In this week's episode, guest expert Selcen Öner, Associate Professor in the Department of EU Politics and International Relations at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey, joins us to talk about creative inspiration for academics and women in the media in Turkey We wrap up with our takeaways from the conversation. Feel free to share your thoughts and responses with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook and tag us @university_of_venus on IG and @UVenus on Twitter or post it on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/UVenus/ and we will share, retweet, and amplify! Find University of Venus on Instagram @university_of_venus , Twitter @UVenus , and Facebook http://www.facebook.com/UVenus/
Topics Discussed in this Episode:
Resources Discussed in this Episode:
Music Credits: Magic by Six Umbrellas
Sound Engineer: Ernesto Valencia
View from Venus, Season 3, Episode 2
Mary Churchill: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the View from Venus. My name is Mary Churchill and on today's episode, I am joined by cohosts Meg Palladino and Lee Skallerup Bessette and guest expert Selcen Öner, Associate Professor in the Department of EU Politics and International Relations at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey.
[00:00:27] In today's episode, we'll be talking with Selcen about her work related to women's education, academic freedom, and women in the media in Turkey. We asked her to join us on View from Venus, because we wanted to hear more about her work related to female education and women and the media in Turkey.
[00:00:45] So thank you so much for joining us and Meg, the way we start things on the View from Venus is Meg does a kind of fun question that she answers first because she knows the question and then you'll answer. And then Lee and I will answer. And it's just a warmup question to be a little human and silly sometimes. So, hit us with your question.
[00:01:11] Meg Palladino: [00:01:11] So my question today is cake or pie? I went to my brother and sister in law's birthday party last weekend and I realized that I have a definite preference for cake. And I was just wondering, are you guys cake people or pie people?
[00:01:27] Selcen Öner: [00:01:27] I'm more of an apple pie person. I like apple pie so much.
[00:01:31] Lee Skallerup Bessette: [00:01:31] Yeah. I think I'm like, I'm going to go off board and go. I'm a brownie person. Like that's the, that's the, like, I guess it sort of goes brownie then pie then cake in that sort of order where it's like, whenever I get cake, I think I'm expecting brownie. And then I'm always disappointed that it's cake and not brownie. So, I think, like I said, I'm going off board and going with brownie
[00:02:00] Meg Palladino: [00:02:00] I've never been a brownie person.
[00:02:03] Mary Churchill: [00:02:03] Oh, I love brownies. So, I, you know, Meg. If it's a birthday, it's a cake, right? Like, I would feel strange with a birthday pie, but I love pie. I really love pie. And I guess I have to say I would choose pie because, I have cake more often. And so, I think pies sometimes are a little more difficult to make, especially a good crust. And so, I think I appreciate a pie over a cake, and I am a better cake maker than I am a pie maker.
[00:02:37] So that was good. Okay. So, let's get into the real questions now .You are a volunteer at Community Volunteers Foundation focused on university students in Turkey. Can you tell us about this organization and about why you do this work?
[00:02:56] Selcen Öner: [00:02:56] Okay. Actually, I'm a volunteer in this organization since 201. In those years, I stared to question. what can I do to touch people's lives more? I mean, not only focusing on academia, but also dealing with some other social responsible projects and then one of my professors recommended me to contact with the founder of this foundation. And then I really enjoyed it because they're organizing actually all over Turkey the activities for university students, not only giving scholarships to university students, but also they are encouraging them to do social responsibility projects and how they will do social responsibility projects, giving these university students education about how to make projects, how to manage them. And also, they are organized at university as clubs as well. So, it's a very well-organized foundation and it's a very bottom up project.
[00:03:52] I mean, not, you know, in Turkey, sometimes some of the civil society organizations are more like top down and not really bottom up organizations. But this one is really bottom up and I really enjoy being there as a volunteer. What am I doing there? Actually, I was mentoring some university students coming to Istanbul from different parts of Anatolia.
[00:04:16] And so they, it takes some time for them to adapt to the big city, you know, Istanbul is huge about 15 million people. And so, it takes some time to adapt. So, we meet sometimes meet with each other and talk about life and about social activities. We sometime go to the cinema or theater together and talk about their academic life and also their social life, et cetera.
