Book presentation
Pluralism Under Pressure: Islamism, Liberalism and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond
- Date
- Tuesday 9 June 2026
- Time
- Location
- Spui Campus
Spui 5
2511 BL The Hague - Room
- 2B.56
About the speaker
Keynote from Nora Fisher Onar followed by discussants: Seda Gurkan, Beatrix Futak Campbell and Sarah Wolff and Q&A
Nora Fisher Onar will present her book that aims to challenge the received wisdom that a binary contest between ‘Islam’ and ‘secularism’ as the driving force in Turkey’s politics. It voices the same scepticism about other binary divides often used to explain Turkey’s political history, instead proposing an alternative theory of alliances between pluralist and non-pluralist forces that shift over time.
Instead, Nora Fisher-Onar's innovative argument centers on coalitions for and against pluralism. Retelling Turkey's story from the late Ottoman Empire to the present as a tale of pluralizing vs. anti-pluralist coalitions, this book offers an alternative explanation for major outcomes from elections and coup d'etats to revolutions. Here, cross-camp alliances pit those who are willing to coexist with 'Other(s)' against those who champion a unitary, national project in which everyone speaks, believes, looks, and loves as they do. Drawing on a rich array of primary and secondary data, Fisher-Onar introduces an analytical framework for capturing causal complexity in political contestation. This study rejects Orientalist exceptionalism, rereading the relationship between political religion, pluralism, and populism via a framework that travels across and beyond the Muslim-majority world.
About the speaker
Nora Fisher Onar is Associate Professor and Chair of Global Studies at the University of San Francisco.
Her research interests include international relations theory, diplomacy, comparative politics / area studies (Turkey/Middle East; Europe; Eurasia), political ideologies, gender, and history/memory. She is also increasingly interested in the impact of technological change on international affairs.
She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford and holds master’s and undergraduate degrees from Johns Hopkins (SAIS) and Georgetown universities, respectively. She speaks five languages, has traveled to over 80 countries, and lived in eight.
Fisher-Onar is the author of Contesting Pluralism(s): Islam, Liberalism and Nationalism in Turkey, with Cambridge University Press, and lead editor of the volume, Istanbul: Living With Difference in a Global City (co-edited with Susan C. Pearce and E. Fuat Keyman). She is also the editor of special issues of major scholarly journals like: the Journal of Common Market Studies; International Affairs, and Global Studies Quarterly, among others.
Fisher-Onar speaks often at policy fora like Brookings, Carnegie, and the German Marshall Fund (GMF) where she has served as a Ronald Asmus Fellow, Transatlantic Academy Fellow, and Non-Residential Fellow. She further contributes commentary to platforms like the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and OpenDemocracy.