Umut Ozkirimli

Umut Özkırımlı is a Visiting Professor at IBEI (Barcelona Institut d’Estudis Internacionals) and Blanquerna – Universitat Ramon Llull. He is also a Senior Research Associate at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs). He is the author of Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (3rd edition, 2017) and of the forthcoming Dumb Swedes, Smart Turks? Nationalism, Democracy and the Global Crisis of Trust (with Lars Trägårdh and Henrik Berggren).

Ganó Milei, ganó Wilders: ¿cómo frenar el avance de la hegemonía reaccionaria?

Hay que mirar más allá del mainstream para frenar a la extrema derecha

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 19 Dec 2023

Ganó Milei, ganó Wilders: ¿cómo frenar el avance de la hegemonía reaccionaria?

Coronationalism?

Even though coronavirus knows no borders, our solidarity often does.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 14 Apr 2020

Catalonia mon amour

In which the author goes in pursuit of sanity, and is forced to take a stand.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 26 Nov 2019

Entering Brexit Britain, with Eric Cantona as my North star – Bill Bryson a trusty guide

“I liked Britain in 1995, and I like Britain now – from the looks of it, more than she likes herself.”

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 26 Mar 2019

Entering Brexit Britain, with Eric Cantona as my North star – Bill Bryson a trusty guide

White is the new black: populism and the academic alt-right

“It is our duty to expose this moral agenda for what it is, not by 'deplatforming' them – only adding victimisation to their already lavish arsenal – but through reasoned argument.”

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 2 Jan 2019

Fear and loathing in Turkish academia: a tale of appeasement and complicity

Can fear explain the loathing that the victims of this ‘academic cleansing’ are exposed to, often by their own colleagues? Could insecurity justify the complicity?

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 13 Jul 2017

Why Turkification will never work

A country as heteregenous as Turkey can't be held together by an autocrat, so what to do?

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 3 May 2017

Hej Carl Bildt, are you asleep? Should Europe still stand by Erdoğan?

Dedicated to Aydın Engin, or “uncle Aydın”, and all jailed writers and journalists in Turkey.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 2 Nov 2016

Hej Carl Bildt, are you asleep? Should Europe still stand by Erdoğan?

Dedicated to Aydın Engin, or “uncle Aydın”, and all jailed writers and journalists in Turkey.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 2 Nov 2016

Very Turkish abduction from the seraglio and crocodile tears of the ‘West’

The international “friends of Turkey” bear a great deal of responsibility for Turkey’s predicament, a fact that the crocodile tears they shed today could not easily conceal.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 18 Jul 2016

On ‘bad writing’, politics and killing a Kurd…

Now is the time to speak up, even if our words can be found wanting in the face of complex realities and the merciless world of politics.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 29 Nov 2015

Ankara bombing and the end of the Turkish Republic

What we have witnessed in the last two years, culminating in the horrible scenes of 10 October in Ankara, is the end of the Turkish Republic as we know it.

By Umut Ozkirimli

/ 12 Oct 2015