University of Toronto, Turkish and Ottoman Studies

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies:
Berrak Burçak Della Fave (Bilkent University)
The Politics of Female Beauty in Late Ottoman History
Fri. January 26, 2024 12:00-2:00 pm EST
Online, registration link:
https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZArce2trzgqE9Y8jOaiNKgxKkMPgrG1Q3dF

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies:

Pınar Bedirhanoğlu
Middle East Technical University and York University

Who Is Afraid of the “Finance Lobby”? Neoliberal Transformation of Turkey’s Economic Management under the New Presidential System of Government

The passage to the presidential system of government (PSG) on 9 July 2018 in Turkey, following a two-year-long emergency rule, has meant a leap in the state’s neoliberal transformation since the 1980s. In the economic field, this led to the rise of politicised, centralised, personalised, discretionary, and non-accountable management practices in contrast to the earlier neoliberal mottoes of depoliticization, decentralisation, institutionalisation, rule of law, and transparency. This presentation provides a detailed analysis of economic management in Turkey in the first four months of the PSG, a period which also saw Turkey’s most severe financial crisis since the one in 2001, to highlight the political economic continuities underlying this shift towards re-politicization.

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies:

Şerife Yalçınkaya, Ege University (İzmir)
Journey Stories in Classical Turkish Literature
Thurs., 28 November 2019, 4-6 pm
NMC Conference Room (BF200B)
4 Bancroft Ave., 2nd floor

Abstract: Classical Turkish Literature is full of road and journey stories. In classical texts of Turkish literature, the journey is circular. This cyclicality is largely related to the perception of the universe by Sufism and this perception was inspired by Ptolemy’s theory. Turkish literature constructs the perception of the mystical universe through the wahdat al-wujud theory. According to Sufism, the soul is in the state of homesickness. Sufi stories also tell the story of the return of the soul to the homeland (God). This is also the return of the individual to find himself. There is a saying attributed to the prophet of Islam: “To know yourself is to know Allah” (man ‘arafa nafsahu faqad ‘arafa rabbahu). This journey is also the journey of self-maturation. We can trace these themes in pre-Islamic Turkish literature going back to Uighur Buddhist texts and in the Islamic period examples inspired by Persian and Arabic literature: Turkish epics and Uighur Buddhist and Manichean texts (9th and 10th centuries), Iranian masnavis (especially ‘Attar in the 12th century and Jami‘ in the15th century), Arabic symbolic stories (Ibn Tufeyl’s Arabic philosophical novel and an allegorical Hayy bın Yaqzan, early 12th century) were sources of road stories in Turkish literature. This seminar will focus on the mystical lines of this journey with examples from Turkish literature from the 13th through the19th centuries.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies:
Inci Sariz, PhD
“Translator Agency in Turkey under Censorial Constraints: Institutional Pressure on Translation”
Thurs., 31 October 2019, 4-6 pm
NMC Conference Room (BF200B)
4 Bancroft Ave., 2nd floor
Abstract: Translation is one of the spheres where the effects of an ideology are most visible because what is allowed and proscribed to exist in a culture is immediately reflected on the constraints surrounding the agents of translators, e.g., the translators, editors, publishers, and their resulting translational behavior. Rethinking the issue of translator agency within a framework of censorship can shed light on both the unusual and imperceptible constraints that impinge on translational activity. Through a review of a variety of scandalous translation cases that have generated much legal, academic, and public debate in Turkey, this talk explores the question of translator agency under an emerging authoritarian regime with a focus on the institutional forms of censorship in the production of translated literature. By casting light on the multifaceted power relations between the agents of translation and institutions of power, a study on censorship and translator agency also contributes to ongoing studies of how larger systems of culture and literature evolve.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies
Victor Ostapchuk (University of Toronto)
“The Refugium in Eurasian History and its Spatiality”
Thursday | 17 October 2019 | 5:00-7:00 pm
Natalie Zemon Davis Room (SS2098), 100 St. George
Abstract: The term refugium—yet to be properly defined—has been used by scholars to denote areas where safety from enemies owing to remoteness or difficulty of access provided long-term security that allowed for polity-formation (no connection to refugium as a medieval village fortification). Often a degree of sacredness is said to have been ascribed to refugia by their possessors. Examples of refugia on the Eurasian steppe: north of the Göbi Desert for the Asiatic Huns (Hiung-nu), Rouran (“Avars”), and Gök Türks; Yeti-su/Semirechye (Lake Balkash basin) for the West Türk Qaganate; Blue Forest on the Samara River (Ukraine) for Qipchaqs/Polovtsians; Burqan Qaldun Mountain for the Mongols of Chinggis Khan. Other possible refugia: the lower Dnieper River below its rapids (Zaporozhia) where the genesis of Ukrainian cossackdom occurred; Scandinavia (“Scandza Island”) for the Goths; Gerrhus for the Scythians. This seminar will survey the sources and spaces, query the reality of refugia as opposed to simple refuges, and explore aspects of spatiality.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies (SOTS)
“What is Ottoman Historiography? Competing and Converging Narratives in 15th- and Early 16th-Century Rumeli”
Tuesday, March 26, 2018 4-6 pm
Natalie Zemon Davis Seminar Room (Sidney Smith 2098)
Sponsored by the Departments of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and of History and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Abstract: In the first decade of the 16th century, the historian Kemālpashazāde (d. 1534) composed an elaborate History of the Ottoman Dynasty, in which he included a lengthy account of the pre-Ottoman past of the Balkans (Rumeli) based—after a thorough redaction—on an apocryphal Christian work of medieval Bulgarian history. By taking this peculiar case of convergence between Muslim and Christian historical narratives as a starting point and trying to locate it in its proper cultural and political contexts, this talk will embark on an attempt to tackle the wider issue of the make-up and dynamics of historical writing in a period of ideological experimentation in the nascent Ottoman imperial enterprise. It will explore the competitive nature of various historiographic strands originating in Rumeli and relating its history, as well as possible venues of interaction between them, in order to demonstrate how the consolidation of the dynasty’s authority in the region was paralleled by a process of appropriation of its past through the merger of these originally competing traditions.

