 The Turkologentag 2023, organized by the Chair of Turcology of the University of Vienna in cooperation with the Society for Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies (GTOT), took place in Vienna between September 21 and 23, 2023. At the largest and most important academic congress in Europe, if not worldwide, in the fields of Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies, almost 800 participants from around 50 countries presented their research in more than 200 panels!
Edhem Eldem (Boğaziçi University) gave the conference a brilliant start with his keynote address, "Ottoman and Turkish studies in 2023: The Good, the Bad, and the (Un)Likely", in which he contemplated the state of our discipline in a profound and highly entertaining manner. Several panel discussions also focused on the development and future of our disciplines.
The documentary film "Traugott" about Traugott Fuchs (1906-1996) had its world premiere, so to speak, at the Turkologentag, with the director Dirk Schäfer in attendance. Another highlight was the evening with the author and journalist Can Dündar, who presented his new book Die rissige Brücke über den Bosporus. Ein Jahrhundert Türkische Republik und der Westen and answered the audience's questions, moderated by Bilgin Ayata (University of Graz). In the context of his appearance at the Turkologentag, Can Dündar also gave an interview for the Falter. Die Wochenzeitung aus Wien (No. 40/23, pp. 27-29).
The Turkologentag 2023 was also mentioned in the daily newspaper Standard (see below).
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At the Turkologentag 2023, the GTOT Prize Awardees for outstanding MA and PhD theses from Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies were also announced in the presence of the prize winners (one via Zoom).
Jovo Miladinović won the best dissertation award with the dissertation Heroes, Traitors, and Survivors in the Borderlands of Empires. Military Mobilizations and Local Communities in the Sandžak (1900s-1920s) he completed at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2021. The best master’s thesis awards were granted to Bérenice Bernard (Acteur et enjeux du développement du système préscolaire en Turquie (1968-1993), École de la recherche de Sciences Po Paris, 2022) and Ömer Faruk İlgezdi (Imagining Rūm in Mamluk Cairo. ʿAbd Al-Bāsiṭ Al-Malaṭī and the Ottoman Domains, Sabancı University, 2020).
Summaries of the award-winning works will appear in the next issue of Diyâr (see below).
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Our lecture series in the winter semester of 2023/24 presents current doctoral projects in Viennese Turkology in thirteen lectures. The series started with Fatih Yücel’s lecture “V-3M=? A late 16th Century Ottoman Monetary Equation” on 11 October 2023 and will continue with Ercan Akyol’s lecture “Melancholia, love and sex in the Early Modern Ottoman elite circles” on 18 October 2023 at 5:00-6:30 pm, Lecture Hall of the Department of Near Eastern Studies (Institut für Orientalistik).
The lecture series will be held in a hybrid format. Zoom-link to follow one or more of the lectures in the series is:
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After a pause of several years, the editors Jeanine Dagyeli and Manja Stephan-Emmrich proudly announce the relaunch of ANOR. ANOR is an open-access, peer-reviewed book series that publishes empirically and linguistically grounded research from the Humanities and Social Sciences on and from Central Asia and adjacent regions. The Editorial Board of ANOR invites proposals for small to medium-length monographs (including outstanding MA theses), collaborative writing projects or collected volumes based on original research and profound regional expertise.
The word ANOR means pomegranate in diverse Central Asian languages, and this fruit has a long visual and symbolic history in the poetry and material culture of the region. The pomegranate also symbolises the many commonalities in Central Asia that transcend contemporary nation-state borders. At the same time, the pomegranate, with its many kernels, stands for the multi-perspectivity and diversity of approaches and positionalities that the ANOR series wants to pursue. By taking the historically consolidated region of Central Asia with its five former Soviet republics, Xinjiang and Afghanistan as its focus and point of departure for analysis, ANOR employs area as a method. The series is dedicated to fostering transregional exchange and the decolonisation of knowledge production by increasing the visibility of academic debates, research interests and achievements from Central Asia itself. Another emphasis lies on cross-cutting and cross-disciplinary themes and approaches highlighting the historical and contemporary ties between Central Asia, larger Eurasia, South Asia and the MENA region. For more information, please see the publisher’s website: ANOR Central Asian Studies (degruyter.com).
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Viennese Turkish Studies hosts four (two Ph.D. students and two postdocs) TÜBİTAK fellows in the 2023/24 winter semester:
Deniz Armağan Akto (Bilkent University): Continuity and Change on the Lower Danubian Periphery of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century
Şeyma Benli (Istanbul Medeniyet University): Narratives on Early Modern European Climate in Ottoman Literature
Oya Gözel (Kocaeli University): Politicization of Consumption in the Ottoman Empire after 1908 in the Context of Changing Social and Economic Mentality
Arif Tapan (Social Sciences University of Ankara): Saving a ‘wretched’ nation: Garabed Panosian and his Armeno-Turkish Münadi-i Erciyes newspaper (1859-1862)
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Diyâr, second special issue 2023:
Borders, Territory, and the Republic of Turkey
The Diyâr special issue “Borders, Territory, and the Republic of Turkey,” edited by Alexander Balistreri and Mert Pekşen, will be published at the end of November with contributions by
Johanna Ollier; Sertaç K. Şen, Tunç İbrahim Ceylan, and Güldeniz Kıbrıs.
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Julia Fröhlich will present the paper “Modelling the Military. The Greek-Jewish Refugee Movement and its Dependence on Military Evacuation Structures” at the Graduate Conference on Holocaust and Genocide Studies, to be held at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Boston on 16-19 October 2023.
Nazlı Vatansever will present the paper “Sahaflarşeyhizade Vakanüvis Esad Efendi’nin Şahsi Mecmûaları Üzerinden Bir Sınıflandırma Denemesi” at the “Mecmuâ Tipolojileri Çalıştayı” Workshop in Istanbul on 3-4 November 2023.
Onur İnal will serve on the extended editorial board of Resistance: A Journal of Radical Environmental Humanities, published by the Nebraska University Press.
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“Buyurdum ki….” – The Whole World of Ottomanica and Beyond. Studies in Honour of Claudia Römer (The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage, Vol. 78), edited by Hülya Çelik, Yavuz Köse, and Gisela Procházka-Eisl can be downloaded as a PDF via u:search (University of Vienna)
Edith Gülçin Ambros, “A Case Study of Social Structures Triggering a Subgenre: The 16th-century Ottoman Poets ‘Askerī’s and ‘Ubeydī’s ‘Books of Advice’ (Pendnāmes) in the Context of Their Peers’ Actions and Verses,” in Selected Studies on Genre in Middle Eastern Literatures: From Epics to Novels, eds. Hülya Çelik and Petr Kučera, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023, pp. 90-112.
“Die Turkologen stehen vor den Toren Wiens”, Interview with Yavuz Köse (in German, by Gudrun Harrer), Der Standard, 17 September 2023, https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000186663/die-turkologen-stehen-vor-den-toren-wien
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