Ottoman History Podcast

The situation of Kurdish language and culture in Turkey is one that has been very much in flux within an ever-changing political climate. The Kurdish music industry has become increasingly lively in recent years under more favorable legal conditions, though even still, many feel that the scene remains underground. Because of its tenuous legal status, the production of Kurdish music irrespective of lyrical content has also historically carried an inherent political meaning. Meanwhile, producers and artists operating under difficult conditions have faced challenges when trying to distribute and sell their music. In this podcast, Alev Kuruoğlu discusses the history of Kurdish music recordings both in Turkey and abroad and the development of the Kurdish music industry. - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2013/08/the-kurdish-music-industry-history-and.html#sthash.Y4yVszll.dpuf

Osmanlı tarihyazımında cevabı aranan önemli bir soru da Osmanlı kültüründe günlük, anı, hatırat gibi ben anlatılarının bulunup bulunmadığıdır. Bu bölümümüzde Selim Karahasanoğlu ile son çalışması Sadreddinzade Telhisi Mustafa Efendi ceridesi hakkında konuştuk. 18. yüzyılın önde gelen ulema ailelerinden birine mensup bu Osmanlı kadısının 24 yıl boyunca düzenli olarak tuttuğu bu günlüğün tarihsel kaynak olarak değerine ve Avrupa'daki diğer örneklerle arasındaki fark ve benzerliklere değindik. Ayrıca, yazma kütüphanelerinde karşılaşılan kurumsal zorlukların nasıl Osmanlı kültür tarihi araştırmalarının önünü tıkadığının altını çizerek, bir kaç eser üzerinden genellemeler yapmanın zorluğundan bahsettik.

During the interwar period, nationalist and socialist movements throughout the world looked to the peasant as both the source and object of state programs wherein establishing a link between the center and the provinces was a critical part of fostering the sense of nation devised by elite intellectuals. In Turkey, the ideas of Ziya Gökalp regarding the importance of the Anatolian villager in the development of Turkish national culture are a prominent example of how interwar nationalists saw the peasant as the stuff of the nation. Within this context, various programs designed to link the center and the periphery both economically and culturally emerged, and in this episode, Seçil Yılmaz discusses one such project, which sent professionally-trained Turkish painters into the Anatolian countryside over the period of 1938 to 1943 to create artistic depictions of the Turkish nation.

The Tanzimat era is conventionally viewed as a period of centralization in the Ottoman Empire, and as such, any concessions to local interests or extensions of autonomy during this period are viewed as a failure of state policy. However, given the aspects of decentralization also contained within late Ottoman reform, it is worth considering local autonomy as a strategy employed by the Ottomans in their attempt to govern disparate territories. In this episode, Elektra Kostopoulou explores these issues and discusses the transformation of Ottoman rule in Crete during the nineteenth century and the eventual creation of an autonomous region the in 1898.

Osmanlının 19. yy’da karşılaştığı en büyük sosyal ve politik meselelerden biri şüphesiz ki muhacir sorunudur. Rus devleti, eski Osmanlı toprakları olan Kafkasya ve Kırım’a yerleşmeye yönelik bir siyaseti benimseyip bölgedeyayıldıkça, yerli Müslüman nüfusa kaçmaktan başka bir çare kalmamıştı. Osmanlı, devlet nüfuzunun sınırlı olduğu seyrek nüfuslu bölgelere, yeni gelenleri yerleştirmek için yoğun çaba sarfetti. Ciddi sıkıntılara girerek, Anadolu ve Suriye boyunca sayısız muhacir yerleşimi kuruldu. Bu yerleşimlerin bir çoğu zamanın getirdiklerine dayanamadı ama Adana-Mersin bölgesinden bir örnek olan Atlılar köyünde Muhacirler kuşaklar boyunca varlıklarını sürdürebildiler. Bu bölümümüzde Mehtap Çelik, Atlılar Köyü ile ilgili yaptığı araştırmadan bahsetmektedir. During the nineteenth century, one of the major social and political issues faced by the Ottoman Empire was Muslim immigration from the Russian sphere. As the Russian Empire expanded into Crimea and the Caucasus, hundreds of thousands of individuals flocked to the Ottoman lands. The Ottoman state sought to settle these newcomers in sparsely populated regions where state power was limited. Not without serious hardship, numerous settlements were founded throughout Anatolia and Syria. Many did not withstand the test of time, but in this episode, Mehtap Çelik tells the story of one such settlement, the Circassian village of Atlılar near Mersin (podcast is in Turkish).

