Ph.D. Theses

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A civil unionist :|the biography of Mehmed Cavid Bey, 1876–1926
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2021., 2021.) Yazıcıoğlu, Ayşe, 1976-; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.; Toprak Zafer.
This dissertation, titled A Civil Unionist: The Biography of Mehmed Cavid Bey (1876–1926), analyzes three issues related to the life of Mehmed Cavid Bey, who was the Minister of Finance during most of the Second Constitutional Period. First, as a reflection of the international arena during this period, the close interaction between the Ottoman Empire’s financial issues and its foreign policy is examined. Second, the policy making processes of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) are analyzed. Third, how the political preferences of the ruling elite were determined during the transition from empire to nation-state will un fold along the axis of Cavid Bey's life story. The original value of this dissertation is its effort to understand the multi-dimensional structure of the history of a country and its desire to achieve poltical and financial independence amid wars, conflicts, revo lution, and ideological transitions through examining the life of an indi vidual.
A game of two halves :|the making of professional football in Turkey, 1946-1963
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2019.., 2019.) Tunç, Sevecen.; Kırlı, Cengiz.; Pamuk, Şevket, 1950- .
This dissertation examines the professionalization and popularization of football in Turkey in the period 1946-1963 from a social history perspective. Utilizing an extensive research based on the empirical-analytical model, it explores the transition of Turkish football from an amateur, participant-based sport into a professional mass spectator game. Focusing on a period when Turkish society was itself undergoing a significant transformation, this dissertation asks how changing social, political, demographic, and economic dynamics played role in the transformation of football and its cultural production. The belated move towards professionalism in the post-World War II era, albeit without conceding the game to free-market forces, resulted in an incomplete, hybrid mode of professionalism, that would develop around public service values instead of a business logic. In this regard, this study lifts the lid off the peculiarities that give Turkish professional football its current shape. One of the inspirations for this dissertation is the conception of football as a “total social phenomenon” to use Marcel Mauss’s term, that illuminates the historical development of the wider society. Guided by this perspective, this study contributes to the recognition of football as a subject of serious academic research in Turkey and expands the horizon of the international sports history literature by offering a non-Western case study.
A social history of rice in Turkey
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2020., 2020.) Ceylan, Okan.; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.
This dissertation examines the transformation of rice farming before the state, the society, and the economy in Turkey between 1948 and 2018. Rice is one of the most important fields of application of the Green Revolution after the Marshall Plan is examined from a spatial point of view in three basins such as the Meriç Basin, the Lower Kızılırmak-Lower Yeşilırmak Basins and Karacadağ Agricultural Basin. Both the geographical locations of these basins in Turkey and the differences in their agricultural structures and human capital are determinative in their preference as a field study. However, apart from these basins, there has been rice farming culture in South Marmara, Adana, West and Central Black Sea sub regions. In other words, this dissertation both explains the story of agricultural transformation in a historical process and presents a comparative perspective among these basins on a spatial scale. Therefore, this study can be evaluated in the fields of economic history, social history and environmental history. The main claim of this dissertation is to prove that thanks to the biological and agricultural properties of rice, it is a historical actor that directs the state, society, and the economy. On this basis, this study is far from putting sharp boundaries between nature and society and the anthropocentric historiography. In this context, this study examines the subject by putting the reciprocal relations and interests between the desires of human beings and the biological and agricultural requirement of rice into the center. The main purpose of this study is to explain the bureaucratic, economic and social networks of rice from its cultivation and harvest to its processing in to paddy and consumption. The main findings of this dissertation are that rice is a social, cultural, economic, artistic and bureaucratic commodity. In this context, rice requires specialized and intensive labor to collaborate with society, the state and market actors to be able to spread and carry its genes into the future. Besides, acquisition, nutrition and profit underlie in the desire of a human being toward rice. To sum up rice with one word, it can be conceptualized as the crop of controversies. As a matter of fact, it is too difficult to find any other crop that accommodates collaboration and conflict of interest and also the bureaucratic control in the cultivation of rice and free market economy in the sale of rice at the same time.
Agrarian and commercial change in the Southeastern Black Sea region :|production, ecology, and institutions (1850s-1910s)
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2019., 2019.) Mahmuzlu, Ekin.; Kırlı, Cengiz.; Pamuk, Şevket, 1950- .
