Episode 321

with Peter McMurray

hosted by Nir Shafir and Huma Gupta

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What is the aural possibility of Islamic life in European cities today? This special episode begins with a ten-minute segment from an audio composition crafted by our guest, musicologist Peter McMurray, from recent field recordings and ethnographies he conducted among various Turkish communities in Berlin. As the discussion progresses we weave in and out of two discussions. First, we look at the means by which Turkish migrants from the Alevi, Shi’i, and Sufi communities use the different private and public spaces of the city as a stage for their religiosity. We add to this a second discussion of how ethnography, aesthetics, and the aural intersect in scholarship today.

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Episode 299

with Angela Andersen

hosted by Chris Gratien and Shireen Hamza

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In this episode, we approach the religious architecture of the Alevis, to examine how practice shapes architectural space and how socioeconomic change transforms such spaces. Many of our episodes on Ottoman History Podcast have focused on how monumental architecture, such as mosques and other buildings of religious significance, are tied to political transformation and expressions of political power and ideology. Taking a different perspective, our guest, Angela Andersen, researches the history and development of Alevi architectural forms in Turkey and abroad. Historically, Alevi religious practice and cem ceremonies took place in homes and other multi-purpose buildings, which could be configured as ad hoc meeting places for local communities during the communal cem ceremony. But with Alevi urban migration to cities in Turkey, Germany, and elsewhere, the creation of a "permanent address" for Alevis has emerged in the form of community centers providing a number of services, including designated rooms or halls for the cem. In this episode, we trace the genealogy of the modern cemevi to older contexts of Alevi religious practice and consider the role played by the cemevi in Turkey's new political landscape.

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Episode 293

with Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal

hosted by Nir Shafir

featuring additional material by Samuel Dolbee

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The Opium Wars and the massive trade in opium between South Asia and China over the nineteenth century attest to the prominent role of opium within the history of colonialism and globalization. But it is less well known that in the early twentieth century, the Republic of Turkey became the largest exporter of opium in the world. In this episode we speak with Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal about how and why opium became an export commodity in Turkey and how Turkish citizens smuggled the substance out once it became formally illegal. Along the way we gain a glimpse into the economic history of the young republic, the legal life of its citizens abroad, and how these smuggling operations built new forms of cosmopolitanism from the ground up as the Turkish republic became less and less accommodating for non-Muslims.

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Episode 290

with Emmanuel Szurek

 

hosted by Chris Gratien and Aurélie Perrier

 

featuring Seçil Yılmaz and Nir Shafir

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National language politics and the transformation of literacy have effected major changes in both spoken and written language over the course of the last century, but few languages have changed as dramatically as modern Turkish. The reform of the language from the 1920s onward, which not only replaced the Ottoman alphabet with a new Latin-based alphabet but also led to a radical transformation of the lexicon and grammar, has been described by Geoffrey Lewis as "catastrophic success" due to the extreme but unquestionably successful nature of this attempt to revolutionize language in Turkey. In this episode, we talk to Emmanuel Szurek about his research on the politics of the alphabet change, the language reforms, and the surname laws of the early Republican period. Our extended interview is followed by a brief conversation in French about the history of French Turcology.

Release Date: 4 January 2017

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After facing the destruction of their community during the First World War, former Ottoman Armenians set about rebuilding in Turkey first during a period of relative optimism under the Allied occupation of Istanbul and later as non-Muslim citizens of new Turkish nation-state. In her new work entitled Recovering Armenia, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu explores the changes and continuities in the identity of Istanbul's Armenian community during this transformative period. In this interview, we explore Armenian collective politics, feminist movements, and expressions of loyalty through the Armenian press and through the writings of women in particular, and we examine the issue of Armenian belonging in Turkey through the lens of "secular dimmitude" among non-Muslim citizens of a predominantly Muslim but secular republic.

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As spaces fundamental to Muslim religious and communal life, mosques have historically served as sites of not just architectural but also ideological construction. As our guest Kishwar Rizvi argues in her latest book entitled The Transnational Mosque (UNC Press 2015), states operating in transnational contexts have taken a leading role in the building of mosques and in doing so, they forge political, economic, and architectural networks that span the globe. In this episode, we discuss the architectural exports of the four states covered in Prof. Rizvi's monograph: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to situating and comparing transnational mosques of different states, we give special attention to the rise of Neo-Ottoman architecture in modern Turkey and its role in re-branding Turkey's image on the global stage.

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Although artistic production occurs in a political context, art and politics are often studied as separate fields of historical inquiry. Our guest in this episode, Dr. Sarah-Neel Smith, offers a reflection on the close relationship between art and politics in Turkey through a discussion of her research on the figure of Bülent Ecevit. As a politician, Ecevit is remembered for his four stints as Prime Minister of Turkey and his prominent positions in the Republican People's Party (CHP) and later in the Democratic Left Party (DSP). Yet during the early years of his career, Ecevit was also extremely active in intellectual pursuits as a writer and art critic. In this episode, Dr. Smith explores the intellectual life of Bülent Ecevit and the link between debates about art and culture and the development of democratic politics in Turkey during the 1950s.

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The subject of health in the modern period is often discussed as a transition from traditional to scientific medicine and what Foucault has called "the birth of the clinic." Such perspectives view medicine and healing through the lens of changing methods, forms of knowledge, and types of authority. In this podcast, our guest Sylvia Wing Önder offers a slightly different approach to the subject in a discussion of her monograph "We Have No Microbes Here (Carolina Academic Press, 2007)," looking at continuities in the centrality of households and women in making decisions about medical care within a Black Sea village.

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In the 1920s and 1930s, politicians, intellectuals, and members of the public joined a lively debate about the issue of female suicide in Turkey. While we cannot know whether the rates of female suicide were actually skyrocketing during this period, the fact that so many public figures began to treat this issue as a central concern tells us a lot about the relationship between the modernizing state of Early Republican Turkey and the women whom it governed. In this episode, Nazan Maksudyan explores what might have provoked this debate, what it might say about the state and its relationship to women, gender, and the female body, and how women themselves might have used suicide as a means of asserting their agency.

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Countries, much like companies, must seek to present a certain image to the outside world in order to achieve political and economic goals. As our guest, Aslı Iğsız, demonstrates, this self-presentation can take the form of full-fledged marketing campaigns. In this episode, we explore the marketing policies and strategies adopted in Turkey and the broader Middle East during the past two decades and reflect on how they various match, contradict, and intersect with politics in practice.

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