James Ryan

James Ryan is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is working on a dissertation entitled “The Republic of Others: Opponents of Kemalism in Turkey’s Single-Party Era, 1919–1950.” He has written for Al Jazeera America, The Journal of Urban History, The Middle East Journal, and Mobility in History.


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Writing on Public Books

Turkey’s Progressive Past

In her posthumously published memoir, written in the late 1960s, the journalist Sabiha Sertel reflected on her life in exile from Turkey, her home country. She had lived through a period of authoritarian rule led by a man whose attempt to transform the country into a Western-style democracy had forced her and others into exile, […]