Visting Researchers/Doctoral Scholarship Holders

Visting Researchers

Gökçen B. Dinç, (Utrecht University)

Secularizing Khidr and Hıdrellez: The Ambiguities of Heritage Politics for Alevis

This project examines how Hıdrellez has been celebrated across communities, with a special focus on Alevi interpretations and practices in Turkey’s history. Hıdrellez is the annual celebration of the arrival of spring held on May 6 in Turkey and neighboring countries. It is believed that on the night of May 5, the prophets (or saints) Khidr (Hızır) and Elijah (İlyas) meet on earth to restart the cycle of fertility. The celebration includes beliefs and rituals associated with Christianity and Judaism, as well as elements linked to shamanism and paganism. Hıdrellez reflects the diversity of religious life in Turkey and was, and still is, celebrated in a convivial manner by people of different ethnic, religious and gender backgrounds. However, Khidr holds a particularly sacred role in Alevi belief, and for Alevis, the largest religious minority in Turkey, Hıdrellez functions as a religious ritual. As part of the broader intangible cultural heritage politics of the current AKP government, Hıdrellez was inscribed by North Macedonia and Turkey in 2017 as a “spring celebration” on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. While existing literature on the AKP focuses primarily on its religious politics, and scholarship on the heritage–religion nexus in Muslim contexts often emphasizes destruction, this project highlights a different dynamic: the reframing and heritagization of a living Alevi ritual through a secular lens. In addition to the history of Hıdrellez celebrations, I explore the ambiguities this reframing generates: while it allows for recognition of the practice as national culture, it simultaneously downplays its religious and specifically Alevi dimensions.

Alexandros Maria Hatzikiriakos (The University of Sheffield)

Sonic Identities in Early Modern Crete and Cyprus 1453-1700: Acoustic Communities at the Interface of Venetian Colonisation and the Ottoman Empire

Contested for centuries by Venice and the Ottoman Empire, the islands of Crete and Cyprus have been the subject of enduring transcultural contacts, frictions, and identity negotiations. SONICC studies these transformations through the soundscapes of the local communities. Drawing from musicology, auditory history, and material and visual culture studies, this project investigates how Cretan and Cypriot communities performed their identities through sound. This involves examining not only past musical practices (e.g. music performances during civic and religious events, incidental music, or domestic entertainments) but also various sounds and noises that are not normally considered by musicologists (e.g. urban noises, the sounds of civic infrastructure such as fountains and bells, the paralinguistic “polyphony” of multilingual cities), including their visual and material manifestations, which together form multifaceted soundscapes. Scholars working in various disciplines have analysed the impact of the Western and Ottoman conquests on the populations of Crete and Cyprus. However, they have focused primarily on visual, literary, and architectural traditions, often neglecting the complex and hybrid soundworlds that characterise these communities. SONICC fills this gap through its ground-breaking comparative and intermedial analysis of historical, musical, literary, visual, and material sources related to the musical practices, sounds, voices, linguistic differences, and “noises” that were used to construct and communicate local identities. In a current moment marked by the resurgence of nationalism and the reinforcement of rigid borders, this project seeks to reassess historical sonic identities in ways that will enhance our understanding of present-day cultural struggles in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

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.