Who I Am
· I'm Serdar to some, Kaya to others (I'm Kay in Starbucks)· I live in British Columbia
· I'm approaching my fifties
· I'm Georgian by ethnicity, Turkish by birth, Canadian by citizenship
What I Do
· I teach courses on global issues at a Canadian university, often focusing on the realities of the Global South, and comparing them with those of wealthy nations· I travel, mostly to developing contexts, and document ordinary moments through photos & videos
What i want to do:
· Write a book about my two decades in small-town British Columbia, witnessing the sudden demographic shift during the Trudeau years and beyond. Observing how people from completely different backgrounds and walks of life reacted in their own ways to the idea of Canada being renegotiated around them. The ongoing story of a Canadian town still changing year after year. Businesses, neighbourhoods, and everyday interactions transforming in ways both subtle and dramatic. Conservatives, liberals, newcomers, and old-timers each carrying their own particular disappointments. Schoolkids at bus stops staring into emptiness, vaping who knows what, adding a quiet but major generational tension to it all. And maybe set all of this against the voices of people I met in 100+ countries over the same years, enough to make Canada’s left and right, for all their global rhetoric, sound oddly local.What I Enjoy
· world cinema· long-form podcasts
Last updated: Spring 2025