Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of ...Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text's creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre-periphery relations.
This book intends to contribute to the discussions on the "New" Turkey, which has become a noteworthy term during the third term of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and which was officially ...used by Erdogan, the Republic of Turkey in 2014. The "New" Turkey, although a connotation used frequently for a new beginning of politics followed by each political power, has been attributed to a symbolic value by the current political power, AKP. The "New" Turkey has a bipolar meaning in Turkish politics: One that is strongly defended and supported by the current political power to maintain the historical bond between the Ottoman heritage, a mixture of Turkish culture and Islamic identity, and the Turkish republic, therefore to reinstate the Ottoman understanding among the people through state institutions while challenging the secular and Kemalist side, which resists losing the "old" Turkey's Kemalist identity. Political, social and economic transformations are visible in daily and social life in Turkey toward Turkish-Islamic synthesis. Such a visibility is of concern for both polarized sides in Turkey. The "conservative democrat" AKP is deeply keen on bringing back the "national" and "local" philosophy of culture, production, technology and identity while protecting their "own" and "othering" those who do not agree with the AKP, securitizing the opposition who disregard the Ottoman heritage and who states the Turkish Republic was founded from a scratch. This book focuses on the political regime transformation, social problems such as aging and nation, economic problems such as import and export destinations during the third term of AKP, when they officially started to name it "New" Turkey. Although the "New" Turkey is very often used to denote a state culturally and ideologically conservative, it is also a term to utter a regional power, which centers itself in the world politics. Today, the biggest question is whether Turkey is going to manage to undo polarization of the society while maintaining development. The present work seeks answers to these questions.
One of the goals of Russia's Eastern policy was to turn Moldavia
and Wallachia, the two Romanian principalities north of the Danube,
from Ottoman vassals into a controllable buffer zone and a
...springboard for future military operations against Constantinople.
Russia on the Danube describes the divergent interests and uneasy
cooperation between the Russian officials and the Moldavian and
Wallachian nobility in a key period between 1812 and 1834. Victor
Taki's meticulous examination of the plans and memoranda composed
by Russian administrators and the Romanian elite underlines the
crucial consequences of this encounter. The Moldavian and
Wallachian nobility used the Russian-Ottoman rivalry in order to
preserve and expand their traditional autonomy. The comprehensive
institutional reforms born out of their interaction with the tsar's
officials consolidated territorial statehood on the lower Danube,
providing the building blocks of a nation state.
The main conclusion of the book is that although Russian policy
was driven by self-interest, and despite the Russophobia among a
great part of the Romanian intellectuals, this turbulent period
significantly contributed to the emergence, several decades later,
of modern Romania.
The Balkans offer classic examples of how empires imagine they can transform themselves into national states (Ottomanism) and how nation-states project themselves into future empires (as with the ...Greek “Great Idea" and the Serbian “Načertaniye"). By examining the interaction between these two aspirations this volume sheds light on the ideological prerequisites for the emergence of Balkan nationalisms. With a balance between historical and literary contributions, the focus is on the ideological hybridity of the new national identities and on the effects of “imperial nationalisms" on the emerging Balkan nationalisms. The authors of the twelve essays reveal the relation between empire and nation-state, proceeding from the observation that many of the new nation-states acquired some imperial features and behaved as empires. This original and stimulating approach reveals the imperialistic nature of so-called ethnic or cultural nationalism.
The Treaties of Carlowitz (1699) presents studies on the Lega Sacra War of 1683-1699 against the Ottoman Empire, the Peace treaties of Carlowitz (1699), and the legacy of the conflict for Modern ...Europe, the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire.
