Refik Halit: A Life of Opposition

with Christine Philliou

hosted by Sam Dolbee and Brittany White

| Refik Halit Karay (1889-1965) was a writer, bureaucrat, and political exile whose life spanned the end of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Christine Philliou traces his life as well as a genealogy of political opposition more broadly in her new book Turkey: A Past Against History. Following Refik Halit between his exiles in Sinop, Syria, and elsewhere as well as his momentous encounter with Mustafa Kemal in the Telegraph Episode, Philliou sheds light on the complicated transition between empire and nation. She also grapples with the challenge of telling history based on the voluminous and often satirical musings of a figure himself deeply invested in interpreting the past.

Refik Halit Karay (1889-1965) was a writer, bureaucrat, and political exile whose life spanned the end of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Christine Philliou traces his life as well as a genealogy of political opposition more broadly in her new book Turkey: A Past Against History. Following Refik Halit between his exiles in Sinop, Syria, and elsewhere as well as his momentous encounter with Mustafa Kemal in the Telegraph Episode, Philliou sheds light on the complicated transition between empire and nation. She also grapples with the challenge of telling history based on the voluminous and often satirical musings of a figure himself deeply invested in interpreting the past.   

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Contributor Bios

	Christine Philliou is professor in the History Department, Director of the Modern Greek and Hellenic Studies Program at the Institute for European Studies, and Director of the Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program at the Center for Middle East Studies at UC Berkeley. Her first book was Biography of an Empire (2010, UC Press; Greek edition forthcoming 2021 with Alexandria Publications) and her new book is Turkey: A Past Against History (2021, UC Press).
	Sam Dolbee is a lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. His research is on the environmental history of the late Ottoman Empire told through the frame of locusts in the Jazira region.
	Brittany White is a graduate student in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. Broadly, she is interested in the African Diaspora in former Ottoman territories.

Further Listening

	Erol Ülker	415 6/20/19	Mütareke İstanbul'unda Direniş ve Sol
	Erik-Jan Zürcher	323 7/6/17	Kemalism and the Making of Modern Turkey
	Hans-Lukas Kieser	435 11/22/19	A Political Biography of Talaat Pasha
	Sarah Abrevaya Stein	434 11/20/2019	Family Papers and Ottoman Jewish Life After Empire
	Yiğit Akın	429 10/3/19	How War Changed Ottoman Society
	Christine Philliou	294 1/19/17	Ottoman Governance and the House of Phanar

Credits

Episode No. 506
Release Date: 16 July 2021
Recording Location: Kensington, CA / Somerville, MA / New York, NY
Sound production by Sam Dolbee
Script by Brittany White and Sam Dolbee
Additional thanks to Chris Gratien
Music: Zé Trigueiros, "Petite Route," "Saez," "Big Road of Burravoe"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Christine Philliou

Images

Refik Halit, circa 1920. 

Refik Halit and Ali Kemal, depicted as chemists in the satirical magazine Güleryüz on June 30, 1921. In the foreground, they are about to add liquid from a beaker labelled "muhalefet" or "opposition" to their potion.

Select Bibliography

Adıvar, Halide Edib. Memoirs of Halide Edib. New York: Century, 1926.

Ginio, Eyal. The Ottoman Culture of Defeat: The Balkan Wars and their Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Karay, Refik Halid. Ay Peşinde. Istanbul: İnkilap Kitabevi, 2009.

_____. Deli. Istanbul: Semih Lutfi, 1939.

_____. "Meşrutiyetperver Çinlilere Nasihat." In Kirpinin Dedikleri. Istanbul: İnkilap Kitabevi, 2009.

_____. Bir İçim Su. Istanbul: Semih Lutfi, 1939.

Kieser, Hans-Lukas. Talaat Pasha: Architect of Genocide, Father of Modern Turkey. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Özalp, N. Ahmet. Refik Halid: Okları kırılmış Kirpi. İstanbul: Kapı Yayınları, 2011.

Philliou, Christine. "The Paradox of Perceptions: Interpreting the Ottoman Past through the National Present." Middle Eastern Studies 44.5 (2008): 661-675.

_____. Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution. Berkeley: UC Press, 2010.

_____. Turkey: A Past Against History. Oakland: UC Press, 2021.

Shields, Sarah. Fezzes in the River: Identity Politics and European Diplomacy in the Middle East on the Eve of World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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