Although it was not an Ottoman province, Crimea was politically, militarily, and economically critical to Ottoman power in Eastern Europe, and the suzerainty of the Giray dynasty that governed Crimea for over three centuries was ultimately what held off Russian expansion and made the Black Sea truly an "Ottoman sea." In this episode, Denise Klein discusses the role of the Crimean Khanate in the Ottoman world and gives us an overview of the history, society, and culture of this political space. Drawing on her own research, she also uses a comparison of Ottoman and Crimean historiography to examine how these suzerains understood their place in the Ottoman equation and how writers on opposing sides of the Black Sea interpreted and represented events in different ways.

For over a week now, Istanbul and increasingly city centers in many parts of Turkey have witnessed the rise of an unprecedented protest movement referred to variously as Occupy Gezi or Resistanbul. Western media has been quick to herald another Arab Spring-type revolutionary event while the Turkish government and media has largely downplayed the significant of these events. In this podcast, we will try to take a closer look at the nature of these protests, which began as an occupation of a park slated for destruction and are now something much more, considering the historical and political contexts as well as providing an on the ground descriptions of what protests both in and outside of Istanbul look like. In part two of this podcast, we examine the anatomy of the Occupy Gezi movement and some aspects of its spread into different parts of Turkey and discuss possible implications of these protests within the wider context of Turkish politics as well as seemingly similar "leaderless revolutions" that coalesce around social media and the occupation of public space.

For over a week now, Istanbul and increasingly city centers in many parts of Turkey have witnessed the rise of an unprecedented protest movement variously referred to as Occupy Gezi or Resistanbul. Western media has been quick to herald another Arab Spring-type revolutionary event in the Muslim world while the Turkish government and media have largely downplayed the significant of these events. In this podcast, we will try to take a closer look at the nature of these protests, which began as an occupation of a park slated for destruction and are now something much more, considering the historical and political contexts as well as providing a first-hand description of what protests both in and outside of Istanbul look like. In part two of this podcast, we examine the anatomy of the Occupy Gezi movement and some aspects of its spread into different parts of Turkey and discuss possible implications of these protests within the wider context of Turkish politics as well as seemingly similar "leaderless revolutions" that coalesce around social media activity and the occupation of public space around the world. - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2013/06/occupy-gezi-protests-taksim-istanbul-turkey.html#sthash.lochLITa.dpuf

Her ne kadar modern tarihyazımı tarafından bir meritokrasi olarak tanımlansa da Osmanlı İmparatorluğu adam kayırmacılıktan ve akrabalık ilişkileri etrafında örgütlenen siyasi ağlardan muaf değildi. Bu podcastimizde Dr. Güneş Işıksel, genelde Osmanlı siyasi tarihyazımının ihmal ettiği kapı, hizip ve çıkar grubu gibi kavramlar etrafında 16. yüzyıl'ın ve belki de Osmanlı tarihinin en muktedir vezirlerinden birinin nasıl akrabalarını Osmanlı devletinde kritik noktalara yerleştirdiğini anlatıyor. Sokollu ve ailesinin siyasi kariyeri üzerine odaklanarak, devlet ile devleti oluşturan görevlilerin oluşturduğu hiziplerin çıkarlarının aynı olmadığının altını çizmekle kalmıyor, aynı zamanda devşirme sisteminin sanıldığı gibi ailesiyle bağlarını kaybetmiş, tamamen Sultan'a bağlı, geçmişsiz bir idareci sınıfı yaratamadığını da öne sürüyor. - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/search/label/Coming%20Soon#sthash.8sBDW1ZM.dpuf

In the early modern Mediterranean, diplomatic and commercial relations were often mediated through a group of interpreters known as dragomans whose role often extended well beyond their linguistic function. In this podcast, Emrah Safa Gürkan discusses the emergence of dragomans within the Ottoman context, their role in the Ottoman capital, and the influence of the use of interpreters more broadly among European states.

Akademik tarihyazımı ne kadar çeşitli olsa da Türkiye'de tarih öğretimi çok fazla milli ideoloji çerçevesinde yapılmaktadır. Bu bölümümüzde Emrah Yıldız, 50 üniversitenin ders programını inceleyen bir çalışmanın sonuçları doğrultusunda Türkiye'de tarih öğretimi konusunda yapılan hatalardan bahsedip bazı önerileri ileri sürmektedir. Despite diverse historiographical developments that have changed the way historians understand history, in the realm of education, history is still largely discussed within a nationalist framework. In this episode, Emrah Yıldız critiques this nationalist approach to history and explores the results of a study that examined the topics and content of course offerings at 50 Turkish universities (podcast is in Turkish). - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2011/05/education-history-turkey.html#sthash.pYZD93Wb.dpuf

Researchers focusing on the period of Ottoman history predating the establishment of what we know as the classical Ottoman bureaucracy and the earliest surviving court records are faced with major challenges when it comes to source material. In this episode, Christopher Markiewicz discusses one type of source that can be used to study this period: insha collections (inşa mecmuaları). While these collections of letters can be used to study diplomacy and the earliest formation of an Ottoman professional bureaucracy, Chris explains some of the ways in which these sources could potentially be used for a wide variety of historical topics related to cultural and social history of the early Ottoman Empire.

Yunanistan Müslümanlarına yönelik çalışmalar genellikle Mübadele ve Batı Trakya Türkleri üzerine yoğunlaşmaktadır. Bu bölümde söz konusu çalışmalardan farklı olarak Melike Kara, Yunanistan'ın 1913 yılında itibaren bir parçası olan Girit'e ve Müslümanlarına ilişkin incelemelerde bulunuyor. Müslümanların 1913 yılından Ada'dan ayrıldıkları 1924 yılına kadar yaşamlarında meydana gelen değişimleri ortaya koyarken olayların arka planında yer alan siyasi gelişmelere de değiniyor. Most studies of Muslims in Greece focus on the population exchange of 1924. In this episode, Melike Kara examines the little studied period directly preceding the population exchange through the peculiar case of Crete, which passed from independent status to being a part of Greece only in 1913. Taking a social history approach, we discuss some of the changes in the Cretan Muslim community as an official minority in Greece within the context of broader political developments (podcast is in Turkish). - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2011/05/crete-greece-ottoman-empire.html#sthash.2Lxm676Z.dpuf

Stories of insincere conversion under duress and secret Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire give the impression that many Christians lived in hiding from a Muslim majority. However, as Zeynep Türky0131lmaz argues in this podcast, the phenomenon of Crypto-Christianity is really more complex, as diversity and heterogeneity among the Ottoman Empire's rural communities gave rise to "in-between" groups that did not conform to categories of identity being formulated in the center. In this episode, we focus on the Trabzon region in order to understand how local communities sought to define their participation in a rapidly transforming society and economy of the nineteenth century.

The biography and intellectual legacy of Komitas Vardapet, an orphan from Kütahya who became one of the foremost Armenian intellectuals of his day, is firmly embedded within Armenian national lore. Yet, seldom has it been told as an Ottoman story. Drawing on sources in Turkish, Armenian, and English, this mixtape presents the life and works of Komitas through some of the earliest recordings of Armenian music, including his own performances. Part 2 of this historiographical mixtape deals with Komitas Vardapet's ideas regarding nationalist and his relationship with Turkish intellectuals in the context of the tumultuous and hostile years of the First World War.