07.05.24 | In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey

In this event Görkem Akgöz (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) will discuss her latest book In the Shadow of War and Empire: Industrialisation, Nation-Building, and Working-Class Politics in Turkey. The book offers a site-specific history of Ottoman and Turkish industrialisation through the lens of a mid-century cotton factory in the “Turkish Manchester” a name chosen by the Ottomans…

23.04.24 |Landscapes of the Eastern Question: Architecture and Power Balances in Istanbul

The “cosmopolitan” districts of Galata and Pera in Istanbul, with embassies built since the beginning of the 16th century, can be seen as one of the first environments in world history where diplomacy constructed a peculiar urban space and landscape. In this lecture, Paolo Girardelli argues that, beginning in the mid 18th century, each phase…

Politics of Corruption and the Earthquake in Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan

27 March | 17:00-18:30 | Spui 25 Amsterdam | Onsite & Online A panel discussion with Enno Maessen (Turkey Studies Network), Zeynep Koban (University of Amsterdam), Zeynep Kaşlı (Erasmus University), Burcu Köken (TU Delft), Sherwan Qasem (Médecins sans Frontières) and Uğur Üngör (NIOD/University of Amsterdam). Moderation: Beste İşleyen (University of Amsterdam). The two disastrous earthquakes…

Streaming Piety: Religion in Turkish Television Drama

Thursday 15 December 2022 | 17:15 – 18:15 | Leiden University | Lipsius Cleveringaplaats 1 Leiden & Online Television drama is the strongest narrative tool for popular culture to represent and comment on the socio-political context in which it is produced. The idea that television drama is a powerful tool in present days cultural production…

3…2…1…Action! Nationalism and Political Myths in Cold War Turkey

Online TSN Lecture | 10 November 2022 | 17.00-18.30 CET | Güldeniz Kıbrıs & Melis Behlil In this talk Dr Güldeniz Kıbrıs analyzes the changing discourses of Turkish nationalism between the 1950s-1980 through the reproduction of political myths in nationalist action/adventure films with historical settings. How myths narrate the nation’s spatial, ancestral, temporal roots, present situation, future, and…

National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism: The American Passport in Turkey

University of Amsterdam | 22 September 2022 | Spui25 | 20.00-21.30 CET | On-site & online In their new book, The American Passport in Turkey: National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism, Özlem Altan-Olcay and Evren Balta explore the diverse meanings and values that people outside of the United States attribute to U.S. citizenship, specifically…

Benevolent Conquerors, Besieged Homelands, Threatened State: The Reproduction of Political Myths in Cold War Turkey

PhD Defence by Güldeniz Kıbrıs Leiden University | 1 September 2022 | Academy Building – Rapenburg 73 Leiden | 15.00-15.45 CET | On-site & online This dissertation analyzes the changing discourses of Turkish nationalism between the 1950s-1980 through the reproduction of political myths in nationalist action/adventure films with historical settings. How myths narrate the nation’s spatial, ancestral, temporal…

The CHP in local government: Democratic enclaves within authoritarian neoliberalism?

Annual Roundtable Lecture on Contemporary Research Trends in Turkish Studies 2022 by Kerem Öktem Leiden University | Lipsius Building 148 | Friday 2 September 11.15 – 13.00 | please register via Petra de Bruijn – p.de.bruijn@hum.leidenuniv.nl Since the 2019 local elections in Turkey, a substantial number of municipalities have passed to parties of the opposition.…

Book Launch: Making Turkey, Representing Turkey

In this shared book launch TSN Members Özge Calafato and Enno Maessen will present their new monographies, Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era by Calafato and Representing Modern Istanbul: Urban History and International Institutions in Twentieth Century Beyoğlu. The event will focus on the contents of their respective books,…

The Sultan of New York: A Biography of the Eastern Question in the United States 

A public lecture by Nora Lessersohn (University College London, Smithsonian American Art Museum & National Museum of American History) | Thursday 19 May | 17.00 CET | via Teams This talk will examine the life and work of an Ottoman Armenian American man named Christopher Oscanyan (1818-1895). In particular, it will explore his diplomatic efforts…

Weaponizing History: The Populist Remaking of the Ottoman Past in Contemporary Turkey

A public lecture by Dr Emre Erol (Sabancı University) | 13 April 2022 | 17.00-18.30 CET | Utrecht University, Drift 21 Utrecht – Sweelinckzaal What we think of our past has an impact on our present. This has been one of the main challenges for those who are interested in the scientific study of the…

Book launch: Age of Rogues Rebels, Revolutionaries and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empires

You are cordially invited to a book panel on 10 March 2022 (Thursday, 17.00-19.00 CET) on Zoom to discuss Alp Yenen’s and Ramazan Öztan’s edited volume, Age of Rogues Rebels, Revolutionaries and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empires. The volume came out in June 2021 with Edinburgh University Press and analyzes several cases of political violence at the margins of…

CfP Ypres

WW1 in the Middle East On the occasion of the temporary exhibition For Civilisation. The First World War in the Middle East, IFFM together with the Turkey Studies Network in the Low Countries (TSN), Power in History: Centre for Political History (University of Antwerp) and the Hannah-Arendt-Institute (Mechelen) is organising the international conference The First…

Narrating Exile in and between Europe and the Ottoman Empire/Modern Turkey

 A conference organized by the Turkey Studies Network in the Low Countries (TSN) & the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES) University of Amsterdam – November 11-12, 2021 Exile and flight, forced or voluntary, recurrently and perennially affects societies and peoples across Europe and the Middle East. Through the window of exile, however, we can…

Book Launch: Dangerous Gifts

In this event TSN Member Ozan Ozavci will discuss his latest book Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798-1864 (Oxford University Press, 2021) with five distinguished panelists: Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht University), Khaled Fahmy (University of Cambridge), Selim Deringil (Boğaziçi University), Christine Philliou (UC Berkeley) and Isa Blumi (Stockholm University). The…

CfP: International Conference – Narrating Exile in and between Europe and the Ottoman Empire/modern Turkey

University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands | 11-12 November 2021 The Turkey Studies Network in the Low Countries (TSN) is seeking original paper proposals that unsettle traditional narratives on exilic experiences in and between Europe and the later Ottoman Empire/modern Turkey as part of a two-day interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Amsterdam and hosted…

A Transitional Justice Itinerary for Turkey

24.06.2021 | 17.00 CET | A TSN Spring Series Lecture by Esra Akcan This lecture explores architecture’s role in an extended notion of transitional justice and in healing societies after intense upheavals and internal conflicts. The concept of transitional justice emerged as accountability for large scale past abuses came to the forefront of grassroots human…

Sovereignty Suspended: Building the So-Called State

POSTPONED: 10.06.2021 | 16.00 CET | A TSN Spring Series Lecture by Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay What is de facto about the de facto state? Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay discuss their recent book Sovereignty Suspended, in which this question guides Bryant and Hatay through a journey into de facto state-building, or the process…

Migration, Revolutionary Politics, and Border Security in the Hamidian Era: The Ottoman Empire as a Global Precursor

24.05 | 17.00 | A TSN Spring Series lecture by David Gutman This paper will discuss the conjuring of the Armenian migrant as a security threat in Ottoman state discourse during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909). As this paper seeks to demonstrate, anxieties about the international migration of Armenians, particularly to the United…

Post-Imperial Equivocations: Turkey’s Temperamental Mobilization of the Caliphate, 1919-1924

Post-Imperial Equivocations: Turkey’s Temperamental Mobilization of the Caliphate, 1919-1924 13.05.2021 | 17.00 CET | A TSN Spring Series Lecture by Isa Blumi Central to the transformations of capitalist imperialism was the de facto bankruptcy of the old European empires after World War I. Accordingly, the cash-strapped bureaucrats of these dying structures stuck in Africa, the Middle…

Making Sense of Turkey’s Cold War

Making Sense of Turkey’s Cold War This event has passed. 26.03.2021 | 13.00 – 19.00 Turkey’s Cold War history has received only limited attention from scholars. Most studies focus on conventional questions of either diplomacy or governance, sidelining the history of cultural developments, social movements, and transnational dynamics. Addressing these gaps in the literature, this…

Calouste Gulbenkian: Refugee, Oil Man or “Citizen of Nowhere”?

Calouste Gulbenkian: Refugee, Oil Man or “Citizen of Nowhere”? This event has passed. 25.03 | 17.00 | A TSN Spring Series lecture by Jonathan Conlin By the time of his death in Lisbon in 1955 Calouste Gulbenkian was the world’s richest man, widely known as “Mr Five Per Cent” on account of his personal holding…

The Great War in the Middle East seen through the lens of Ottoman memoirs and archival documents.

The Great War in the Middle East seen through the lens of Ottoman memoirs and archival documents. 17.02 | 17.00 | A TSN lecture by Selim Deringil This event has passed. This presentation is based on Deringil’s most recent book, The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands. Turkish Memoires and Testimonials of the Great War.…

Belgium and the Ottoman Empire

Belgium and the Ottoman Empire: ‘Transnationals’ and Diplomacy in an Age of Global Capital. 10.12.2020 | 17.00 | A TSN Lecture by Houssine Alloul This event has passed.Houssine Alloul is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. His interests lie principally in the history of Euro-Ottoman interstate encounters, diplomats and their habitus, finance capitalism…

Transgressive Politics in Turkey in the Long 1970s

Transgressive Politics in Turkey in the Long 1970s: Bridging the International and the Interpersonal.

12 November 2020 | 17:00 | A TSN Lecture by Alp Yenen