(With Nurdan Şafak) "The 'Derviş' Savvas Rumi Paşa and the Karamanlidika Newspaper Sebat" in: Cultural Encounters in the Turkish-speaking Communities of the Late Ottoman Empire, (eds Evangelia Balta & Mehmet Ölmez), The Isis Pressö Istanbul 2014, 311-334. (original) (raw)
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Journal of Islamic Studies, 2021
This book was a long time coming. As the author humorously explains in its opening pages, after completing work on his dissertation in 2008 (which this book is based on), Baykal's life ventured into the land of tech start-ups and IT consultancies, far away from the 'hallowed halls' of academia. Focused on the history of the Ottoman periodical press in Istanbul during the early twentieth century, this book is the latest in a growing body of literature on publishing in the Empire's varied languages. A few studies have examined how small religious presses operated by Armenian, Jewish, Greek, and other non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman world began slowly to churn out books in the late 1400s. Recent literature on the topic has largely focused on the publishing industry's important advancement during the long nineteenth century when private printing presses were producing all sorts of material for commercial use and were set up in many major Ottoman cities, from Istanbul to Beirut, Cairo, and Baghdad. Nevertheless, English-language studies on the history of the Ottoman press, specifically the periodical press, in Anatolia are few and far in between. (Most appear in edited volumes. For a selection, see Geoffrey Roper [ed.], Historical
Master Thesis: Kurdish and Armenian Relations in the Ottoman Kurdish Press (1898-1914)
This thesis will focus on two Kurdish newspapers, two journals and one pamphlet from the late Ottoman period and their writers' approaches about Armenians. First of all the thesis will discuss the issues of collective identity and multiple identities in the empire and the process of formation of the Kurdish identity in that era, as collective belonging (the consciousness of being a different group had started in the late empire from the 1880s to the end of WWI). In my thesis I will mention that the proto-Kurdish nationalism initially began against Armenians then it rose up against the Ottoman Empire and Turkish nationalism. This thesis will follow the historical background and analyze the following: Kurdistan newspaper, the pamphlet titled Kürdistan Kıyamı (Kurdistan Rebellion) and Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Gazetesi (The Kurdish Solidarity and Progress Newspaper), Rojî Kurd (Kurdish Sun) and Hetawî Kurd (Kurdish Sun) periodicals. All of these publications have different perspectives regarding the Armenian people and/or the Armenian question, and the problematization of a homeland between two societies, namely the Kurds and the Armenians. I will also discuss the relationship between the Kurdish and the Armenians through the Kurdish intellectuals' collective identities (Ottomanness, Islam, and Kurdishness). This thesis however is unfortunately one-sided and is solely based on the study of the Kurdish intellectuals' approach (not including the Armenian intellectuals approach) regarding Armenian slaughters, the question of land, and the alliance with the state or with Armenians. iv ÖZET Bu tez Kürt entelektüellerinin geç Osmanlı döneminde çıkardıkları iki gazete, iki dergi ve bir broşürde Ermeniler hakkında yazdıklarına odaklanacaktır. Öncelikli olarak tez, kimlik, çoklu kimlikler ve Kürt aydınlarının kimlik oluşumunu; kolektif aidiyet ve farklı bir grup olarak ortaya çıkmalarını, Kürdistan gazetesinin çıkışından Birinci Dünya Savaşının başlangıcına kadarki dönemi (1898-1914) ele alacaktır. Yine tez, bu dönemi proto-Kürt milliyetçiliğinin oluştuğu dönem olarak adlandırmaktadır ve bu ilk milliyetçi karakterin ortaya çıkışı kurgulanırken, Kürt entelektüellerince ‗ötekiler' olarak ilk kodlanan grubun Ermeniler olduğunu, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Türk milliyetçiliğinin ise daha sonra ‗ötekiler' kategorisine dâhil olduğunu iddia etmektedir. Diğer yandan, tez sırasıyla Kürt Ermeni ilişkilerinin tarihsel arka planını ve ardından Kürdistan gazetesi, Kürdistan Kıyamı (broşür), Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Gazetesi, Rojî Kurd ve Hetawî Kurd dergilerini ele alacaktır. Yine tez; Ermeni toplumu, Ermeni meselesi ve ülketoprak (Kürdistan-Batı Ermenistan) meselelerine yaklaşırken, Kürt entelektüellerin farklı yaklaşımlarını yazıları üzerinden inceleyecektir. Devamla Kürt-Ermeni ilişkilerinde Kürt entelektüellerin sahip oldukları kimliklerini (Osmanlıcılık, İslamcılık ve Kürtlük) kendi yayınlarında nasıl ele aldıkları ve hangi kimliğin öne çıktığı da tartışılacaktır. Fakat ne yazık ki bu çalışma tek taraflıdır (Ermeni aydınların tartışmaları maalesef yok), Ermeni katliamları, toprak meselesi, Kürtlerin kurmaya çalıştığı ittifaklar (devletle veya Ermenilerle) gibi konular sadece Kürt entelektüellerinin bakış açılarıyla değerlendirilecektir. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to express my special thanks to my advisor Assoc. Prof. Bülent Bilmez for his support and valuable guidance throughout the thesis process. He advised me not only in the master program but also during my undergraduate education in the same department.