2006 Campagna-Kerven Lecture on Modern Turkey: Graham E. Fuller

Hosted by Boston University

Boston University’s Campagna-Kerven Lecture Series presents leading experts — journalists, scholars, business leaders, literary figures, and creative artists — on modern Turkey, as well as promising younger scholars and intellectuals. The series fosters informed public debate and seeks to improve the public’s knowledge of Turkish society and politics. Speaking at the Castle, this year’s lecturer is Graham Fuller, a former intelligence officer at the CIA, talking about Turkey’s role in the Middle East political mosaic, which is the focus of his latest book, The Future of Political Islam.

In the last decade things have changed dramatically, Fuller says, and “Turkey is now the most powerful military state in the whole Muslim World, the most functioning democracy in the whole Muslim World, the most diversified, largest economy in the whole Muslim World, and it has a dynamic and evolving society that is in no way frozen and is constantly opening aspects of its culture and future.”

He argues that for the first time since the early 1900s Turkey is returning to a condition of normalcy. The Turkish identity is changing, growing, and becoming more global, thus affecting Turkey’s national interests.

Fuller says that Turkey is becoming a Middle Eastern country as well as a European one. Turkey’s future could be extraordinary, he says, as the country becomes increasingly confident, self-sustaining, and independent. The “old Turkey” is gone and the door is opening to many possibilities. After the lecture the floor opens to questions from the audience, encouraging response to the specifics and the implications of Fuller’s arguments.

April 28, 2006, 5 p.m.
The Castle

Video length is 01:14:00.

About the speaker:
Graham E. Fuller is currently an independent writer, analyst, and consultant on Muslim World affairs. He earned a B.A. and an M.A. in Russian and Middle Eastern studies at Harvard University. He served 20 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, working in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. In 1982, he was appointed the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia at the CIA and four years later named vice chairman of its National Intelligence Council. He was a resident senior political consultant at the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C., for 12 years, where his research focused on Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and problems of ethnicity and religion in politics. Fuller’s work has appeared in numerous newspapers — among them the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times — and his most recent book is 2003’s The Future of Political Islam.

E-mail this

Keyword
From
To
By Topic
By Host

Receive updates as new videos are posted

In addition the BUniverse mailing list, you can also receive updates via RSS.

RSS is a system of syndicated news feeds that are updated every time the web site is updated. Subscribe to RSS