This dissertation examines the changes in local agricultural production, when the local market in the Southeastern Black Sea region was being integrated into global markets from the mid-1850s to 1910s. It first examines the structure of agricultural production and commerce by deconstructing each step for every major crop and then captures agrarian and commercial changes at the micro-level. Benefitting from recent developments in economic history - institutional economics and ecological economics - the thesis analyses the causality behind the agrarian and commercial change. The key finding is that although the emergence of capitalism and global markets triggered a series of agrarian and commercial changes at the global level, economic conditions, especially transportation, transaction, capital, and information costs determined the direction and limits of these agrarian and commercial changes in local agriculture and commerce. The dissertation argues that the amplitude and direction of agrarian change were determined by changes in commercial and financial institutions, innovation in transportation and information technologies, and emergence of the agro-industries under the constraint of ecological and climatic conditions. There had been two major agrarian and commercial change periods. In the first period, the longdistance agrarian market formed mostly thanks to innovations in transportation, information technologies lead to agrarian change, especially in tobacco and haricot during mid-1850s-1860s. In the second period, these markets were transformed especially thanks to institutional changes in financial institutions and emergence of agro-industries, which triggered agrarian change in tobacco, hazelnut and grains (1890s-1910).
Alevism in politics: Possibilities and limits of Alevi identity politics
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2016., 2016.) Ertan, Mehmet.; Buğra, Ayşe,
This dissertation scrutinizes the politicization of Alevism in the 1990s. The politicization of Alevi identity as the basis of a socio-political movement is shaped by culturel turn of politics stemming from debates on postmodernism, multiculturalism and globalization,,but the Alevi movement has never been a classical identity movement. Its ambivalent characteristics, which derive from a heterodox cosmology, ethnic pluralism, and geographical distribution, makes Alevism’s availability as a defining component of identity movement difficult. Despite this ambivalence, historical massacres provide Alevi identity with a stable foundation. The ambivalence of Alevi identity and fear of new massacres shape the dynamism of its politicization. In this regard, the Alevi movement, which politicizes without direct reference to Alevi identity, focuses on universal ideologies that provide for equal coexistence of Alevis and non-Alevis. Citizenship and secularism have thus become key concepts of the Alevi movement. Aer analysis of the structural framework of Alevi politicization, this dis-sertation examines its dynamism of Alevism through the main agents of the movement in the 1990s: Alevi associations and the Peace Party. Various defi-nitions and historiographies of Alevism developed by these associations as well as their differentiated positions toward political parties and state struc-tures demonstrate the contested associational domain of Alevi politics. At an-other level, discussions during the formation of the Peace Party and its subse-quent failure demonstrate the difficulty of using Alevism as an ideological source for a party. us, this dissertation underscores the multidimensional relation between culture and politics.
Alo kapitalizm :|Turkish telecommunications policy in the context of an outward-oriented development strategy
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2018., 2018.) Üçer, Sırrı Emrah.; Türem, Ziya Umut.
This dissertation provides a political-economic analysis of Turkish telecommunications policy in the period of outward-oriented development after 1980. The dissertation combines the findings of the telecommunications policy research agenda with a structural analysis of global capitalism to better grasp policy formation in middle-income peripheral countries in the context of international financial crises and fluctuations and to shed light on real-world mechanisms of capital transfer. The dissertation analyzes Turkish telecommunications policy after 1980 in two periods. The first, between 1980 and 1994, was characterized by a public telecommunications leap. In this period, policymakers prioritized the use value of telecommunications. The second is the period after 1994 and was characterized by privatization for revenue maximization. It was a period in which policymakers prioritized the exchange value of telecommunications. As case studies, the dissertation analyzes the introduction of private capital to the mobile telephone segment in the 1990s, the advent of foreign capital through the introduction of another private operator in 2000, and the privatization of Türk Telekom in 2005. With respect to these case studies, the dissertation focuses on the political mediation of capital movements from the core to the periphery, the lobbying of core governments, and the role of the political forum as an essential mechanism of dispute settlement.
Alternative claims on justice and law: rural arson and poison murder in the 19th century Ottoman Empire
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2011., 2011.) Türker, Ebru Aykut.; Kırlı, Cengiz.
