Episode 413 with Nathalie Clayer, Fabio Giomi, and Emmanuel Szurek hosted by Andreas Guidi Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Our latest podcast in collaboration with The Southeast Passage examines how Kemalism as a political category has been used widely and often ambiguously throughout the history of the Turkish Republic in public discourse as well as in historiography. In this episode, we discuss Kemalism from an innovative transnational perspective. The making of Kemalism was embedded in hybridity and circulations involving other regions of the post-Ottoman space. Practices of governance, material objects, new conceptions of the body and gender roles, and scientific debates created a convergence of Islam and modernity which was influenced by external references but also attracted observers from surrounding countries such as Albania, Yugoslavia and Egypt. « Click for More »

Episode 358 with Hikmet Kocamaner hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Discourses surrounding the family and morality have played an important role in modern political debates. In this episode, we discuss the politics of family in Turkey and its relationship to both religion and government policy. Our guest Hikmet Kocamaner discusses how the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs--the Diyanet--oversees a range of activities concerning the family as part of the project of a "New Turkey" championed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). In particular, we discuss family-oriented television programming related to Diyanet. While distinctively Islamic in their rhetoric, these programs in fact serve as a fascinating meeting point for various expert approaches to social issues and the family, demonstrating the complex entanglement of Islamic and secular institutions in modern Turkey. « Click for More »

Episode 342 with Selcen Coşkun Lorans Tanatar Baruh and Seda Kula Say hosted by Nilay Özlü, Susanna Ferguson and Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we discuss the history of Beyoğlu's Emek Cinema from its construction in 1884 to its 2013 destruction, which sparked major opposition among Turkish intellectuals, writers, researchers, members of the film industry, and lovers of cinema and of Beyoğlu, many of whom fought to keep this piece of Istanbul's cultural and architectural heritage. Through a wide-ranging discussion with architects and historians, this episode shows how the history of one building can speak to trajectories of urban development, violence, and transformation in Istanbul from Ottoman times until today. « Click for More »

Episode 341 with Sara Rahnama hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Seçil Yilmaz Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In this episode, we explore debates about aesthetics, headwear, and dress in interwar Algeria and Turkey. Why did hats and hijabs generate so much debate among Algerian thinkers, both men and women? How did expectations about what men would wear on their heads carry different political connotations than similar debates about women's head coverings? This episode takes up the role of dress and comportment in shaping Algerian conversations about colonialism, feminism, and Islamic reform, as well as the importance of a "Turkish model" in interwar Algerian debates. « Click for More »

Episode 337 with Kalliopi Amygdalou hosted by Michael Talbot Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud During the late Ottoman period, the diverse and vibrant Aegean ports of Izmir (Smyrna) and Thessaloniki (Salonica) experienced rapid growth and transformation through the increased interconnection of the Mediterranean world and the rise of maritime trade. But in the tumultuous final decade of the Ottoman period, both cities witnessed political and demographic upheaval as well as outright destruction by fire. With Thessaloniki permanently incorporated into Greece and Izmir into the new Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two cities seemed destined to follow different paths. Yet as our guest Kalliopi Amygdalou explains, interesting comparisons and parallels between the development of Izmir and Thessaloniki endured even after they ceased to be part of a unified Ottoman polity. In this episode, we follow the story of urban and architectural transformation in Izmir and Thessaloniki after the decade of war between the Balkan Wars (1912-13) and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey and the period that followed in the two cities under a transition from empire to nation-state. « Click for More »

Episode 321 with Peter McMurray hosted by Nir Shafir and Huma Gupta Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud 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. « Click for More »

Episode 293 with Daniel-Joseph Macarthur-Seal hosted by Nir Shafir featuring additional material by Samuel Dolbee Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud 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. « Click for More »

