Periodizing Modern Turkish History

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.

Nicholas Danforth is a PhD student studying the history of modern Turkey at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)
Chris Gratien is a PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)

Note for the listener: This podcast is not primarily a work of primary source research. It is a synthesis of publicly available information and draws extensively from the following works below, which are also mentioned during the course of the episode. For the purposes of academic citation, we encourage you to consult these works. 

Select Bibliography
Üngör, Uğur Ümit. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Göçek, Fatma Müge. The Transformation of Turkey Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011.

Ahmad, Feroz. Turkey: The Quest for Identity. Oxford: Oneworld, 2003.

Meeker, Michael E. A Nation of Empire The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Zürcher, Erik Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998.

Zürcher, Erik Jan. The Unionist Factor: The Rôle of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement, 1905-1926. Leiden: Brill, 1984.

Ahmad, Feroz. The Turkish Experiment in Democracy: 1950-1975. Boulder, Colo: Westview, 1977.

Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Music - Kamuran Akkor - Kim Ne Dersin Dese