In Search of a Compass: Greek-Turkish Relations in Uncharted Waters
Friday, 11 Mar 2022 17:00-19.00 via Zoom
Dr Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, Bilkent University Turkey
This presentation aims to evaluate the state of Greek-Turkish relations in light of recent developments leading to the reconfiguration of Turkish foreign policy. Following twenty years of détente and relative calm in bilateral relations, the year 2020 witnessed two escalations in Greek-Turkish relations, one in March 2020 involving refugees and immigrants on the Greek-Turkish land border and another in August 2020 involving military vessels of the two countries. The refugee crisis and energy exploration and monetization efforts in the Eastern Mediterranean have raised tensions at a moment when the political and institutional tools for the promotion of conflict resolution between Greece and Turkey linked to Turkey’s EU membership perspective appear to be obsolete. This presentation seeks an answer to the question whether structural or ideational factors played the biggest role in the recent escalation of the Greek-Turkish disputes.
The joy of fatwas: A glimpse into the Ottoman mind
Saturday, 27 Nov 2021 17:00-19.00 via Zoom
Dr Colin Imber, Retired Reader in Turkish, Manchester University UK
A fatwa is a legal opinion issued by a qualified authority – a müfti – in answer to a legal problem. Before the modern era it was customary for the mufti or his staff to re-write the question, omitting names and anything else considered irrelevant. The questioner would then receive the rewritten question and the answer on a slip of paper. Fatwas played an important role in all Islamic societies, and especially in the Ottoman Empire, where the chief mufti – known from the late sixteenth century as the şeyhülislam – was the supreme legal and religious authority. Anybody from the sultan to his lowliest subject could present a question to his office and receive an answer. The fatwa collections that resulted from their activities form a distinctive branch of Ottoman literature, while also giving us glimpses of the everyday beliefs and worries of the sultan’s subjects.
The lecture will concentrate on fatwas dealing with oaths and profanities, a topic that occupies long chapters in both classical legal texts and collections of Ottoman fatwas. It will show how the rules of Islamic, and specifically Hanafi law helped to shape Ottoman society and dominate the lives and thinking of ordinary Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.
Intercultural Encounters among the Millets in the Late Ottoman Empire
Friday, 1 October 2021 17.30-19.00 via Zoom
Dr Kübra Uygur
Intercultural Encounters enabled by the Armeno-Turkish Print Media
Writing Turkish with different alphabets was a common practice during the nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman Empire. Of these writing systems, Turkish in Armenian letters – known as Armeno-Turkish – emerged as one of the more popular compound mediums. In this talk, I will focus on the newspapers published in Armeno-Turkish during the Tanzimat era of the Ottoman Empire (1839-76). I will analyse the articles and editorial letters published in those newspapers to provide a picture of the inter-communal relations particularly among the Turkish and Armenian literati of the period.
Dr Aude Aylin de Tapia
Cultural and Religious Relations between Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians and Muslims in late Ottoman Cappadocia
The region of Cappadocia was, until 1923, one of the main centers for the Karamanli population, namely Orthodox Christians who spoke Turkish as their mother tongue and wrote Turkish with the Greek alphabet. Especially thanks to the economic, cultural, and intellectual prosperity of their members who emigrated and lived in the largest cities of the empire and abroad, the Karamanli communities of Cappadocia experienced huge developments during the last Ottoman century, especially in terms of education, cultural and religious activities, construction of private and public buildings, etc. These developments also modified their relations with Muslims who lived in the same villages or in neighbouring settlements. In this talk, using as primary sources Karamanlidika print media (books, almanacs, press) and the Oral Tradition Archives of the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens, I will focus on cultural and religious encounters between Karamanli Christians and Muslims in villages and towns of Cappadocia until the exchange of population between Greece and Turkey that took place in 1923.
The Persecution of Uyghurs and the Chinese Communist Party’s Digital Dungeons
Saturday, 31 Oct 2020 17:30-19.00 via Zoom
Dr Gül Berna Özcan, Royal Holloway, University of London
The long repression and cultural diminution of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples turned into systemic annihilation in Xinjiang with the establishment of a vast network of concentration camps.
In this talk, Dr Özcan will discuss how the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) two-faced ideological identity of communism enhanced with Chinese characteristics and a Han nationalist imperial discourse has gained speed and taken shape with Chairman Xi Jinping.
Genocidal practices against Turkic Muslims are symptomatic of the CCP’s brutal rule and are likely to expand elsewhere, as in Hong Kong.
Dr Özcan will draw on broader evidence and her research on displaced Uyghurs in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to show how extensive digital surveillance and punishment are used to govern through social control in China and why these methods may be replicated by regimes with a weak capacity to rule.
The talk will end with comments on the perils of state surveillance and digital technologies in democracies.