Friday, November 24, 2006
Academics in Turkey
I hope everyone back home had a great Thanksgiving, and in case you were wondering I had a pretty decent one. My group and I went to the American-Turkish Association and had turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie (something you really can't find here). I know everyone back home likes to joke about "eating turkey in Turkey", but the truth is it isn't called "turkey" here, its called "hindi" which oddly enough is also what they call "India". So, I have really been eating India in Turkey, and truth be told I've also eaten a good bit of Egypt, seeing as the name "Mısır" is also applied to that countries main agricultural export -- corn.
I mentioned in my last post that there was a request to post about what I'm studying here, so here are my thoughts from both a specific view of what I am studying in particular, and what the Ivory Tower is like half a world away from home.
Needless to say a lot of my time here is spent learning Turkish, which is a surprisingly easy language to learn, especially since Atatürk changed the script from Arabo-Ottoman to modified Latin. There are also many cognates I've picked up on from my Arabic classes over the past two years, though I wish I was able to keep up with that language more than I have.
I've also been taking a class on Islamic Art and Archaeology from the 8th through the 13th centuries, covering the Umayyad dynasty through the Anatolian Seljuks (predecessors to the Ottomans). The class has been very interesting and has certainly given me a new appreciation to the arts and in particular the plethora of mosques and palaces I've seen here in Turkey. It also sparks another travel bug in me that makes me want to go to places like Spain to see the Great Mosque of Cordoba or to Syria to see the Great Mosque of Damascus. These two in particular mosques strike my fancy because they both have rich histories in both the Islamic and Christian faiths. The Great Mosque of Damascus is seen as the oldest surviving mosque in the world and evolved from the church structure that was the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Byzantine times (indeed for a time the Muslims shared the area with the surrounding Christians, opening the Basilica to them on Sundays for mass). The mosque even still has a large shrine in its prayer hall that houses the head of St. John the Baptist, and was visited by Pope John Paul II (imagine that! a Pope praying Christian prayers inside a mosque). The Great Mosque of Cordoba is an example of the opposite effect. When the Umayyads were thrown out of Syria one of their family fled through north Africa, gathered a force of Berbers and led an invasion into Andalusia thus establishing the Umayyad (or Moorish) dynasty of Spain which lasted about 300 years. The mosque itself is a fantastic exemplar of intricate architecture, horseshoe arches and splendid mosaic. Some time after its completion Christian forces were able to push out the Umayyads, this process became known as the reconquista. The citizens of Cordoba would not let this jewel be destroyed as the Spaniards wanted, and so a compromise was made and a large Cathedral was built smack in the middle of the existing structure so that in order to reach the prayer hall of the mosque you must walk through the Cathedral.
This has been very exciting to study this sort of art, but truth be told is hasn't been my primary focus. I've been doing a lot of research this semester on the modernization of the Ottoman Empire. In particular I've been studying the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, who ruled from 1876-1909 and by all accounts was the last Sultan to harness any real power before the Committee on Union and Progress (CUP) took over and led the empire into World War I. Abdulhamid was a very dynamic character. He was a shy and aloof child who grew into sort of an antisocial young prince. He was convinced that his father Abdulaziz (who was forced to abdicate because he would not install a constitution) had not committed suicide, but was murdered. He ascended to the throne after his brother Murad V who was labeled as insane, left him as the last member of the House of Osman. His reign is often characterized as that of a violent, autocratic reactionary who pushed policies of Pan Islam, destroyed the Constitution and lost an awful war with Russia. There is a good bit of truth to these accusations, but they only address one side of the story. Abdulhamid was arguably the only Sultan to realize the Ottoman Empire was falling apart on all accounts. He realized that more important than securing the borders and fending off feasting Imperial powers in Europe, he must modernize the countries infrastucture and society while unifying it under the only banner he had, Islam. Indeed he was acting on a survival instinct, which made him quite paranoid of bureaucrats and kept a tight circle around him. He suspended Parliament before the war with Russia in 1877 (though in all technicalities he did not suspend the Constitution, he knew it would eventually be important to bring that back, though it didn't happen until almost 40 years later), and went about reforming the education system, building railroads, instituting the telegraph and participating in world cultural affairs, such as the Columbia Exhibition at the 1892 World's Fair (which, of all places, appeared on the Midway in Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago had just been founded). In many ways Abdulhamid's reign was the first turbulent step towards a modern, democratic Muslim country, the kind the Republic is today and how we hope the rest of the Middle East may someday turn out to be.
That said, academics in general here is interesting. Turkey is still developing its academic institutions and currently the academic elite is a small, tight knit group. There is a heavy emphasis on pre-professional education, by far the most popular major here at Bilkent is Management. Indeed many of the people who take classes like art or history only do so to fill a requirement, they for the most part believe there is no money to be made in these sort of esoteric subjects. These people are right to a large extent. This developing country has a lot of money for people who want to manage companies or engineer new technology. Endeavors of career academics are seen as a luxury item, someone must have money from somewhere else or expect to practice outside the country. This seems like a very natural situation for a country that has yet to build or flourish a stable economy or a democracy that is less reliant on its military. Someday, though, these sort of 'esoteric' subjects will be seen as noble pursuits for any Turk with the interest to pursue. Creativity and philosophy are important to democracy, and its something we in our own country take for granted. While in order for the country to run itself efficiently it is absolutley necessary to have business managers and doctors and lawyers, but without our artists, historians and philosophers no doubt a country loses sight of its self-worth and its creativity, thus making it more adept to a paternalistic, authoritarian regime that acts on the whim of a few and not the will of many.
