Wednesday 15 April 2026. 7 pm UK, 9 pm Israel. PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DAY. In the 19th century, a series of reforms meant to strengthen the flagging empire in the face of growing European power instituted legal equality for minorities, broke down the old social hierarchies — and made the Jews’ situation under Ottoman rule more precarious. How did  Jews adapt to change and modernity?  What were relations like with other non-Muslim minorities, who were the leading Jewish nationalists, and how did Ottoman Jews contribute to the Hebrew Enlightenment?

Born in Istanbul, our speaker Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak is an Israeli scholar whose research focuses on modern Turkey, Israel-Turkey relations,  Turkish educational curricula, the Jewish community in Turkey, the Kurdish question, and the history of the Ottoman empire and the Middle East.

He serves as a researcher at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, at Tel Aviv University, the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the Israel Center for Grand Strategy.   In 2022, Cohen Yanarocak published his book The Evolution of the Turkish School Textbooks from Atatürk to Erdoğan. Recording here.

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