event
Friday 19 February 2016 ore 18:30 - 20:00

Istanbul: a workshop for the present.At the origins of contemporary Turkey

Gallery 1 – admittance €5.00
admittance for 3 seminars €10.00 – free for myMAXXI card holders
purchase of a ticket provides for reduced price museum entrance within a week of issue

Recent events in Turkey recounted through the political, social and religious history of a country in continuous transformation

The war in Syria has delivered the coup de grâce to the policy of “zero problems with all neighbours” on which the Turkish president Erdoğan and the prime minister Davutoğlu had counted to restore the splendours of the Ottoman past. And yet, despite the geopolitical instability and the economic problems, Turkey continues to think big. In terms of foreign policy, it is openly challenging Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran for regional leadership, while the refugee crisis is offering Ankara unexpected room for manoeuvre with the European Union. Domestically, with the AKP’s electoral defeat having been avoided and the army normalised, the conflict with the Kurds was reignited. What remains today of Kemalist Turkey? What is the fate of the Turkish economic miracle in the face of renewed monetary pressure from the United States and the slow-down in Chinese growth? And how is Istanbul changing, the pulsing heart of a country that continues to think in imperial terms?

Speakers

Marco Ansaldo lecturer in Foreign Journalism at LUISS University, Rome
Lucio Caracciolo director of Limes, the Italian geopolitics magazine
Hou Hanru artistic director of MAXXI
Giovanna Melandri president of Fondazione MAXXI