From Life Itself

This event is cosponsored with ASU and the Future Security Initiative.

One neighborhood in Istanbul offers a window onto a city, a country, a region, and a world in upheaval. In From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan, Suzy Hansen centers her reporting on Karagümrük.

It is here that Hansen went looking for the truth behind headlines about President Erdoğan’s authoritarian turn, a catastrophic regional war, and an accelerating geopolitical crisis. She asks whether Turkey was a harbinger of the global resurgence of authoritarianism—or whether the lives of this neighborhood reveal a more complex story.

Over a decade reporting from Karagümrük, Hansen came to know its people: İsmail, the longtime muhtar; Hüseyin, a loyalist for Erdoğan’s AK Party; and Ebru, a real estate agent and mother seeking to unseat İsmail. Through these local lives, she connects neighborhood change to forces reshaping Turkey, the Middle East, and the world.

Join the New America Fellows and Future Security Programs for a conversation with 2020 New America (ASU Future Security) Fellows Suzy Hansen and Peter Bergen about From Life Itself.

Speakers:

Suzy Hansen
2020 New America (ASU Future Security) Fellow 
Author, From Life Itself

Peter Bergen
Vice President, Global Studies & Fellows