EVREN KÜÇÜK, Türkiye-İsveç İlişkileri (1914-1938) / Turkey-Sweden Relations (1914- 1938), Publications of Turkish Historical Society, Ankara 2017. [Book Review]

Belleten ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (294) ◽  
pp. 759-762
Author(s):  
Ayşe Bedi̇r

The purpose of this book review is to fulfi ll the absence of comprehensive study on the Turkey-Sweden relations both Sweden and Turkey yet. Turkey-Sweden Relations (1914- 1938) is an original work, which is suitable for scientifi c criteria and prepared as a doctoral thesis, receives the details of the relations of both countries for the fi rst time in detail, and sheds light on the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the early Republican period of Turkey. Very rich sources are used in this work with a simple language and style. As it is seen that in preparation of the book the sources of the foreign archives and local archives such as Sveria Riksarkivet (Sweden State Archives), Sveria Krigsarkivet (Sweden Military Archives), Kungliga Bibliotek (Sweden Royal Library), Uppsala University, Carolina Rediviva Library, The National Archives (London), League of Nations Photo Archive, Prime Ministry Republican Archives, Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, Red Crescent Archives, Presidency Archive, Foreign Ministry Archives, Istanbul Sea Museum Archive, Turkish Revolution History Institute Archives have been used. Additionally, the book uses domestic and foreign literature, newspapers and magazines.

Author(s):  
P.V. Shlikov

Аннотация В фокусе внимания статьи процесс трансформации традиционного института вакфа в Османской империи XIX начала XX в., основные детерминанты которого определили судьбу вакфов в раннереспубликанский период истории Турции. Распространение коррупции и снижающаяся эффективность деятельности значительного числа вакфов, использование сомнительных механизмов эксплуатации, замены и аренды вакуфного имущества негативно отразились на общественной репутации института, поставив под сомнение целесообразность и правомерность существования многочисленных вакфов. Озаботившись установлением непосредственного контроля над вакфами и их ресурсами, султан Махмуд II учредил в 1826 г. Министерство вакфов с обширными полномочиями. Однако разрозненность вакфов и их функциональное многообразие свели деятельность министерства к минимуму формальной регистрации решений, принимаемых на местах. В результате, система вакфов сохранила децентрализованный характер, а ее деятельность по-прежнему определялась преимущественно корпоративными и семейно-клановыми, а не государственными интересами. Наряду с распространением злоупотреблений важным катализатором кризиса системы вакфов во второй половине XIXв. стала политика османских властей по наращиванию роли государства в сфере социального обеспечения и благотворительности. В совокупности все это подготовило почву для масштабной конфискации вакуфной собственности, проводившейся в начале XX в. в разных частях Османской империи (от Турции до Сирии и Египта).Abstract The paper analyses the transformation of the traditional waqf institution in the 19th and early 20th century Ottoman Empire the process which determined the fate of waqfs in the early republican period of Turkeys history. The spread of corruption and precarious practices of exchange and rent of waqf properties together with the declining effectiveness of many waqf activities all this had a negative impact on the public reputation of waqfs and questioned both the legitimacy and usefulness of numerous waqfs and the large scale waqf network. The Ottoman authorities were concerned about the direct control of waqfs and their properties, in 1826 the Sultan Mahmud II established a Ministry of Waqfs with extensive power and jurisdiction. However, the scale, diversity and ramified structure of the waqf system reduced the real work of the ministry mostly to the formal registration of the decisions taken at the local level. As a result, the waqf system remained decentralized and its activities were determined mostly by family and corporate interests and not by the state. Along with the widely spread corruption and misuse of waqf properties another factor conducive to the growing of crisis in the waqf system was the Ottoman states aspiration to play an increasingly important role in the sphere of social welfare, social security and charity in the late 19th century. The combination of these factors paved the way for the large-scale confiscation of waqf properties in various parts of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century (from Turkey to Syria and Egypt).


Author(s):  
Gökser Gökçay

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (b. 1901–d. 1962) was a Turkish novelist, poet, critic, and historian of literature. He is considered to be one of the leading figures in modernist Turkish literature, writing five novels; sixteen stories; and many essays, letters, and diaries that constitute a rich resource for understanding the last century of the Ottoman Empire and the Early Republican Era. He belonged to the first generation of teachers educated in the Republican period. Although he served as a deputy of the Republican People’s Party in the Grand National Assembly between 1943 and 1946, he mainly focused on his literary studies and worked as a professor of Turkish literature in Istanbul University until he died in 1962. His two novels Huzur and Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü are considered among the best novels written in Turkish. He was heavily influenced by Turkish poet and novelist Yahya Kemal Beyatlı as well as French poet Paul Valéry. He considered himself an outsider who rejected binary identifications of modernist versus traditionalist in Turkey’s intellectual life. As a result, he bemoaned the fact that he was ignored by his contemporaries. He only began to be embraced by the Turkish intelligentsia a decade after his death in the 1970s when Turkey was increasingly struggling with the dilemmas of modernization and the inevitable domestic conflicts that derived from it. While his critique of modernity was considered as a criticism toward the modernization endeavor of the Republican period, he was a proponent of many aspects of the revolution except for the language reform. His reconciliation of the supposedly contrasting themes like the Ottoman past versus modern Turkey, with the help of allegorical narratives, highlighted the duality of the Turkish modernization and made him a pioneer in the Turkish literature. His influence can be seen in many prominent Turkish authors including Oğuz Atay and Orhan Pamuk.


Theology ◽  
1920 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-117
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Gordon
Keyword(s):  

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 429-439
Author(s):  
Boğaç Erozan

Established in 1923, Turkey has been a republic without a dominant republican conception of liberty. A chance to install such a conception was missed in the early republican period and never recaptured. The republic was unable to get rid of vestiges of the authoritarian tradition of the past. Centuries-old authoritarian tradition persisted well into the recent and the contemporary periods. Presenting ample evidence, the article underlines the weight of history and the legacy of authoritarian mentality that promoted the use of authority, not liberty, in political problem-solving. The initial failure to abandon an authoritarian problem-solving approach proved fateful for the chances of the deepening of democracy in Turkey.


Author(s):  
Aleksei V. Sarabiev ◽  

Prince Boris N. Shakhovskoy (1870–1926), the Russian consul in Damascus from 1907 until the First World War, left to his descendants a legacy of attentive and balanced diplomacy. His reports to the Russian Embassy in Constantinople and to the 1st Division of the Foreign Ministry contain invaluable information shedding light on interfaith relations in the Syrian regions of the Ottoman Empire on the eve and after of the Young Turk Revolution, as well as on the early months of the so-called Great War (WWI). The article analyzes the messages of the diplomat on various aspects of the religious situation in the region. He considered the activities of the Islamist organization Muslim League in Damascus, which aimed at enforcing Sharia law throughout Syrian society and countering non-Muslim and European influence in the region. An anxious change in interfaith relations is being evaluated, when Muslim suspicion towards Christians grew, aggravated by the common conscription in the context of the Tripolitan and two Balkan wars. The consul attentively followed the problems of the participation of the Orthodox Arabs in the Ottoman institutions, as well as the attempts to join the English Old-Catholics to Orthodoxy, acting through Metropolitan of Beirut. Of historical interest is also the information about the transition of the Syrian Jacobites to Catholicism, as well as notes on the Catholic missions activities in the region. All these issues in the Syrian soil are viewed by the diplomat through the prism of competition between European powers, especially France and Italy.


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