I'm headed out to Amasya and the Black Sea region this weekend, so I'll post again early next week.
Over and out.
I mentioned in my last post that there was a request to post about what I'm studying here, so here are my thoughts from both a specific view of what I am studying in particular, and what the Ivory Tower is like half a world away from home.
Needless to say a lot of my time here is spent learning Turkish, which is a surprisingly easy language to learn, especially since Atatürk changed the script from Arabo-Ottoman to modified Latin. There are also many cognates I've picked up on from my Arabic classes over the past two years, though I wish I was able to keep up with that language more than I have.
I've also been taking a class on Islamic Art and Archaeology from the 8th through the 13th centuries, covering the Umayyad dynasty through the Anatolian Seljuks (predecessors to the Ottomans). The class has been very interesting and has certainly given me a new appreciation to the arts and in particular the plethora of mosques and palaces I've seen here in Turkey. It also sparks another travel bug in me that makes me want to go to places like Spain to see the Great Mosque of Cordoba or to Syria to see the Great Mosque of Damascus. These two in particular mosques strike my fancy because they both have rich histories in both the Islamic and Christian faiths. The Great Mosque of Damascus is seen as the oldest surviving mosque in the world and evolved from the church structure that was the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Byzantine times (indeed for a time the Muslims shared the area with the surrounding Christians, opening the Basilica to them on Sundays for mass). The mosque even still has a large shrine in its prayer hall that houses the head of St. John the Baptist, and was visited by Pope John Paul II (imagine that! a Pope praying Christian prayers inside a mosque). The Great Mosque of Cordoba is an example of the opposite effect. When the Umayyads were thrown out of Syria one of their family fled through north Africa, gathered a force of Berbers and led an invasion into Andalusia thus establishing the Umayyad (or Moorish) dynasty of Spain which lasted about 300 years. The mosque itself is a fantastic exemplar of intricate architecture, horseshoe arches and splendid mosaic. Some time after its completion Christian forces were able to push out the Umayyads, this process became known as the reconquista. The citizens of Cordoba would not let this jewel be destroyed as the Spaniards wanted, and so a compromise was made and a large Cathedral was built smack in the middle of the existing structure so that in order to reach the prayer hall of the mosque you must walk through the Cathedral.
This has been very exciting to study this sort of art, but truth be told is hasn't been my primary focus. I've been doing a lot of research this semester on the modernization of the Ottoman Empire. In particular I've been studying the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, who ruled from 1876-1909 and by all accounts was the last Sultan to harness any real power before the Committee on Union and Progress (CUP) took over and led the empire into World War I. Abdulhamid was a very dynamic character. He was a shy and aloof child who grew into sort of an antisocial young prince. He was convinced that his father Abdulaziz (who was forced to abdicate because he would not install a constitution) had not committed suicide, but was murdered. He ascended to the throne after his brother Murad V who was labeled as insane, left him as the last member of the House of Osman. His reign is often characterized as that of a violent, autocratic reactionary who pushed policies of Pan Islam, destroyed the Constitution and lost an awful war with Russia. There is a good bit of truth to these accusations, but they only address one side of the story. Abdulhamid was arguably the only Sultan to realize the Ottoman Empire was falling apart on all accounts. He realized that more important than securing the borders and fending off feasting Imperial powers in Europe, he must modernize the countries infrastucture and society while unifying it under the only banner he had, Islam. Indeed he was acting on a survival instinct, which made him quite paranoid of bureaucrats and kept a tight circle around him. He suspended Parliament before the war with Russia in 1877 (though in all technicalities he did not suspend the Constitution, he knew it would eventually be important to bring that back, though it didn't happen until almost 40 years later), and went about reforming the education system, building railroads, instituting the telegraph and participating in world cultural affairs, such as the Columbia Exhibition at the 1892 World's Fair (which, of all places, appeared on the Midway in Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago had just been founded). In many ways Abdulhamid's reign was the first turbulent step towards a modern, democratic Muslim country, the kind the Republic is today and how we hope the rest of the Middle East may someday turn out to be.
That said, academics in general here is interesting. Turkey is still developing its academic institutions and currently the academic elite is a small, tight knit group. There is a heavy emphasis on pre-professional education, by far the most popular major here at Bilkent is Management. Indeed many of the people who take classes like art or history only do so to fill a requirement, they for the most part believe there is no money to be made in these sort of esoteric subjects. These people are right to a large extent. This developing country has a lot of money for people who want to manage companies or engineer new technology. Endeavors of career academics are seen as a luxury item, someone must have money from somewhere else or expect to practice outside the country. This seems like a very natural situation for a country that has yet to build or flourish a stable economy or a democracy that is less reliant on its military. Someday, though, these sort of 'esoteric' subjects will be seen as noble pursuits for any Turk with the interest to pursue. Creativity and philosophy are important to democracy, and its something we in our own country take for granted. While in order for the country to run itself efficiently it is absolutley necessary to have business managers and doctors and lawyers, but without our artists, historians and philosophers no doubt a country loses sight of its self-worth and its creativity, thus making it more adept to a paternalistic, authoritarian regime that acts on the whim of a few and not the will of many.
I'm headed out to Amasya and the Black Sea region this weekend, so I'll post again early next week.
Over and out.
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We are all waiting to hear about the pope's visit. Looking forward to the post. Aunt Colleen
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