Human rights are politically fraught in Turkey, provoking suspicion and scrutiny among government workers for their anti-establishment left-wing connotations. Nevertheless, with eyes worldwide ...trained on Turkish politics, and with accession to the European Union underway, Turkey's human rights record remains a key indicator of its governmental legitimacy. Bureaucratic Intimacies shows how government workers encounter human rights rhetoric through training programs and articulates the perils and promises of these encounters for the subjects and objects of Turkish governance. Drawing on years of participant observation in programs for police officers, judges and prosecutors, healthcare workers, and prison personnel, Elif M. Babül argues that the accession process does not always advance human rights. In casting rights as requirements for expertise and professionalism, training programs strip human rights of their radical valences, disassociating them from their political meanings within grassroots movements. Translation of human rights into a tool of good governance leads to competing understandings of what human rights should do, not necessarily to liberal, transparent, and accountable governmental practices. And even as translation renders human rights relevant for the everyday practices of government workers, it ultimately comes at a cost to the politics of human rights in Turkey.
Scientific Instruments between East and West is a collection of essays on the transmission of knowledge about scientific instruments and the trade in such instruments between the Eastern and Western ...worlds.
Turkey's economy is a complex mix of modern industry, a traditional agricultural sector, and a rapidly growing private sector. At the same time the country is positioning itself and preparing for ...entry into the European Union. That Turkey should meet her national economic goals is, therefore, particularly important. A vital factor in achieving these will be the country's regional economies and their associated economic policies. To date, however, many of the policy interventions adopted have been based on models drawn from developed economies and the outcome has raised a number of concerns. Are policy interventions drawn from advanced economies appropriate for transitional economies such as Turkey? Aksel Ersoy's book is the first work to explore the dynamics of local and regional development in Turkey. In addition, he offers a new theoretical framework for understanding the local and regional dynamics of emerging and transitional economies more generally.
During the last half century of its existence, the Ottoman Empire and the lands around its borders were places of constant political turmoil and unceasing military action. The enormous costs of war ...were paid not only by politicians and soldiers, but by the Ottoman civilian population as well. This book examines the hardships that ordinary people, Muslim and Christian alike, endured during decades of warfare. Jeremy Salt brings to the surface previously ignored facts that disrupt the conventional narrative of an ethno-religious division between Muslim perpetrators and Christian victims of violence. Salt shows instead that all major ethno-religious groups-including Armenians, Turks, Kurds, and Greeks-were guilty of violent acts. The result is a more balanced picture of European involvement in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, one that highlights the destructive role of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and other European leaders grabbing for Ottoman resources up to the end of World War I. The effects of these events are felt to the present day. This extraordinary story centers not on military campaigns but on ordinary civilians whose lives were disrupted and in many cases destroyed by events over which they had no control. Disease, malnutrition, massacre and inter-communal fighting killed millions of people during the First World War alone. Until now this epic saga of human suffering has remained a story largely untold.
Your Freedom and Mine Miley, Thomas Jeffrey; Venturini, Federico
2018, 2019-10-15
eBook
"Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts... I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be ...separated."—From a letter by Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment, February 10, 1985 A revolutionary imprisoned on an island fortress may hold the key to peace in the Middle East. The leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, is considered by many to be the "Kurdish Mandela", courageously issuing proposals for peace even from his prison cell. His ideas on democracy, women's liberation, and freedom have even inspired the remarkable Rojava Revolution in northern Syria. As Turkey descended into tyranny and Syria exploded in civil war, a peace delegation of European politicians, academics, and journalists, led by Nelson Mandela's lawyer and Supreme Court judge Essa Moosa, repeatedly attempted to go to meet with Öcalan at his prison on Imrali Island. Your Freedom and Mine tells the story of these momentous delegations. The book opens with an informative historical overview of the Kurdish Question, leading up until the optimistic opening—and eventual bitter failure—of the peace process in Turkey. It includes official documents and reports from the Imrali Delegations in Istanbul and Diyarbakir/Amed, which involved in-depth interviews with Kurdish and Turkish politicians, media, and civil society regarding the degenerating political and human rights situation. The final section is a collection of testimonials from delegation participants. Your Freedom and Mine offers crucial insight into the dramatic history and current reality of the Kurdish struggle for recognition and peace in Turkey.
