Events

Past Event

CANCELLED - Opposition from abroad: History, memory, and politics in the early Turkish Republic

March 9, 2020
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
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Faculty House, Columbia Universiy

UPDATE 3/6: Based on the latest travel, visitor, and event guidelines from Columbia University in response to the developing situation with COVID-19, and in an effort to be mindful of everyone's health and safety, we have made the difficult decision to cancel this event on Monday, March 9th. We apologize for any inconvenience and disappointment this may cause!

RSVP required: Please email Yasemin Akcaguner [email protected] to attend.

Speaker: Christine Philliou, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

The formative years of the Turkish Republic (1923-1927) have traditionally been closed to historical scrutiny, only recently receiving critical attention. When we take up these first few years after the Republic's founding, we see a great deal of contention within the emerging establishment, not just about the form the Republic would take, but about the positioning of it with respect to the recent Ottoman past. In this talk, Christine Philliou will examine the conflicts of these early years––about past and present––through the lens of the so-called List of 150-individuals who were banished from Turkey at its inception and branded traitors. Some on this list continued to challenge the fledgling Republic even from abroad. She will analyze one such challenge, which was a controversy in the Republican press over the publication of the writings of one member of the list, Refik Halid, living in exile in Beirut. 

Christine Philliou is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the political and social history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey and Greece as parts of the post-Ottoman world. Her book, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution, was published in 2011 and examines the changes in Ottoman governance leading up to the Tanzimat reforms of the mid-nineteenth century through the vantage point of Phanariots. Her current work turns to the political, personal and intellectual/artistic itinerary of the Turkish writer Refik Halit Karay (1888-1965). 

 

Part of the Columbia University Ottoman & Turkish Studies Seminar. Co-Sponsored by The Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies.