Turkey is currently witnessing a promising but precarious peace process between the state and the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), with the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan already declared that the organization will dissolve itself. At the same time, the Erdoğan regime is cracking down the main opposition party CHP, with many analysts pondering whether the era of free elections is over in Turkey. This panel gathers four experts to discuss these interrelated recent developments.

Speakers

Dr. Toni Alaranta is a senior research fellow in the European Union research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). His areas of expertise include Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies, the Kurds in international relations, the Middle East in world politics, and the Cyprus question.

Dr. Esin Düzel is a political anthropologist, and a former fellow at the European Institute, London School of Economics. She is the co-Principal Investigator of the Horizon 2020 project ACCTING at Sabancı University, Turkey. Her research focuses on utopian movements, feminist war and peace studies, political ecology, and the green transition in Turkey and Europe. She has published extensively on the Kurdish movement and the Kurdish conflict and is currently completing a book manuscript on the transformation of Kurdish utopianism during the conflict.

Dr. Anu Leinonen is an Executive Officer at the Foundation of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, who has been following Turkey since 1995 and has lived in the country for over five years. Her academic interests include Turkish political history, nationalism, Kurds and other minorities in Turkey.

Tülay Yılmaz is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her doctoral research focuses on the Gezi protests, examining the emotions and narratives of participants. She is broadly interested in social movements, political change in authoritarian settings, and the intersections of historical, sociological, and political perspectives. She is also a member of the Centre for the Sociology of Democracy in Finland.

Moderator

Ambassador, Emerita Maria Serenius worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for 37 years. She has served as Ambassador to Turkey and Latvia and Consul General in Los Angeles. Her other postings have included Sri Lanka, Cairo, Geneva, and Tokyo. Maria Serenius has also served as Head of the Department for Africa and the Middle East at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Maria Serenius was also a member of the board of the Foundation of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East. She writes about the Middle East and Turkey for, among others, the Kanava magazine.