers
Monday 8/12 |
Tuesday 8/13 |
Wednesday 8/14 |
Thursday 8/15 |
Friday 8/16 |
Michael Rubin
|
Ibrahim Kalin |
David Rohde
|
|
Kemal Kirişci |
Monday–Friday, August 12–16 @ 10:45 a.m.
Monday, August 12
Michael Rubin
resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research whose major research area is the Middle East, with a special focus on Iran, Syria, Arab Politics, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Turkey. He is also a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Civil-Military Relations and a senior editor of Middle East Quarterly. Between 2002 and 2004, Rubin worked as a staff adviser for Iran and Iraq at the Pentagon.
The author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami’s Iran, co-author of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos and co-editor of Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats, Rubin was the primary drafter of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 2008 taskforce report Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development. He is currently completing a history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes.
Rubin regularly instructs senior military officers deploying to the Middle East on regional politics, and teaches Iranian history, culture, and politics onboard U.S. aircraft carriers. He has previously worked as a lecturer in history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, three universities in northern Iraq, and Yale University, where he earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in history and a bachelor’s degree in biology.
On social media:
Back to top ↑
Tuesday, August 13
Ibrahim Kalin
chief adviser to the prime minister of Turkey
Ibrahim Kalin currently serves as chief adviser to the prime minister of Turkey and is a fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. As a broadly trained scholar of Islamic studies, he teaches courses on Islamic philosophy and Islam-West relations. His field of concentration is post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy with research interests in comparative philosophy, Muslim-Christian relations and modern Turkish history.
Kalin is the author of Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect and Intuition and Islam and the West, which won the 2007 Writers Association of Turkey award for best book. He co-authored a major study on the Turkish perceptions of the West and is a regular contributor to several publications on current events and Turkish foreign policy.
The founding director of the SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research based in Ankara, Turkey, Kalin is also the official spokesperson for A Common Word between Us and You, a major interfaith initiative to improve Muslim-Christian relations in the 21st century. He has lectured throughout the world and served as a faculty member at the Department of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He received his doctorate from the George Washington University.
On social media:
Back to top ↑
Wednesday, August 14
David Rohde
foreign affairs columnist, Reuters
author, Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East
David Rohde, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in journalism, is a foreign affairs columnist for Reuters. Previously, he worked as a reporter for The New York Times for 15 years. He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for uncovering the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia for The Christian Science Monitor and his second in 2009 as part of a team of New York Times reporters covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
While reporting for the Times in November 2008, Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by the Taliban and held captive for seven months in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Rohde and his wife, Kristen Mulvihill, co-authored A Rope and A Prayer: A Kidnapping From Two Sides, in which, in alternating chapters, Rohde describes his abduction, captivity and eventual escape, and Mulvihill recounts her work with government and media officials to keep him alive and secure his release.
Rohde’s latest book is Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East. He is also the author of Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica. He serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of English at Brown University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in history.
On social media:
In the news:
Nedim Şener
award-winning Turkish journalist
Nedim Şener is an author, investigative reporter and columnist, most recently for the Turkish daily national newspapers Milliyet and Posta. Şener rose to prominence for his book and articles implicating Turkish security forces the 2007 assassination of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink, which led to charges filed by several senior senior police and security service officials. First tried on those charges in June 2009, he was acquitted in June 2010. In March 2011, Şener and fellow journalist Ahmet Şık were detained, accused of being part of “Ergenekon,” a neo-nationalist organization in Turkey. They were released more than a year later, in March 2012.
Şener is the author or co-author of several books, most recently Kırmızı Cuma (The Red Friday), an extended and updated version of his 2007 book investigating the Dink murder. The 57th journalist — and third Turkish journalist — honored as an International Press Institute World Press Freedom Hero, he also received a 2011 Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression. Şener is a member of the Turkish Journalists’ Association, PEN Turkey and PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee, and an honorary member of Danish PEN.
On social media:
Back to top ↑
Friday, August 16
Kemal Kirişci
TÜSİAD senior fellow and Turkey Project director, Center on the United States and Europe, Brookings Institution
Kemal Kirişci is the TÜSİAD senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he also serves as director of the Center on the United States and Europe’s Turkey Project. Kirişci served as a professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, until January 2013, and previously served as director of the univerity’s Center for European Studies.
Kirişci’s areas of research interest include European integration, asylum and immigration issues in the European Union, EU-Turkish relations, Turkish foreign policy, ethnic conflicts and refugee movements. In June 2010, he completed a fellowship at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington and contributed to the report titled “Getting to Zero: Turkey, Its Neighbors and the West” and the book Turkey and Its Neighborhood.
Kirişci is the author, co-author or co-editor of many books, including Land of Diverse Migrations: Challenges of Emigration and Immigration in Turkey; Turkey In World Politics: An Emerging Multi-Regional Power; and The Political Economy of Cooperation in the Middle East. He is also co-editor of the special issue of New Perspectives on Turkey on the transformation of Turkish foreign policy. In June 2011 Kirişci received the first prize of the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awarward. He received his doctorate from City University in London.
