People/Interviews

Mustafa Akyol.. A prominent Turkish author &commentator

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Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish political commentator and author based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Among many journalists and opinion leaders in Turkey this gentleman is known for his unbiased and unprejudiced views and interpretations about the prevailing political issues in the country. Akyol has mostly received admiration not only from those with similar views but also from people with adverse opinions.

As BUSINESSTURKEYTODAY.COM  we follow MR. AKYOL’s articles which we find worth reading to have a much better and neutral picture about what Turkey has been going through all along.

This post is aimed to contribute to his popularity among intellectuals world wide so as to make a much more neutral, creative and informative source of information available for everybody.

17.05.2012
Editor, BTT

MUSTAFA AKYOL
Author, journalist and commentator

Akyol was born in Ankara in 1972 and had his early education there. Later he graduated from Istanbul Nisantasi British High School and from the International Relations Department of the Bosphorus University. He had his master thesis on the Kurdish question at the History Department of the same university.

Since 2002, he has been a regular commentator in the Turkish media. He is currently a regular columnist for Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey’s foremost English-language daily. He writes a regular column for a Turkish-language daily, Star, as well. He also appears regularly on Turkish TV, on political discussion shows.

He has spoken on many platforms, including the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Mont Pelerin Society, Cato Institute, Acton Institute, Discovery Institute, Mises Institute and many universities around the world . (His talk at TED, Faith Versus Tradition in Islam, was widely acclaimed.)

Over the years, Akyol’s articles have  appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, Newsweek, The American Interest, First Things, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, The American Enterprise Magazine , Huffington Post, National Review Online, The Forward, Tech Central Station, Bitter Lemons and IslamOnline. He has appeared on BBC World, Al Jazeera English, France 24, and other international TV channels.

Mustafa Akyol has a book in Turkish titled Rethinking The Kurdish Question: What Went Wrong? What Next? (Dogan Publishing, 2006), which is a work partly based on his English-language graduate thesis, The Origin of Turkey’s Kurdish Question: An Outcome of the Breakdown of the Ottoman Ancien Régime. He has four other books in Turkish, three of which are collections of his essays.
His latest book, Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty, which was defined by the Financial Times as “a forthright and elegant Muslim defence of freedom,” was published by W.W. Norton in July 2011. The book was long-listed for the 2012 Lioner Gelber Prize, along with other titles by Henry Kissinger, Francis Fukuyama and Niall Ferguson.
You can also visit Akyol’s website in Turkish. On Twitter, he is at @AkyolinEnglish.
Some Comments on Mustafa Akyol’s Work“The [Turkish] secular establishment’s suspicions about the AK are best described by Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol as “fact-free paranoia.” – Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek

“Mustafa Akyol, a bright young columnist for the English-language Turkish Daily News, makes a very convincing case…” – US News & World Report

“Mr Akyol, an advocate of reconciliation between Muslims and the West who is much in demand at conferences on the future of Islam…” – The Economist

“Mustafa Akyol, a writer and columnist sympathetic to, but not uncritical of, the AKP” – Financial Times

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