Modern Turkish Studies

Abstract

Turkey has long been a fertile field for social scientists (in the broadest sense of the term) and for commentators on the socio-political scene. Travelogues and analyses of the society by westerners or the Ottoman Empire include such well-known authors as Ubicini, Jorga, Vamberi, Engelhardt, Mortmann, Zinkeisen and Hammer-Purgstall. As western penetration into the area increased in the 19th and early 20th centuries there emerged numerous accounts of Turkish life and public affairs by diplomats (e.g., Sir Edwin Pears, Turkey and Its People, 1912), educators and missionaries (e.g., Caleb Gates, Not to Me Only, 1940), soldiers (e.g., Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, 1928). By 1908, their ranks were augmented by a few Turks such as Ahmet Emin Yalman and Halide Edib. But it was only with the great reforms of AtatUrk that western social scientists began to come to Turkey in any significant numbers, and not until after World War II did modern Turkish studies come into full flower both in terms of quality and quantity. In the last two decades or so there has emerged a very considerable volume of studies by both Turks and others, in Turkish as well as German, French and primarily English. American social scientists have in recent years begun to dominate the field which earlier had been largely the province of Europeans.