This study examines the ordinary Ottoman subjects "interplay with justice and law from the mid- to late nineteenth century Ottoman Anatolia and Rumelia at a time when the Ottoman state's centralization efforts escalated and its claim on justice was much stronger than ever. It explores the Ottoman state's interventions to the everyday life by regulations and instructions in order to show their impact on the ordinary subjects while at the same time concentrates on the subjects" perceptions of and reactions to these interventions from a perspective informed by gender studies and social history. Rural arson and poison murder, in this study, are regarded as two unique means to implement justice unofficially and assert agency by peasants and women. Based on archival evidence yielded by the nizamiye court records and particularly by the interrogation reports, this dissertation explores the way justice was perceived by common people and to what extent this perception overlapped or differed from the justice as defined by the Ottoman state. In doing so, it aims to uncover alternative claims on justice and law by common people and their own narratives of conflict. By focusing on intra-peasant disputes and domestic conflicts, it investigates the ways these people found solutions to their very real problems and implemented justice unofficially when the official mechanisms proved to be incapable of providing an outlet in situations of everyday crisis.
An examination of the Balkans in international politics from past to present
(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University.Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2009., 2009.) Yararcan, R. Taylan.; Toprak, Zafer.
In international politics, the evaluation of a region with multiple actors such as the Balkans is only possible by means of a multi-faceted and detailed study. This work examines important phases of Balkan history from a perspective of international relations and from within a political historical discipline. This thesis is an examination of a particular story of a geographical region viewed from perspectives which reflect internal and external policies. While considering in turn each point of change in Balkan history, this work sets out from the idea of making a significant conflict-resolution exercise for the creation of a stabilization zone for the Balkans, which even to this day has the characteristic of being a "powder keg." The periods of Ottoman Hegemony, The Development of Modern Balkan States, The Cold War Period, and Contemporary Balkan Developments, each displays its own particular characteristics and reflects the points of disruption during the long span of the period under discussion. However, in all periods which are examined in the course of this work, the truths that are encountered in relation to the Balkans are the influences of demography, geography and external forces on Balkan geopolitics and history. Overall, the outzone of this influence can be evaluated as instability.
Armenians and the land question in the Ottoman Empire, 1870-1914
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2017., 2017.) Polatel, Mehmet.; Altuğ, Seda.
This dissertation examines the emergence and transformation of the land question in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, focusing on the extent and characteristics of land disputes concerning Armenians. Views on the land question, which emerged as a distinct social problem in the 1870s, varied among the central government, local authorities, the Armenian politi-cal elite, Armenian institutions, Kurdish powerholders, and the Kurdish polit-ical elite. Based on Armenian, British, and Ottoman sources, this study demonstrates that there were significant changes in the extent and character-istics of land disputes during and after the massacres of 1894-97. These novel-ties include the massification of the problem, participation of ordinary people in the seizures of Armenian properties, dispossession of Armenian large land-owners, and the development of a state policy directed at changing the demo-graphic characteristics of the population in the region.
Collective political action in the Turkish press (1950-1980)
(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2004., 2004.) Akaş, Cem, 1968-; Kuyaş, Ahmet.
This dissertation examines the types of collective political action undertaken in Turkey between 1950 and 1980. Instead of examining the period in a purely chronological order, this study groups types of collective action together, and describes and analyzes them in chronological development. Seven such groups are identified: association formation, symbolic action, action in writing, demonstrations and protests, collective action involving the press, boycotts and sit-ins, and contentious action involving violence. The research for this study is based primarily on a close reading of the newspapers of the period, coupled with the application of the relevant theoretical literature in analyzing the history of collective action in Turkey. The study has found that such action has been wide-spread in Turkey since the beginning of the democratic era, even during periods of exceptional repressive measures taken by governments to stifle all forms of criticism and opposition. The types of action range from the universal (found in most contentious political action all over the globe) to actions unique to Turkish society; some types of popular action have also been adapted to local conditions and requirements. The variety of these types, however, steadily diminished in the 1970s and was eventually blotted out by a single type: violent action. The role of the youth and the military as the designated guardians of the regime has very much determined both the ideology of actors and the types of action they undertook.
