As Turkey's film industry grew in the 1950s, one of the most distinctive, local genres was the Efe film. These told the stories of heroic (and, sometimes, anti-heroic) bandits in the Aegean mountains. Check out the documentary I've made about these films: reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2024/05/20/efe…

Sunday extras! 🎥"Efe: From the Mountains to the Silver Screen" via Reuben Silverman. reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2024/05/20/efe…

Deadline for applications to the 2024 CEST Symposium, this year in Copenhagen, is June 15. Feel free to share with anyone you think may be interested in the theme "Turkey, Europe, and the Limits of Liberal Normativity." See more in the link: cest-turkey.org/cest-symposium…

As an addition to my Turkish bandit film documentary (reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2024/05/20/efe…), I'm going to post several translations of bandit ("efe") literature. The first is an excerpt from Ömer Seyfettin’s story “The Lone Efe.” Check it out here: reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2024/08/12/ome…

As an addition to my Turkish bandit film documentary (reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2024/05/20/efe…), I'm posting several translations of bandit ("efe") literature. Here's the newest one, Sabahattin Ali's short story "Çakıcı’s First Bullet": reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2024/10/24/sab…

Check out my new piece on Yasar Kemal and the people who helped make him into the internationally famous author he became. It includes a translation of his journalism about the bandit Cakircali Mehmet Efe: reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2025/01/26/the…

Read my new paper: I argue shared world-views between the AKP and Qatari rulers only partially explain the relationship; as important are changes in the economies of both countries which give their leaders something to offer one another: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Feroz Hocanın ardından: 20. yüzyıl Türkiye’sinin en büyük tarihçilerinden birini uğurlarken birgun.net/haber/20-yuzyi…

Read my new post about Peyami Safa (as well as a translation of one of his Cingöz Recai stories). His writing--often disturbingly--reflected the philosophical, political, and social debates of his times: reubensilverman.wordpress.com/2025/07/13/vit…

Check out my interview on New Books Network (@newbooksnetwork.bsky.social) with Selim Koru about his new book New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country (Bloomsbury Books UK 2025): newbooksnetwork.com/new-turkey-and…