Hosted by Faisal Al Yafai
Featuring Suzy Hansen
Produced by Finbar Anderson
Listen to and follow The Lede
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Youtube | Podbean
When Suzy Hansen started going to the Istanbul neighborhood Karagumruk, the local residents didn’t quite know what to make of her. “I think they very much wondered, ‘What in God’s name is this woman doing, and why does she keep coming back, and why is she not married, and what is the deal?’” Hansen tells Faisal Al Yafai on The Lede.
However, after Hansen published a profile of the neighborhood in a magazine and the locals saw her efforts to treat them and their locality seriously, they began to trust her. “I think they knew that by coming back again and again, you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say,” she suggests. “It means something to people.”
“I think they knew that by coming back again and again, you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say.”
Hansen eventually translated her visits to Karagumruk into her new book, “From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan,” inspired by her feeling that Turkey was not adequately portrayed in the media. “Turkey in particular never really comes to life in the press,” she says. “I wanted to show how people talk, to show how the streets sound.”
One of the primary themes that began to come through was how ordinary people react to and live through an increasingly authoritarian society. “The question becomes, when is the moment, if ever, that they realize their lives have changed because of authoritarianism? And how do they realize it?” Hansen asks.
Those questions ended up having a much wider relevance to her home in the United States, Hansen says. “I did not write this book intending in any way that it was going to happen in the U.S., and all of a sudden, everything that was happening in the U.S. was reminding me of what happened in Turkey over 15 years.”