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 Enjoy
· slow-paced, long-form podcasts where the guests' life experiences are nothing like mine· films from around the world
What I Want to Do:
I want to 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 reveal how Canada’s left and right, for all their global rhetoric, remain constrained by a distinctly local way of framing both their problems and the solutions they imagine for them.
Last updated: Fall 2025