Conceptual change of an occupation: Transformation of teaching in Turkey in neoliberal times (1980-2013)
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2018., 2018.) Ertem, Ece Cihan.; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.; Wright, Susan.
Primary school teachers in Turkey comprised an influential group in Turkish society in the twenty-first century since they are a large occupational group among state workers. Moreover, their occupation touches the heart of everyday life due to the responsibilities it entails. However, the prestige of such an influential occupation seems declining in Turkey and in some other countries, as well. Although this decline appears to be a widespread global phenomenon in both developed and developing countries, the reasons, results, and processes of this decline in Turkey have local characteristics. This dissertation portrays the transformation and conceptual change in primary school teaching in the period from 1980 to 2013 by appointing the September 1980 coup as a turning point. The dissertation focuses on the effects of the state interventions, and the reflections in society and in the attitudes of parents and teachers themselves of the transformation of the occupation. Furthermore, the study examines abstract concepts related to the images of primary school teachers in their portrayal in Turkish literature. It peeks into classrooms and describes the actual occupational practice of primary school teachers. Last, the study scrutinizes gender roles in Turkish primary schools and the feminization of the occupation. This dissertation addresses these subjects using the data from a comprehensive face-to-face survey conducted throughout Turkey as well as in-depth interviews that were designed to convey the exact phrases of teachers and recover their voices which have been hidden among legal decrees, books, occupational journals, and documents.
Conservative women in contemporary Turkish politics : mobilization, party politics and voting
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2022., 2022) Kourou, Nur Sinem.; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.
This dissertation examines women's political participation process (a.k.a political feminization) in the case of Turkey's AKP. Therefore, it is built on a puzzle between the number of women in the party and the party's gender agenda. It focuses on the political participation process of women through qualitative research on the party's women's branches and party's women voters. By analyzing the relationship, the party's anti-feminist agenda deliberately specifies the limits of women's political involvement bolstering it with the party's Islamist-conservative ideology. Afterwards, without challenging the strict bounds of the party, women activists (actors in the party's women branches) rigorously navigate their political survival by polishing their mobilization abilities. The research findings suggest that AKP reaches out women without pledging to gender equality or feminist emancipation while rhetorically encouraging their participation into politics both as activist and voter. In return, women form their political style considering the limits and pushing the presumable opportunities, which stem from the the limits. Moreover, women voters raise their political agency by routinizing the voting behavior and identifying themselves as the AKP's supporters.
Debating Turkish health reform
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2019., 2019.) Kartal, Ayşecan.; Yazıcı, Berna.
This dissertation is a study of the political debate that got generated around health reform in Turkey between 2002 and 2011, which corresponds to the formative period for the debate. Through a close examination of both the proreform and anti-reform discourse on health, it shows how a technical issue such as health care became a primary ground of political debate, contestation and polarization in the Turkey of early 2000s. More specifically, the AKP’s pro-reform discourse and the progovernment media presented health care providers and health care receivers as opposing groups and positioned the AKP as the protector of health care receivers. This pro-reform discourse emphasized the universalist trend in the reform that abolished the inegalitarian structure of the pre-existing health system and extended coverage. On the other side of the political debate, opponents of the reform, mainly the TTB (Turkish Medical Association), highlighted the neoliberal aspects of the reform. However, the oppositional discourse did not receive wide support as it was formulated when the short term benefits introduced by the reform were still in effect.
Educating citizens for “Sexual Manners” : politics of sexuality between 1945-1965 in Turkey
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2022., 2022) Yurttagüler, Laden.; Özbek, Nadir.
This study aims to examine the discourse on "sexual manners" that has become visible in the public sphere in Turkey between 1945 and 1965, a period marked by political, economic, and social changes. On the one hand, "sexual manners" turned into a constructive and regulative discourse for concepts such as femininity, masculinity, marriage, family, reproduction, and birth control, based on the legitimacy of "scientification," when the sexuality of the citizens was considered invisible and muted in the public sphere. The sexual manners discourse, produced by the authors gathered around Seksoloji magazine and similar publishing houses, developed discussions in line with the global literature for the well-being of the individual and collective body. On the other hand, sexual manners contributed to the circulation of new norms for “desired” citizenship by aiming to regulate intimate relations between individuals. This dissertation aims to discuss the transformation regarding the "appropriate sexuality" of the period by focusing on the tensions between discourse and practice through subjects such as virginity, sexual pleasure, divorce, and extramarital affairs.
