In this episode, hosts Sertaç Sehlikoglu and Meryem Zişan Köker are joined by Maureen Freely, the novelist, journalist, and translator who has brought Orhan Pamuk, Sabahattin Ali, and many other Turkish writers to English-speaking readers. Freely reflects on growing up in 1960s Istanbul, where she first learned Turkish by listening rather than studying, and on how translation has entered in to her life. The conversation moves between fiction and ethnography, the histories that are erased or told differently in Turkish, Greek, and Armenian accounts, and the difficulty of carrying Turkish emotion, sound, and rhythm into English. She also speaks about the women writers she has recently translated, including Sevgi Soysal, Tezer Özlü, and Suat Derviş, the unexpected success of her translation of Madonna in a Fur Coat, and why she still finds reason for optimism in the work of Turkey's intellectual diaspora.

Date of episode recording: 2026-01-14
Language of episode: English
Presenter:Sertaç Sehlikoglu; Meryem Zisan Koker
Guests: Maureen Freely
Producer: Hazal Aydin, Sertaç Sehlikoglu, Meryem Zisan Koker

In this episode, we welcome Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford, Director of the Middle East Centre at St. Anthony's College, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Author of internationally bestselling books including The Arabs: A History, The Fall of the Ottomans, and most recently The Damascus Events, Rogan has spent over three decades recovering Ottoman and Arab perspectives long marginalised by European historiography. We discuss how Turkey and the Arab remember the Ottoman imperial past in divergent ways, whether the Empire's collapse was inevitable or a consequence of fateful choices, and what the Ottoman reconstruction of Damascus after the violence of 1860 might teach us about imagining political futures in the region today.

In this episode, the Takhayyul Project welcomes Adnan Khan, an acclaimed Canadian writer, editor, photographer, and visual storyteller. We discuss Adnan's recent work chronicling how the global trade in plastic waste has exploited some of the most vulnerable communities, such as refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Istanbul, and of the importance in bringing empathy and depth to similar stories that often go untold.

Date of episode recording: 2025-11-09
Language of episode: English
Presenters: Meryem Zișan Köker; Hazal Aydın.
Guests: Adnan Khan
Producer: Dr. Sertaç Sehlikoglu; Meryem Zișan Köker; Hazal Aydın; edited by Alexander Pymm