Name: Turkey, far and near
Start: 2025-10-29T19:00:00+01:00
Location: Knihovna Václava Havla

After a century of building a secular state and recent hopes for EU membership, Turkey, our ally, has embarked on a path of harsh repression against political opposition and civil society. Unless it is hit by an earthquake, or we are heading for its beaches, we take virtually zero interest in Turkey. Ready to convince us that this is a mistake, and that it is important to monitor the country and keep it as close to Europe as possible, especially in today's turbulent world, will be Zuzana Kutišová, a PhD student in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Charles University in Prague, and remotely, Prof. Burak Bilgehan Özpek, a political scientist at TOBB University of Economics and Technology and a respected expert on Turkish politics and foreign policy and Veysel Ok, a lawyer for many journalists in Turkey and Co-Director of the Media and Law Studies Association.
• Zuzana Kutišová is a PhD student in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Charles University in Prague. She is interested in contemporary Turkey and its society, politics, and culture. She completed her master’s degree at the same department, with a thesis focusing on the depiction of Eastern Anatolia in Turkish literature and center-periphery relations in Turkey. Her doctoral research explores political mobilization among youth in contemporary Turkey. In 2025, she presented her research at the Turkologentag congress in Mainz, Germany.
• Burak Bilgehan Özpek is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara. His main research interests include the de facto states, civil conflicts, contemporary politics of the Middle East and Turkish foreign policy. He has published articles in academic journals such as Journal of International Relations and Development, International Journal, Iran and the Caucasus, Turkish Studies, Israel Affairs, and Global Governance. He is the author of a book entitled "Peace Process Between Turkey and the Kurds: Anatomy of a Failure" published by Routledge in 2017. Özpek is also one of the founders of Daktilo1984 Movement in Turkey.
• Veysel Ok is a co-founder and currently co-director of the Media and Law Studies Association. As part of the (MLSA) work, Ok continues to defend 11 imprisoned journalists including Nedim Türfent, Ziya Ataman, Salih Turan, İdris Yılmaz and İdris Sayılgan and many other journalists and academics.

Moderated by Tereza Engelová, journalist and documentary filmmaker. For her objective and balanced reporting on the conflict in Ukraine, she won the Journalist Award for Audiovisual Journalism, and in 2022 she won the Ferdinand Peroutka Award. The debate will be held in English.