Recent Turkish Political and Social History : Impressions and Inferences from Memoirs This course is intended for all sophomores, juniors and seniors interested in the Ottoman everyday life of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It aims to introduce and discuss Ottoman socio-economic history on the basis of memoirs. After setting out the methodological uses and shortcomings of memoirs as a historical source, participants will have the opportunity to encounter concrete personalities and characters, their lifestyle, personal actions and drama as a part of late Ottoman history. Thus a glimpse will be provided into the recent past in terms of the complex relationship between concrete human action and impersonal historical circumstances. This course covers childhood experiences, school impressions, the social conditions of 19th century Ottoman women, commercial life, literary-artistic activities, journalistic experiences, and the everyday life of bureaucrats. Each of these issues will be treated within the context of Ottoman political and social history.
Readings:
The students are expected to read selections from a memoir for every lesson. The other supplemantary secondary source reading materials (articles and boook chapters) are also to be read to be able to analyze the memoirs and to be able to contextualize the memoirs within their historicities. The memoirs are indicated with an (M). Each memoirs will be presented by one student. Although the other students will read selections from the memoirs, the presenter is expected to make a clsoe reading of the memoirs in question.
Week 1a: Introduction and the 19th Century Ottoman Bureaucracy
(M) Mehmed Tevfik Biren, II. Abdülhamid, Meşrutiyet ve Mütareke Hatıraları, Arba Yayınları, 1993
Carter Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 126-190
Week 1b: Worlds of Ottoman Diplomacy I;
(M) Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, Hariciye Hizmetinde 30 Sene (v. I), Maarif Basımevi, 1949
Carter Findley, Kalemiyeden Mülkiyeye, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996, pp. 90-138
Week 2a: Worlds of Ottoman Diplomacy II
(M) Abdülhak Hamid, Abdülhak Hamid’in Hatıraları, Dergah Yayınları, 1994
Carter Findley, Kalemiyeden Mülkiyeye, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996, pp. 185-224
Week 2b: The Military
(M) Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Paşa, Sergüzeşt-i Hayatım, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996, volume I
(M) Ahmet İzzet Paşa, Feryadım, Nehir Yayınları, 1995, volume I
James Reid, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire, F. Steiner, 2000, pp. 58-86
Week 3a: The Mutasarrıfs, Valis, “Dahiliye” and Governing the Empire
(M) Ahmet Reşit Rey, Ahmet Reşit Rey’in Hatıraları, Türkiye Yayınevi, 1947
Abdülhamit Kırmızı, Abdülhamid’in Valileri, Klasik Yayınları, 2007, pp. 1-43, 56-60, 69-81
Week 3b:Young Turks in Opposition
(M) İbrahim Temo, İbrahim Temo’nun İttihad ve Terakki Anıları, 1987
Şerif Mardin, Jöntürklerin Siyasi Fikirleri 1895-1908, İletişim Yayınları, 1993, pp. 129-161
Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 200-216
Week 4a: The Ulema
(M) Cemaleddin Efendi, Siyasi Hatıralarım, Nehir Yayınları, 2005
İsmail Kara, “Turban and Fez: Ulema as Opposition”, Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy içinde, RoutledgeCurzon, Elizabeth Özdalga (ed.), 2005, pp. 162-200
David Kushner, “The Place of the Ulema in the Ottoman Empire during the Age of Reform (1839-1918)”, Turcica, Vol. 19, 1987
Week 4b: Ottoman Colonialism
(M) Ebubekir Hazim Tepeyran, Hatıralar, Pera,1998
Usama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism”, The American Historical Review, June 2002, Vol. 107, No:3, pp. 768-796
Selim Deringil, ““They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate”, Comparative Studies in Society and History (2003), 45:2, pp. 311-342
Week 5a: Suppressing the Periphery, Encountering the Non-Muslims
(M) Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar, Selek Yayınları, 1959
(M) Mehmed Reşid (Şahingiray), Dr. Reşid Bey’in Hatıraları, Arba Yayınları, 1993
Gaidz Minassian, Arsen Avagyan, Ermeniler ve İttihat Terakki, Aras Yayınları, 2005
Johann Straus, Who Read What in the Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Literatures, Volume 6, Issue 1 January 2003, pp. 39-76
Week 5b: Encountering the West
(M) Mustafa Sami Efendi, Avrupa Risalesi, Kitabevi, 1996
(M) Ahmed İhsan, Avrupa’da Neler Gördüm ?, Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2007
Namık Kemal, “Terakki”, Namık Kemal, “Terakki”, Ibret, 3 Ramazan 1289/ 23 Teşrin-i Evvel 1288. Excerpted in Namık Kemal, Bütün Makaleleri 1, Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu & İsmail Kara (ed.), Dergah Yayınları, 2005
Cemil Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 1-21
Week 6a: Medicine
(M) Cemil Topuzlu, Hatıraları, Türkiye Yayınevi, 1945;
(M) Operatör Hazim Paşa, Hatıraları, Türkiye Yayınevi, 1945
(M) Celal Muhtar Özden, Hatıraları, Türkiye Yayınevi, 1945
Week 6b: Pionners of Free Professions
(M) İlmen, Süreyya, Hatıralarım, İbrahim Horoz Basımevi, 1947
Week 7a: The Unionists
(M) Muhittin Birgen, İttihat ve Terakki’de On Sene, Kitap Yayınları, 2006, v. I
Şükrü Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period”, in Reşat Kasaba (ed.), The History of Turkey Volume IV, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 62-111
Week 7b: Conclusion- Memoirs as Source and Historical Revisionism
(M) Hüsamettin Ertürk, İki Devrin Perde Arkası, Pınar Yayınları, 1994
Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Move, Brill, 1984
(probe also Nutuk (Mustafa Kemal), Rıza Nur’un Hatıraları (Rıza Nur) and İstiklal Harbimizin Esasları (Kazım karabekir)
Grading:
Students are expected to prepare an oral presentation of a memoir among the required memoirs as shown in the syllabus and write a long paper on a memoir that has not been suggested in the syllabus. This paper should focus on the memoir itself but has to analyze the memoirs in the context of their historicity. Another paper to be presented at the end of the course will be thematic scrutinizing a certain theme within the selected various memoirs which also utilizes the secondary sources read throughout the course.