Joakim Parslow

• Presentation
• Research outputs
• Prizes
• Press/Media
• Activities

I study Modern Turkey, using Turkish political, legal, and techno-scientific thought as my primary focal points.

The core of my research addresses how Turkish lawyers have dealt with the fraught political circumstances in which they have worked during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing in particular on “exceptional law” such as martial law regimes and special state security courts, I explore the different ways in which Turkish law professors, judges, attorneys and other legal professionals have shaped the state’s power to use the law for political ends, whether by resisting it, accommodating it, or actively taking part in it.

In addition to my work on the Turkish legal field, I increasingly investigate the intersection of law, governance and technoscience, with a particular eye to the cultural and ideological shifts the arrival of computer technology facilitated among Turkish state leaders, lawyers, and intellectuals during the turbulent Cold War years. My latest article, “The Mechanical Atatürk: Cybernetics and State Violence in the Second Turkish Republic” (International Journal of Middle East Studies 53:4) shows how the techno-scientific paradigm of cybernetics allowed state-loyal thinkers from different political camps to find common ground and to unite against the radical left following the 1971 military coup.

Although my work on Turkey focuses in particular on the period 1923-1990, I have also published research on more recent developments. I also frequently comment on current events in the mass media. (Click "Press/Media" above to view my media engagements after arriving at KU; previous engagements can be viewed on Cristin).

I also teach a wide range of classes on the Middle East more generally, as well as methodology and theory of science for students in Middle East studies.

Before joining Copenhagen University, I served as Associate Professor of of Middle East Studies and as chair of the Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway.

I hold a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Studies with a graduate certificate in Law and Society Studies from the University of Washington.

Selected publications

1. Published

   The Mechanical Atatürk: Cybernetics and State Violence in the Second Turkish Republic

   Parslow, Joakim, 2021, In: International Journal of Middle East Studies. 53, 4, p. 569-588 20 p.

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

2. Published

   Jurists of war and peace: Siddik Sami Onar (1898-1972) and Ali Fuad Basgil (1893-1967) on law and prerogative in Turkey

   Parslow, Joakim, 2018, In: International Journal of Middle East Studies. p. 45-64

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

3. Published

   Theories of exceptional executive powers in Turkey, 1933-1945

   Parslow, Joakim, 2016, In: New Perspectives on Turkey. 55, p. 29-54

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review

4. Published

   Lawyers against the law: The challenge of Turkish lawyering associations

   Parslow, Joakim, 2018, In: Anthropology of the Middle East. 13, 2, p. 26-42

   Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › peer-review