Podcasts Culture Start the Week Turkey: Past and Present

Turkey: Past and Present

Published: Jan. 30, 2017, 11:34 a.m.

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Amol Rajan discusses Turkey past and present with the authors Elif Shafak and Kaya Gen\\xe7, Chatham House's Fadi Hakura and the historian Bettany Hughes.

Shafak's new novel, The Three Daughters of Eve, moves between Turkey and Britain, and is a tale of friendship, faith and betrayal. It portrays Turkey as a country riven by deep divisions in society, politics and religion.

Kaya Gen\\xe7 reports from across Turkey, exploring the lives of the country's angry young people on both sides of the political divide, while Fadi Hakura from Chatham House considers Turkey's changing relations with the outside world amid increasing nationalist feeling and isolationism.

Bettany Hughes's biography of Istanbul is the story of three cities - Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul - and reveals a city that's been at the heart of political life between the East and the West for the last eight thousand years.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

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