Slouching Towards Istanbul

A poster of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, seen amidst the rubble following a 7.8 earthquake in February of 2023.

What a decade in Erdoğan’s authoritarian Turkey taught me about the long, bloody shadow of America’s foreign wars

By Suzy Hansen

I decided to write my book From Life Itself in 2018 out of a sense of disorientation. I’d spent a decade living in Istanbul, Turkey, and the country and the region had become mired in tragedy and violence. The hopeful first months of the Arab Spring had given way to a terrifying war in Syria, which was sending millions of Syrian refugees over the border and into Turkish cities. The war was also drawing the participation of thousands of young men and women in various militant groups, such as ISIS and other al-Qaeda offshoots, many of them flying into Istanbul and then gathering in towns in southern Turkey. READ ON