Global Voices Author Night with Rainer Hermann – Where is Turkey Headed?

Free and open to the public. No registration required.
Reception with the author at 5:00pm. Book signing to follow lecture.

Sponsored by: University of Chicago’s International House Global Voices Lecture Series, the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, and the Niagara Foundation.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK THE EVENT DETAILS ON THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO’S SITE 

Turkey is a pivotal country: It is one of the few countries with a functioning democracy, it links the West with the turbulent Middle East, and it has been a reliable partner in NATO in difficult times. Turkey is also a pivotal country in crisis.

Over the past decades, the trajectory of Turkey’s history had been anything else than a straight line. Especially Turkey’s past 25 years has been a story of profound and deep changes. The start was when rural Anatolia awoke, which had been neglected over centuries. A new Anatolian middle class emerged, it became prosperous, but is still pious; Erdogan became its political leader. Those “black Turks” started to challenge the traditional urban elite, the “white Turks”. Change in Turkey was not about Islam, it was about a fundamental shift in society. Turkey is a natural partner of the West in the Muslim world, despite recent setbacks. Turkey is needed to stabilize war-torn neighbors such as Syria and Iraq and to prevent a spill over to other countries.

Rainer Hermann has been working as a journalist in Turkey and the Middle East for more than twenty years. As correspondent of the national German daily “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” he has been living in Istanbul from 1991 until 2008, then he moved to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Since 2012 he is an op-ed editor at the daily’s headquarter in Frankfurt, Germany. Rainer Hermann has studied economics and Middle Eastern studies in Freiburg (Germany), Rennes (France), Basel (Switzerland), and Damascus (Syria). He has an M.A. in economics and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies. In Germany he has published most recently “The Gulf States” (2011), in March his new German book “Final Destination Islamic State? State Failure and Religious War” will be on sale.