Everyday politics of ordinary people : public opinion, dissent, and resistance in early Republican Turkey 1925-1939
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2010., 2010.) Metinsoy, Murat.; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.
This study examines the everyday and mostly informal forms of peasant and working class politics during the first two decades of the Turkish Republic by scrutinizing the daily protests and resistance of these groups to the social and economic policies of the single-party state and adverse economic conditions. Furthermore, this study explores the influence of the everyday politics of these groups on the political decision-making process of the state. The Turkish single-party period was by all means an extraordinary era marked by profound changes. Historical scholarship has conventionally focused on high and formal politics, and state policies. Due to the barriers before the formal and organizational participation of peasants and workers in legal politics, both these groups have been regarded to be fully excluded from the policy-making. Accordingly, the single-party state has generally been assumed to be based on solely coercive and rigid polity isolated from society. Scholars have barely touched upon the popular discontent and the daily ways in which ordinary people reacted against the state policies, power holders, and adverse economic conditions, and consequently influenced the state decisions. This dissertation takes on this challenging task and depicts an alternative picture in which the ordinary people participated in politics in everyday life, by uncovering the ordinary people’s dissenting opinions, demanding voices, everyday struggles, diverse patterns of protest and resistance strategies. On the basis of new archival sources giving information about daily contacts between the state and society and of a re-reading “against-the-grain” of conventional sources and theoretically drawing on a broader conception of politics as an everyday struggle over the allocation of scarce economic sources, emphasizing non-institutional and mostly informal patterns of the peasant and working class politics, this study delves into the popular dynamics of the political life during the early Republican era. Addressing wider debates about the relations between the state, society and class by focusing on the everyday and mostly informal contestation and negotiation process between the lower classes and state that compelled the state to modify its decisions, this dissertation suggests to see the relations between the state and ordinary people not as dichotomous, but as an interactive process. In this respect, the findings of this work propose a redefinition of the single-party state as “flexible authoritarian,” exposed and responsive to social inputs.
Fashion, handicraft and women between the wars in Turkey :|modernization, nationalism and women’s movement
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2021., 2021.) Dilber, Özlem.; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.
This study looks at women’s fashion-related agenda, tailoring and handicraft works in interwar Turkey. To that end, it revisits the history of the women’s movement and analyzes the activities of four women-run institutions — Women’s Branch of Red Crescent, Organization for the Protection of Ottoman (and) Turkish Women, Turkish Women’s Tailoring School and Turkish Women’s Union. It also focuses on the girls’ institutes as well as tailoring schools and enterprises run by women. It demonstrates that women remained active participants of public life in early republican Turkey thanks to their fashion-related activities, tailoring and handicrafts works. Women in this period not only propagated but also produced domestic clothing. A considerable number of women earned their livings as tailors and embroiderers. The Kemalist regime also encouraged their employment in tailoring-related works. Women who participated in these activities thereby rescued themselves from restriction to their homes and instead made themselves visible in the public sphere. In other words, women's engagement in occupations traditionally associated with womanhood and the domestic sphere brought them the opportunity to join public life. This study argues that women’s activities in interwar Turkey show that the boundaries between public and private sphere were not strict but porous. Women were in turn able to blur these boundaries to their advantage, which increased their opportunities in public life and improved their social status.
Foreign direct investment in development in developing economies and Turkey; the role of institutions
(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2007., 2007.) Dumludağ, Devrim.; Pamuk, Şevket, 1950- .
The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship among foreign direct investment and institutions in developing countries. In this dissertation I examine the role of macroeconomic variables and institutions as determinants of foreign direct investment flows by applying panel data regressions in developing economies. In addition, I apply a questionnaire survey to the executives of 52 multinational corporations operating in Turkey in order to reveal the impact of institutional variables on foreign direct investment.
Formulation of Semahs in relation to the question of Alevi identity in Turkey
(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2004., 2004.) Dinçer, Fahriye.; Köksal, Duygu.
