Turkey, the Middle East, and the Black Sea World: A Scenario within the Confidence Interval of Future Studies

Abstract

An otherwise unremarkable author, L.P. Hartley deserves credit for his astute observation that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently. The qualitative difference of the past from the present has intrigued many a methodologically-concerned social scientist such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Karl Polanyi. As a matter of fact, the reservation that the categories by way of which we approach the analysis of the modern world are by no means equally applicable to the study of pre-modern historical formations is as old as the modern social sciences. If the past is a foreign country the boundaries of which are well defined and the territory of which has been mapped for good, the future remains as the terra incognita waiting for its Columbus, the courageous discoverer. Moreover, because the relevant geography of the future is not a given but only in the making, the task of the social scientist becomes squarely difficult as s/he does not face before her/him a well defined terrain. It is for this reason that, on the whole, social scientists have shied away from exploring the future in a systematic way until recently.