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies (SOTS)
Linda Darling (Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, Üniversität Bonn and University of Arizona)
“A Conquest that Changed an Empire: The Ottoman Military in Syria”
Wed., 20 March 2019, 4:00-6:00 pm
Natalie Zemon Davis Room (SS2098), 100 St. George Street
Sponsored by the Departments of History and of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Abstract: When Selim I conquered Syria in 1516, he changed the Ottoman Empire in more ways than simply adding territory. This lecture discusses the effect of the conquest of Syria on two fundamental Ottoman military institutions—the timar cavalry system and the Janissary infantry corps—and demonstrates the use of government documents to critique the representation of these changes in the political literature of the time as illegitimate. These shifts are usually attributed to the military and price revolutions of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However well before these developments, circumstances resulting from the Ottoman presence in the Arab lands caused both military forces to intensify the recruitment of outsiders. The resulting alterations in both military systems were not confined to Syria, but spread throughout the empire and made the Ottoman Empire another kind of state, not just larger but institutionally and ideologically different.

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies (SOTS)
Gökçe Günel, University of Arizona
“A Seascape of Power: Turkish Energy Infrastructures in Africa”
Thursday, 17 January 2019, 5-7 pm
Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Conference Room (BF200B)

Abstract: Many countries around the world are having difficulty in meeting rising power demands, and employ quick energy generation mechanisms to satisfy the needs of their populations. One such technology is powerships — repurposed ships that serve as mobile power generators. Currently, the only commercial producer of powerships is a Turkish company that converts second-hand ships into floating power plants in shipyards in Tuzla, Istanbul. Floating power plants attach themselves to national grids, and using fuel oil and natural gas, produce inexpensive electricity for countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique, and Indonesia. For instance, the powership in Ghana currently provides 23% of the country’s electricity. Drawing on fieldwork in Turkey and various parts of Africa, this talk will analyze how powership company representatives set up thick relations with governments in Africa, explore the shipyards where ships are manufactured, and investigate the use of a floating power plant in Ghana.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies
Evren Altinkas, University of Guelph
“Ottoman Intellectuals and Patronage Relations with the State: When the Bourgeoisie Is Not There!”
Wed, 21 Nov. 2018, 5:00-7:00 pm
Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Conference Room (BF200B) 4 Bancroft Ave.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Seminar in Ottoman and Turkish Studies (SOTS)
David Do Paço, Centre for History, Sciences Po, Paris
“Women in Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in Late Eighteenth Century Istanbul”
Mon., 29 October 2018, 2-4 pm
BF200B, Near &Middle Eastern Civilizations Conference Room. 4 Bancroft Ave.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and by the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies