Turkish Forum

Tag: History

  • Excavations stopped at ancient city in Turkey

    Excavations stopped at ancient city in Turkey

    KNIDOS RUINS, Turkey: The archaeological site of Knidos in Turkey was once a jewel of ancient Greek civilization — a major port that exported wine as far as India and Britain, the religious center of a confederacy of Greek cities, and site of a medical school that rivaled the legendary Hippocratic clinic.

    Its crowning glory was a statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, by Athenian sculptor Piraxitelles — which attracted admirers from across the Mediterranean basin.

    Archaeologists believe most of the city’s secrets lie hidden beneath the ground. But Turkey has suspended excavations — accusing the Turkish project leader of negligence leading to the collapse of a newly restored column.

    Professor Ramazan Ozgan is now fighting a legal battle at the country’s highest administrative court to overturn the government’s cancellation of his almost 20-year-old excavation permit. The government also suspended excavations by the British Museum and Germany’s Freiburg University, which had been digging under Ozgan’s permit and leadership.

    Excavations stopped at ancient city in Turkey – International Herald Tribune.

  • Revelation Road

    Revelation Road

    With more biblical sites than anywhere outside of Israel, Turkey’s spiritual tourism leads travelers and pilgrims to ruins

    By Peter Manseau
    Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page W16

    From 3,000 loudspeakers affixed to the city’s 3,000 minarets, the canned wailing of muezzins rings out the call to prayer five times a day. Istanbul has been a Muslim city for more than 500 years, and yet there still seems to be no coordination when it comes to scheduling this most basic of Islamic customs. With each chorus of “allahu akbar” beginning imprecisely at sunrise, it’s pretty much every mosque for itself. Some start 10 seconds early, some 10 seconds late; at least one seems to wait until the coast is clear so that its adhan will have the air all to itself.

    I don’t hear a thing once inside the immaculate, Muzak-filled confines of the Point Hotel. The Point is one of a new generation of high-end Istanbul lodgings — most within a few blocks of trendy Taksim Square — that seem to cater to travelers who do not want to know they are in Turkey. To enter the lobby from the predawn din is to suddenly inhabit another universe, one equipped with a Japanese restaurant, a “wellness spa” and molded plastic furniture apparently borrowed from the lounge deck of the Starship Enterprise.

    Revelation Road – washingtonpost.com.

  • Google in “billion news stories” vow

    Google in “billion news stories” vow

    GOOGLE is seeking to put every news article written in the past 200 years online. The company will pay for scanning the articles – estimated to run into billions worldwide – and will make money from advertising placed next to the pages. It follows the success of Google Book Search, which makes scanned copies of old and out-of-print books available on the internet.

    Source: METRO, 10 Semptember 2008

  • Scholar given national grant award [ATATURK]

    Scholar given national grant award [ATATURK]

    Sept. 10, 2008

    By Jacqueline Deavenport
    Reporter

    A member of the history department will be conducting research in Turkey this year, thanks to a Fulbright grant.

    Dr. George W. Gawrych, an associate professor, was awarded a Fulbright Senior Researcher Scholar grant and will begin his research Sept. 15, said Jamie Lawrence, a Public Affairs Officer in the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

    “It is a tremendous honor for me to receive this grant,” Gawrych said in a press release. “I distinctly remember growing up with a great admiration for Senator Fulbright. He was one of my heroes in the political world, and I am thrilled to have this opportunity of working with scholars in Turkey while conducting the ten months of focused research.”

    Gawrych said he remembers being inspired in junior high school by Arkansas Sen. William James Fulbright, a man committed to finding peace and understanding between nations through education.

    Considerations such as professional qualifications, lecturing activity, research activity, language proficiency, and experience abroad, determine who is awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. The Fulbright program was created in 1946, and there are several different types of Fulbright programs for students and educators. Gawrych is the fifth Baylor professor to receive a Fulbright award, according to the press release.

    His research will focus on one of Turkey’s political historical figures, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is trying to understand Ataturk’s career as both a military commander and a statesman. “There is this larger vision, higher purpose that drives him,” said Gawrych.

    Ataturk was an army commander and a revolutionary who led the Turkish national movement, which, in turn, became the Turkish War of Independence. As a statesman, he instituted political, cultural and economic reforms.

    For 19 years, Gawrych taught at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at The United States Military Academy at West Point, where he first became interested in the subject of his research.

    Upon coming to Baylor, he had an opportunity to focus on sources associated with Ataturk.

    For nine months, Gawrych will be pouring over primary sources, working primarily in archives, libraries and research institutes in Ankara and Istanbul. He will also be visiting important battle sites.

    Gawrych said his biggest challenges will be sifting through the masses of documentation and deciphering hand-written and short-hand written documents.

    Dr. Jeffrey Hamilton, department chair of the history department, said Gawrych will help bring positive attention to Baylor.

    “We’re very pleased for Dr. Gawrych and Baylor, because the Fulbright Research fellowships are one of the most competitive and prestigious awards that an academic can receive,” he said. “While both faculty and staff will miss Dr. Gawrych, his presence in Turkey will raise the profile of Baylor as a whole and in Middle East studies.”

    Gawrych’s wife, Joan, will be accompanying him on his trip to Turkey, and there they will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary.

    Source: www.baylor.edu,

  • Turkish Migration to the United States: From Ottoman Times to the Present

    Turkish Migration to the United States: From Ottoman Times to the Present

    From: A DENIZ BALGAMIS <[email protected]>
    List Editor: Mark Stein <[email protected]>
    Editor’s Subject: H-TURK: New book [D Balgamis]
    Author’s Subject: H-TURK: New book [D Balgamis]
    Date Written: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 12:21:01 -0400
    Date Posted: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 12:21:01 -0400

     
    Dear Colleagues,

    The Center for Turkish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
    announces the publication of a new book titled “Turkish Migration to the
    United States: From Ottoman Times to the Present” edited by A. Deniz
    Balgamis and Kemal H. Karpat.

    You may order the book from the University of Wisconsin Press website
    at

    CONTENTS

    Introduction
    Kemal H. Karpat

    PART I SOURCES AND APPROACHES TO OTTOMAN/
    TURKISH MIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

    The History of Turkish Migrations: A Research Agenda
    Rudolph J. Vecoli

    Forging New Links in the Early Turkish Migration Chain: The U.S.
    Census and early Twentieth Century Ships’ Manifests
    John J. Grabowski

    PART II HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND CASE STUDIES

    The Emigration from the Ottoman Empire to America
    Nedim İpek and K. Tuncer Çağlayan

    Reflections of the First Muslim Immigration to America in Ottoman
    Documents
    Mehmet Uğur Ekinci

    From Anatolia to the New World: The First Anatolian Immigrants to
    America
    Rıfat N. Bali

    Conflict and Cooperation: Diverse Ottoman Ethnic Groups in Peabody,
    Massachusetts
    Işıl Acehan

    “Home Away from Home: Early Turkish Migration to the United States
    Reflected in the Lives and Times of Bayram Mehmet and Hazım Vasfi”
    Emrah Şahin

    PART III RECENT IMMIGRATION

    New Migration, Old Trends: Turkish Immigrants and Segmented
    Assimilation in the United States
    Mustafa Saatçi

    A Profile of Immigrant Women from Turkey in the United States,
    1900-2000
    Ayşem R. Şenyürekli

    Migration from Giresun to the United States: The Role of Regional
    Identity
    Lisa DiCarlo

    Turkish Immigrants in the United States: Men, Women and Children
    Müzeyyen Güler

    The Turks Finally Establish a Community in the United States
    Kemal H. Karpat

    Turkish Islam (with Introduction by Kemal H. Karpat)
    Lloyd A. Fallers

    Contributors

    Bibliography

    Index

    ————-
    Deniz Balgamis, Ph.D.
    University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • PUBL.- Ismail Gasprali, French and African Letters, Edition by A.-A. Rorlich

    PUBL.- Ismail Gasprali, French and African Letters, Edition by A.-A. Rorlich

    PUBL.- Ismail Gasprali, French and African Letters, Edition by A.-A. Rorlich

    Posted by: Azade-Ayse Rorlich <[email protected]>

    Ismail Gasprali
    French and African Letters

    Azade-Ayse Rorlich, transl., ed., and Introduction

    Isis Press, Istanbul, 2008

    For information: [email protected]

    The present book provides scholars as well as students access to
    primary sources critical to understanding the intellectual life of
    Russia’s Muslims in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
    Through Ismail Gasprali’s French and African Letters Professor Rorlich
    offers evidence regarding the scope of Muslim modernism in late
    imperial Russia contributing at the same time to a better
    understanding of the debates on gender issues that shaped the
    modernist discourse.

    This volume represents the first annotated English translation of
    Ismail Gasprali’s fictional travelogue, first serialized in his
    newspaper Terjuman between 1887 and 1891. Providing a window into the
    diversity of the issues that shaped the Muslim modernist discourse in
    Russia, this publication offers one of the few opportunities to
    examine primary source material in a field still marked by the paucity
    of such materials available in English translation. This annotated
    translation makes an important contribution to the field of Eurasian
    scholarship not only for bringing to the students of Muslim modernism
    and gender studies an important work of Ismail Gasprali — one of the
    leading Muslim reformers of the Russian empire, but also for offering
    an Introduction that places the French and African Letters in the
    broader context of his work.