[00:04:42] So I try to do some mentoring to a few students in different periods. And in the recent years I'm more active in the scholarship committee. So, we are choosing some students from different parts of Turkey. Actually, this Sunday, we will do online interviews with some students. And we will choose the students on the basis of if they really need, in terms of in financial terms, they need is some support we will support them.
[00:05:10] And plus we are checking to see if they are really a volunteer and active in social responsibility projects. So, we don't give scholarships to the students that are only financially needy but at the same time, active in social responsibility projects. They want to do some projects at their universities, we try to choose the right students in that sense.
[00:05:29] Lee Skallerup Bessette: [00:05:29] So now that you've been promoted to associate professor and, congratulations, do you have more freedom to do more creative work? And what kinds of opportunities are there now that you've been promoted?
[00:05:43] Selcen Oner: [00:05:43] Thank you so much. Actually, I became an associate professor in 2015. And after that, I feel a bit more secure in terms of job security and I started thinking about doing more creative things because after a certain point in your career, because I have been in academia since 2002 is that first as a research assistant and since 2008 as a lecturer, And then I started thinking about what should I do to, you know to improve my satisfaction about life and can I, you know, deal with other things that are really, I'm really interested in.
[00:06:19] So, and also, I'm really interested in literature and art so much, and following try to follow what's going on in different fields of arts, especially poetry. First, it appears in 2016. In 2016, I published a poetry book actually, and it was a very interesting experience for me. I attended some exhibitions, book exhibitions and signed my poetry book and meet with some poets and some writers, attended some workshops about creative writing and poetry.
[00:06:57] So it was a very interesting experience for me and actually I wanted to - you know, I specialize in political science and international relations and focusing on especially European politics and, you know, Turkey EU relations also not going so well in the last years. So, I wanted to escape a little bit also from my field and poetry was a very great escape for me because in poetry, you reconstruct the world, actually, you know, you can construct your imaginary world. So, it's a very new world that you can construct, and you can escape in it whenever you want. Especially in the nights and evenings. I prefer to escape and go to my poetry room. In the mornings, I'm more, you know, focusing on academia again in those years. And also in recent years I attended polyphonic chorus, different types of polyphonic chorales and also I attended one polyphonic Turkish folk song chorus and some people from there, different fields of professional life who are lawyers, who are teachers, academics, you know, working in the bank. They're all attending these polyphonic chorus. So, in the evenings, we come together once a week. So, it was also a good experience. We give some concerts and, you know, we teach each other. I also try to follow that as well. And before the COVID hit, I was going, but I give a break now to the polyphonic chorus.
[00:08:23] Mary Churchill: [00:08:23] I have a follow up question to that. And it's about kind of, something I've been thinking of recently, really. How do people resource themselves so they can be more creative, right? Like what, what are our side hobbies or projects that make us feel more inspired so when we come back to our academic work, we can look at it with fresh eyes.
[00:08:49] Do you feel like kind of the work you've done this more creative work, post promotion and tenure. How does that feed into your, the way you approach your academic work?
[00:09:01] Selcen Öner: [00:09:01] Very good question, Mary. Yeah, exactly. I think sometimes we need to give some breaks and maybe change the place where, where I work also. For example, in 2018, I was a visiting scholar at Lewis university in Rome, Italy for one semester.
[00:09:16] I gave one course there and did my field work there in Rome. It also, for example, gives me different types of energy. I think it's very important sometimes, especially in the middle of our careers, to give some breaks and deal with different things, which makes us maybe sometimes more creative and you start seeing from different perspectives. Sometimes it also contributes to your writing as well. If, for example, during this period, I had the chance to focus on some other fields that's not related with my specialization, such as gender issues, which I'm interested in, but I never wrote on it before.
[00:09:57] And with a colleague of mine, we wrote together, for example, on women international relations scholars in Turkey and how they are connected with civil society. What is their visibility level in the media? And you know, if they want to participate in politics one day.
[00:10:14] So we wrote two articles, actually. We published two articles on this topic, for example. So, when you give breaks and deal with the different things. It, I think also, maybe at the beginning you may feel that, you know, oh, you know, and I don't have much time for my field and I'm publishing less, but somehow when you return back again to your studies, I think it gives you more energy and it somehow it makes you much more productive.
[00:10:42] But in the beginning of my career, I was not thinking in this direction. I was very focusing on my studies, you know, publishing and teaching. And, at a certain level, you feel that you have a kind of a burnout, you want to escape a little bit to a different place or different topics. So, I think we all need to think about it, that everybody has different escapes. We need to find out what makes us happy. And I always deal with literature, but for example, I don't have enough time to read novels for many years during, you know, before my PhD and after my PhD, I just focus on articles. You know, academic books, but not novels, not poetry. So, I delay reading all these things to after my associate professorship and for one year I focused on novels, poetry, much more than my academic research. And I said to myself, Selcen, maybe you may have less citations of your articles, but you are happier now. So, this is much more important. Yeah, because I'm not, Selcen is not only an academic, but at the same time she likes poetry, she likes literature, she likes music. So, this is a, you know, all of this package makes me feel much more happier rather than maybe having much more academic articles published. It's also fine at first but I finally feel that it doesn't make me feel very happy after a while.
[00:12:09] Mary Churchill: [00:12:09] Yeah, Lee, do you want to say something about that? I can see the look on your face.
[00:12:15] Lee Skallerup Bessette: [00:12:15] I mean, there's a reason why we're doing all these podcasts, right?
[00:12:18] Selcen Öner: [00:12:18] I listened to some of the podcasts. They are all very interesting. I mean, I listened to some of them and I think they are very inspiring.
[00:12:27] Mary Churchill: [00:12:27] well, and it's like this whole person, right? I think academia doesn't and this is worldwide doesn't invite us in our whole selves in right and acknowledge this. And I think the more contingent you are as a faculty member, the less you can really show your creative side and, you know, kind of, as you said, you're like for a year, I just read poetry, but then you come back to your academic writing with a set of fresh eyes and an enhanced voice, like a different way to tell the academic story, which I think is so much more compelling and rich, but it's not rewarded in higher ed or encouraged.
[00:13:09] Selcen Öner: [00:13:09] That's true. Definitely. So many people do not think about it. And we do not even question it in all of their careers sometimes. I mean, I saw among my friends, they didn't even question that because all of this academic atmosphere, it makes you feel, you know, because it's very competitive to stay inside the academia in Turkey also. Right. It's very competitive. So, in order to keep your job, everybody focuses on publishing much more than anything.
[00:13:37] Lee Skallerup Bessette: [00:13:37] Yeah, no, I was just going to say that that has actually been one of the most liberating parts of going into an alt-ac and a staff role has been that it's no longer publish or perish, right? I can, if I want to publish, I publish. If I don't and want to spend the whole year reading poetry, then I'll, you know, No, as long as, as long as my day to day work gets done, right then everybody's pretty happy with that. And it's not, I actually just had a conversation today about a long-delayed publication, peer reviewed publication, and the person wrote back super apologetic and I was like, look, no one who wrote this article is relying on this for tenure and promotion. Right. Like, we'd like to see it in print because we think it's a great piece, but you know, it's, we're not, we're not stressed about it, you know. And that's, that's been, that's been a really liberating sort of thing is that it's, it's, it's a different kind of freedom, which is, which is really nice.
[00:14:35] Selcen Öner: [00:14:35] Exactly. Exactly. You feel much more freedom. Yeah. And this freedom feeling is real nice. Definitely.
[00:14:40] Meg Palladino: [00:14:40] Yes. With your colleagues you've written about women academics in Turkey and their visibility on media. Why are women, particularly women academics, less visible in Turkish media?
[00:14:52] Selcen Öner: [00:14:52] I don't want to generalize, but some of the male academics, we can see that they are talking about various topics, you know, which is not only related with their specialized topics. So, they are much more flexible in that sense. And also the women academics, they say that, especially in the debates on, on TV programs, they are usually very, you know, how can I say, the language, the level of language, very harsh words, and very, you know male-centric voice, and, you know, they're harsh debates, but not very polite. They don't want to be participate in this kind of debate with each other. So, they usually do not prefer to attend this kind of program. They say for the, well, this is another reason why then they don't want to participate. And on the other hand, they say that we have to prepare our clothes. You know, the man can, you know, wear whatever he wants, but we have to be much more careful about our hair, you know, makeup and dress, what we wear. Because when we attend the program, usually people, you know, focus on this kind of things as not some of our friends or colleagues say, Oh, that's your dress, it looked very nice on the TV. You know, you look fine, you look beautiful. We feel more stressful in that stuff. We have it. We have to really find a lot of time to prepare for the program.
