Suzy Hansen — From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan
Journalist Suzy Hansen uses one Istanbul neighborhood as a window onto a city, country, and world in upheaval under Erdogan's authoritarian rule.
Date & Time at 7:00 PM EST
Location Politics and Prose at The Wharf Washington, US
Organizer Politics and Prose
Why we picked this
Hansen did something rare with her first book — she made Americans see themselves through foreign eyes. This one reverses the lens, examining what authoritarianism looks like at street level.
Suzy Hansen, whose Notes on a Foreign Country became essential reading on American self-perception, narrows her focus to one Istanbul neighborhood to tell the story of Turkey under Erdogan. She’ll be in conversation with Asli Aydintasbas.
The approach — using a single neighborhood as a window onto geopolitical transformation — gives Hansen the granularity to show what authoritarian drift actually looks and feels like in daily life. It’s the kind of reporting that statistics and policy analysis can never fully capture: the human texture of a democracy coming undone.