Episode 290 with Emmanuel Szurek   hosted by Chris Gratien and Aurélie Perrier   featuring Seçil Yılmaz and Nir Shafir Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud 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 « Click for More »

with Lerna Ekmekçioğlu hosted by Chris Gratien, Nir Shafir, and Eda Çakmakçı Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud 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. « Click for More »

with Aslı Iğsız hosted by Chris Gratien and Nicholas Danforth 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. « Click for More »

with Ozan Aksoy hosted by Chris Gratien and Ceren Erdem The songs and melodies of the Turkey's Alevi communities derive from a long history of song-making in Anatolia that is embedded in local geographies and indelibly tied to notions of worship and belonging. So what happens when, through migration and media, that music enters entirely new contexts? In this episode, we sit down with ethnomusicologist and musician Ozan Aksoy to discuss his research on Kurdish Alevi music in diasporic contexts and hear him perform some of his favorite selections live in the OHP studio. « Click for More »

Istanbul is full of landmarks and objects dating to the Ottoman period that give us a glimpse of the city's material culture. However, the scents and sounds that made up the urban experience of Ottoman Istanbul often elude us. In our inaugural episode of Season 4, we explore the sounds of Istanbul today and link them to city of the Ottoman past. « Click for More »

with Nicholas Danforth hosted by Chris Gratien When are policies driven by prejudice, and when do policies give rise to prejudiced representations? In this episode, Nicholas Danforth explores depictions of Middle East politics in the Turkish satirical periodical Akbaba from the 1930s onward in an attempt to understand the politics of representation, and offers some comparisons regarding the role of such prejudices and discourses within contemporary politics in the US and elsewhere. « Click for More »

133.    New Friends or Old Foes? The Russo-Ottoman rivalry was one of the defining dramas of the European political stage for centuries. When both of these empires gave way to new states following the First World War, a new period of Soviet-Turkish relations began. In this episode, Onur İşçi follows ups and downs of this relationship over the past century through a discussion of the interplay between domestic and foreign politics in Turkey. « Click for More »

with Alev Kuruoğlu hosted by Chris Gratien 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. « Click for More »

with Seçil Yılmaz hosted by Chris Gratien and Sam Dolbee 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. « Click for More »

with Nicholas Danforth One of the central questions in the history of modern Turkey continues be the late-Ottoman legacy and in particular, the experience of World War I and the War of Independence (1914-1923). While some authors choose this period as a start or end point for their historical studies, others seek to identify continuities across Ottoman and republican temporal space. In this episode, Nick Danforth describes different approaches to the periodization of modern Turkish history and explains the political and cultural views and sensibilities that lie behind some of these frameworks. « Click for More »

with Chris Gratien hosted by Nicholas Danforth For at least two centuries, Western countries have used international criminal, civil, and commercial law as a means of influencing the Ottoman and Turkish governments, leading some to speak of a phenomenon called legal imperialism, and while these efforts have impacted policies in Turkey, they have not always achieved their intended effect. In this episode, Chris Gratien discusses an interesting case of would-be trademark infringement in early Republican Turkey, as the Kolynos toothpaste company sought to protect its commercial rights against an alleged act of Turkish piracy. However, in the case file, we also learn some other things about American sensibilities at the turn of the twentieth century, particularly with regards to racism in marketing, allowing us to make some observations about the peculiar legal foundations of global capitalism. « Click for More »

with Timur Hammond The urban history of Istanbul has long been a favorite topic of Ottoman historians, but more recently the history of neighborhoods has emerged as a way of understanding social change in ways that can challenge or confirm larger narratives. In this podcast, Timur Hammond explains the ways in which Eyüp, a peripheral but important neighborhood of Istanbul, has evolved through the centuries as it has been both consciously and unconsciously recreated as an "Islamic space." « Click for More »

with Elizabeth Angell Istanbul has a long recorded history of large earthquakes, and unfortunately, many of the buildings constructed during the city's recent expansion are not equipped to withstand a large quake. Thus, the issue of retrofitting buildings to survive earthquakes as well as the development of emergency response services have become major concerns for many of the city's residents, particularly in the wake of the 1999 İzmit earthquake. In this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast, Elizabeth Angell discusses Istanbul's seismic past, it's current state of earthquake preparedness, and the ways in which people and organizations are evaluating and responding to risk. This podcast is released at 3:02 AM EET on August 17 to coincide with the annual observance of the 1999 quake's anniversary. « Click for More »