[00:16:10] So there, this also makes them, we found that this also makes that more hesitant and stressful and they prefer not to attend the programs. So, this is one of our findings. About the level of participation of women in politics - in Turkey, actually the level of participation of women in politics is very low. It's approximately about 17.4% in the parliaments. We have women in politics, so this is very low. Around Turkey there are hundreds, you know, when we compare with the other countries, although women in academia is very high in Turkey, women in politics are there, they are very low numbers, unfortunately.
[00:16:52] So we also asked the woman academics. If they want to participate in politics one day, they also prefer, they say yes, most of them say, no, we don't want, especially because of the polarized, polarization in Turkish politics. Because of, again, male dominated atmospheres in the, in the, in the parliament. And again, also inside the political parties, there's not enough democracy.
[00:17:14] And, you know, they feel that, you know, there's not internal democracy in the, in the political party system and they prefer, that's why maybe they want to be a consultant to do of some of the political parties and support with their specialization, but they don't prefer to be a member of the parliament in the near future, most of the towns, they know, for example. So, another finding of ours. Eh, so, yeah, I mean, this is, these are some of the findings we found,
[00:17:42] Mary Churchill: [00:17:42] you know, we had a debate last night here with a woman, Kamala Harris debated Mike Pence last night, we had the vice president debate. So that's all over social media today. So, it's interesting that you say that and yeah, no, I think there is this focus on what you're wearing and how you look, and then also. It's a pretty hostile environment. She's getting a lot of kudos for just not losing it on him, for maintaining her composure. And, because you know, it looks different on women, especially women of color, if they act the way that men do.
[00:18:21] So, yeah, there's just a lot more at stake. Definitely. And so, I guess a kind of final question for all of us is what inspires you to be more creative and bring that back to your work? Like where do you go for inspiration
[00:18:36] Selcen Öner: [00:18:36] Should I start first?
[00:18:37] Mary Churchill: [00:18:37] You can start if you want.
[00:18:41] Selcen Oner: [00:18:41] It's a really good question. A very long one. I can talk for hours and because, you know, I like, I like, I try to live life with inspiration and somehow, I have, well, one part of my soul is more artistic, I think. So, I try to find out inspiration actually from nature. I find inspiration. So, when I'm walking and listening to music at the same time by the Bosphorus
[00:19:04] Mary Churchill: [00:19:04] Lee?
[00:19:05] Lee Skallerup Bessette: [00:19:05] Oh, I've been thinking about that. I, I mean, I get inspiration, no, because I get inspiration from so many different places and just, I write, I write a lot. And so, my inspiration, this is going to sound so trite, but like it's, it's just like life. And I write about what's happening. I write about what's going on. I draw inspiration from, you know, my kids, my family, my students, my colleagues, my friends. Yeah. I just, you know, I go where my interests take me and that's sort of, you know, and anywhere where I happen to be in that sort of situation. So, it sounds like I said, it sounds kind of trite to say life is my inspiration, but, it's kind of true.
[00:19:49] Mary Churchill: [00:19:49] That's awesome. I, you know, it's true though. I think the more you write, especially blog posts, right? You're writing about life. Your own writing can be inspiring to you, right? It's a, it's got this multiplier effect and, for me, a lot of what inspires me is real life in the sense of advocacy work I do. Social issues inspire me a lot, but I also, I've always got a fiction book on my nightstand. I read fiction every night, because I think that fiction for me helps me. It gives me a deeper sense of empathy and understanding of people and that I find inspiring. So, individual people are very inspiring for me, Meg, how about you?
[00:20:36] Meg Palladino: [00:20:36] So for me, it's easy to go to the beach here in Connecticut. So, we go to the beach a lot. Then you smell the air and you appreciate the surroundings and it really kind of helps me focus and gives me some energy and calms me down.
[00:20:48]Mary Churchill: [00:20:48] So Selcen, thank you so much. This was wonderful.
[00:20:51] Selcen Öner: [00:20:51] It was a great pleasure to meet you again
[00:20:54] Mary Churchill: [00:20:54] As always, thank you for joining us and we'll be back next week with Anne Gagne talking about remote work and the exhaustion Olympics.