Howard Eissenstat
@heissenstat
Laurentian Associate Professor of History, St. Lawrence University. Non-resident scholar, Stockholm University, Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS) Focused on Turkey and the Middle East. Unlikely to argue on-line. Blocks dumb, annoying, or noisy.
My accent changes all the time! Who I'm talking to, how happy or angry I am, the topic... Doesn't everybody's?!
If I am cranky about the news coverage, local businesses in Ankara, from kebab joints to taxi drivers, are utterly disgusted by what its done to business
For those of you in Istanbul: I'll be among the participants at this exciting event at Beykoz University this Thursday. My focus will be on the triangular relations between Turkey, Israel, and the United States and their implications for NATO.
The Turkish hard left has been rocking the same power chords my entire life
My hot take on the Washington University in St. Louis/ Vanderbilt University report on the humanities? It is a Rorschach test for your priors on the state of the liberal arts
Some personal news. I'm very excited to work with the fine folks at @istanpol.bsky.social this summer. See you in Istanbul!
Informative new policy brief from @stockholm-uni.bsky.social's SUITS program, by @karabekir.bsky.social On Turkish - Iranian Relations and the US/Israeli War on Iran www.su.se/english/divi...
I'd never have the temerity to write an academic piece on Lebanon or Syria given my focus on Turkey, but the focus on using religious/ethnic divides as means to limit collective action seems to me quite clear in both cases To be clear, I don't think this is Israeli borrowing, just parallel policies
In personal news, Whisky the Border Collie is now FIVE years old!
Many times, over the past two decades, people have called me a Cassandra about the direction of Turkey's democracy. But the thing about the Cassandra myth that people forget is that her curse was telling the truth about approaching disaster and not having people believe her.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think Kilicdaroglu has outdone even the GOP leadership for craven cynicism in the name of power, in a complete failure to stand up to open assault on democratic principles.
Back when I lobbied on Turkey's human rights issues, Rubio's office was among the most sympathetic.
"Not for the first time, Americans completely miss the fact that a Brit just criticized their behavior"
There are a number of possible responses when you are compared to the Nazis. This is one that is unlikely to win you much support
I was watching a student presentation which noted wealth disparity in the European Middle Ages and I spent the next 10 minutes wondering whether it was better or worse than the US in 2026
George Washington was a cuck, I guess. historyofvaccines.org/blog/washing...
Just browsing through the National Archives Catalog, noting that Erdogan has been around... for a while.