Semahs are the ritual dances of the Alevis, a heterodox, ethnically diverse religious community in Turkey. This dissertation concentrates on different reformulations of semahs in relation to the reconstruction processes of the Alevi identity since the establishment of the Republic. While the religious belief of the community differentiated from the legitimate state religion, the ethnic/linguistic identity of the non-Turkish speaking Alevi groups contradicted the legitimate national identity as well. These factors pointed at a space where the identity question of the group would be contested and negotiated by intentional actors both from within and outside the community in the last eighty years. In this process, the semah appeared as a religious and/or cultural component of the Alevi rituals, which has been maintained, transformed and manipulated in relation to the reconstructed Alevi identities.After an analysis of the history of the Alevi identity, this dissertation focuses on the texts and oral narratives about semahs, and the semah performances presented in the public sphere. Subjected to a critical-comparative analysis, the critical question emerged on how the semah appeared to represent the identity of the community, or have been reformulated together with the reconstructed Alevi identity. Since the essentialist approaches from which this study distances itself is appropriated in almost all of the narratives, their analysis paved the way for the conceptualization of how semah is utilized as a representative of the Alevi identity. On the other hand, in parallel with the conceptual framework that accepts the semah as a component through which the identity is constituted, these narratives and the popular semahs performances are re-analyzed to arrive at conclusions about the Alevi identity that has been constructed in each period. These periods are specified as 1920-1950, 1950-1980 and 1980-2000 in relation to the social, economic, political and cultural developments that took place in Turkey and affected the lives and the identity formation of the Alevis.
From propaganda to national identity construction:|Turkish literature and the First World War, 1914-1918
(Thesis (Ph.D.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2003., 2003.) Köroğlu, Erol.; Toprak, Zafer.
This dissertation is about the reflection of the 1914-1918 First World War on Turkish literature of the same period. In the warring developed countries of Europe widespread efforts were directed towards the generation of propaganda that would support the war in accordance with governmental policies. However, in the underdeveloped and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, which had not yet transformed into a nation-state, its Ottoman-Turkish intelligentsia could not produce propaganda sufficient to support the battlefronts and the home front. As the war unfolded, Turkish writers abandoned their initial attempts at propaganda and turned instead to the formation of a national culture, which was necessary for the existence of such a mechanism in the long-term. Thus, the Ottoman-Turkish intelligentsia, who could not support the war effort, used the conditions created by the war to eliminate the deficiencies in national culture.The dissertation consists mainly of interpretations of literary texts written by the representative writers of the period. These interpretations follow a cultural historiographical methodology based on contextualisation and give precedence to an analysis of the complex interaction between literary texts and the historical context. The failure to generate wartime propaganda and the efforts to construct a culture-based national identity are described by focusing on their reasons and outcomes within the historical context of 1908-1918, with the addition of an interpretation of literary texts with reference to this context. This work discusses the subjects of First World War propaganda, Turkish nationalism and national identity construction. It is an interdisciplinary effort, as it looks for evidence of an effective interaction between cultural and literary history.
From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish republic: Biology as politics and philosophy (1908-1938)
(Thesis (Ph.D.) - Bogazici University. Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, 2017., 2017.) Yolun, Murat.; Karaömerlioğlu, M. Asım.
This dissertation is about the reception of the theory of evolution from the late Ottoman Empire to the Early Republican Turkey. It argues that the history of this hotly debated theory in Turkey was related with the attempts to interpret organisms by benefiting from scientific findings. As the secular way of think-ing increased in the Ottoman Empire, interpreting organisms without refer-ence to divine will became gradually entrenched among the Ottoman intelli-gentsia. There was a strong relationship between the development of secularism and the rise of evolutionary theory in the Ottoman Empire. Many Ottoman intellectuals used Darwin and Lamarck to explain the origins of hu-mankind and their nature. Modern Turkey inherited certain aspects of the Ot-toman intellectual realm, and consequently the idea of scientism and secular-ism gained an enormous momentum. The political orientation of the early Republican regime influenced its reception directly. The rise of a secular his-tory and physical anthropology paved the way for the promotion and popu-larization of Darwin and the idea of biological evolution crystallized in these scientific fields. This dissertation pays a particular attention to the rise of anti-Darwinism in the late period of the Ottoman Empire and places it into an anti-materialist context. It emphasizes that the main motivation behind anti-Darwinist senti-ments were religious and social concerns, rather than scientific ones.

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