Doctoral Scholarship Holders
İrem Ertürk (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS))
“Revisioning Ali Suavi”
Turkish historiography has often attributed primary importance to the Young Turks (1889) as the principal instigators of modern reforms, relegating the contributions of the Young Ottomans (1865) to a secondary role. Yet, in the 1860s, the Young Ottomans played a crucial role in shaping the political, social, and cultural debates of their time. This group, composed mainly of Ottoman officials and bureaucrats, saw themselves as patriotic reformers committed to preserving the empire. Among them, Ali Suavi stands out as an influential figure who, after initially serving as an ulema, later emerged as an editor and writer in independent newspapers, where he openly criticized government policies. Although Turkish historiography often categorizes him as an Islamist, this research argues that Suavi was, above all, a reformer who sought to adapt religious values to the socio-political realities of his time, rather than an Islamist in the contemporary sense of the term. From Suavi’s writings, it is observed that he was highly intelligent and had undergone a rigorous religious education. This background enabled him to serve in Istanbul’s mosques, where he preached with profound knowledge of hadith, garnering significant attention from both the public and the elite. Later with his writings in his journalistic career, Suavi analyzed reforms through the lens of the prevailing social values of Islam and intellectual currents of his time. This study suggests that, through his critical engagement with reform, he left a lasting political legacy that influenced subsequent reformist movements.
Matthieu Gosse (Université Paris Gustave Eiffel, Paris)
Foreign Missionaries and Consuls in Diyarbekir and Mamuret-ul Aziz (Ottoman East): Local and Imperial Networks of Power, Urban Strategies and Patronage Relations (1870s –1914)
This project explores the social and political roles played by Western foreign actors — notably missionaries and consuls — in the provincial Ottoman cities of Diyarbekir and Mamuret-ul Aziz / Harput during the late Ottoman period. While port cities and their Levantine populations have received considerable scholarly attention, the plural urban societies of the Ottoman East remain comparatively understudied. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources mainly from France, Turkey, the Vatican, and the United States, the study observes the integration and activities of Catholic (Capuchins, Franciscan nuns) and Protestant missionaries (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions – ABCFM) and consular agents (French, U.S., British) between the 1870s and 1914. Though often regarded as peripheral observers, these actors were, in fact, deeply embedded in local patronage networks and urban strategies, competing for influence through various channels: consular protection, education, charitable institutions, and religious conversions.Beyond questions of religious and cultural presence, the research reconsiders forms of Western informal imperialism in regions largely devoid of significant economic interest for Western powers. It highlights the role of foreign actors as intermediaries and power brokers operating across both transimperial structures and local political and social dynamics. Particular attention is given to the spatial distribution of foreign presence through GIS-based mapping and fieldwork conducted in the region. Combining microhistorical methods with the study of transimperial networks, the research offers a renewed perspective on social transformation, intercommunal relations, and the complex interplay between local agency and foreign influence in the Ottoman East at the turn of the twentieth century.
Diana Yayloyan (Georgetown University)
Fugitive Ecologies in the Ottoman Borderlands (1870s – late 1930s)
This project examines the trans-imperial and transnational history of fugitivity across the mountainous borderlands of Eastern Anatolia and the Transcaucasus from the 1870s to the late 1930s. Existing work mostly tends to frame fugitives primarily as a state security problem, where fugitives appear mainly as “bandits” or “insurgents” whose importance derives from the threat they pose to state order. Drawing on multilingual research, the project advances a bottom-up approach that takes seriously the categories through which various groups of fugitives understood justice, obligation, and legitimacy. The principal methodological intervention of this project is to treat fugitivity not only as an object of study but also as a lens for rereading border governance, mobility control, and state-making in late Ottoman and early Republican history.