This study aims to explore the political and social outlook of the Ottoman military in the six years between the constitutional revolution of 1908 and the Ottoman Empire's entry into the First World War, events in both of which the army's role was decisive. An introductory chapter surveys the modernisation of the Ottoman army over nearly a century to 1876. Chapter I focuses on the emergence, after 1876, of two different generations of educated officers with two distinctive approaches to politics and the army's role in society. Chapter II examines the differing roles of these two groups in the events prior to the Revolution and in the making of the revolution. Chapter III focuses upon military publications of the period 1908-1912, and in particular, examines the importance of Japan in the Ottoman army's eyes at the time and how Japanese modernisation and militarisation were presented as a role model. Chapter IV examines the dominant role of the younger patriotic generation in the politics of the country in the years immediately after the Revolution. Chapter V focuses on military reform after the Revolution. Chapter VI examines the effects of the Balkan defeats of 1912-1913 on the political outlook and practice of the officer corps. Chapter VII examines the army's attempts to promote militarism in society at large during the months immediately prior to the outbreak of the First World War. A concluding chapter assesses some of the broader social and ideological implications of the army's assumption of a leading role in domestic politics.

How did Byzantine people treat their dead? How do the mortuary practices for which we have archaeological evidence relate to Byzantine understandings of eschatology and the other world? This thesis endeavours to fill a lacuna in the study of Medieval Byzantine mortuary practice by collating and analysing both previously published catalogues of graves and the data contained in two previously unpublished archives from the sites of Çatalhöyük and Alahan. A typology of sites and graves is developed categorising sites as interior church cemeteries, exterior church cemeteries, chapel burials and field cemeteries. Date ranges and standard grave forms for each category of site have been established as far as possible. This thesis aims to put the data from cemetery sites in context in terms of the religious and political climate of Medieval Byzantine Anatolia in order to assess issues of regionalisation and identity through diversity in mortuary practice. The culmination of this thesis poses the question of whether it is possible to use archaeological data in combination with theoretical approaches to mortuary practice, emotion and ontology to discuss experience at the graveside. The categories and type definitions of cemeteries and graves set out in this thesis form a suggested framework for the future analysis and publication of medieval graves from the region. The primary conclusions of this thesis are that a relational approach to archaeology allows for a greater engagement with the past at the level of the individual, and that the study of Byzantine mortuary practice has a considerable amount to contribute to questions of regionalisation and identity in the period. Finally, it is found that approaching mortuary practice from a symmetrical perspective and problematizing our understanding of Byzantine emotion enables a nuanced discussion of grief and mourning practices not accessible from the study of either the textual or the archaeological material alone.

This thesis focuses on the international-domestic interaction within the context of the 1908 Ottoman Constitutional Revolution and examines it in relation to the intemational dimensions of the social transformation of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So the focus of the research is on the extent and the mechanisms of the international constitution of political change within the Ottoman Empire in regard to the historical moment of 1908. The framework for the research question is the ongoing theoretical investigations of the scholars of International Relations into the possibility of using a historical sociological approach to conceptualize the reciprocal constitutive roles of the international and the domestic realms in engendering political transformations, whether in this longue duree or in sudden ruptures. As such, the thesis engages with the historical sociology tradition. The main objective is to enable a productive encounter between the case study itself and the general theory: the starting assumption is the impossibility of a purely national account of political changes of this scale. Given this framework, the thesis limits the examination of the case and the discussion of theory to the debate on the interaction between international and domestic dynamics. A creative understanding of how these two dynamics interact and co-constitute each other would contribute to the general analysis of political change within the field of International Relations. At the same time an analytical re-reading of the case study from this angle would locate this turning point in the history of the Ottoman Empire and of the Middle Eastern in a wider analytical context and thereby give it its due theoretical and historical weight.

No description available.

The thesis provides a socio-political analysis of the state-building processes in Turkey. It focuses on how the discursive formations on state development imagine, articulate and refer to a distinction between the 'East' and the 'West', and how this distinction is transposed to the discussion of state formation processes as a classification in terms of 'normal' and 'exceptional'. In this respect, the thesis also elaborates on the homologies between the Turkish case and other 'normal' and 'exceptional' cases in Western Europe and North America. Then, it moves to an ideology critique of the dominant theoretical paradigms and the ways in which they are utilized to describe different aspects of state development in Turkey. This ideology-critique, which traverses all the chapters, revolves around three major themes. First, it highlights Turkey's ambiguous position within different paradigms that reproduce Orientalist images of thought. Second, it explores the links between state-building processes and the emergence and dissemination of hegemonic social science paradigms. And third, it examines the nature of hegemony in the global organisation of the academic field with a view to illustrating the asymmetries in the formation of the Turkish academic milieu and its intellectual production. Overall, the thesis provides a theoretical and political analysis of the ways in which the knowledge of the 'Orient' articulates itself in the discourses on Turkish state development.

This thesis examines the linkages between economic development in the predominantly Kurdish provinces in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia (ESA) and Turkey's Kurdish question. The study adopts a historical, structural, and political-economic approach, which entails that socioeconomic and political developments, structures and transformations in ESA are analysed in juxtaposition with those of other domains within the context of the larger geographical area and political entity of which these territories have constituted a part: the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. The study is comprised of three main parts. The first part discusses the key theoretical foundations of the research: theories on Kurdish identity; theoretical perspectives on the Kurdish question in Turkey; and theoretical approaches to socioeconomic development in ESA. The second part explores the social, economic and political alterations, formations and events in Ottoman Kurdistan after 1514 when the bulk of the Kurdish territories largely located in ESA came under the administration of the Ottoman Empire. The final part deals with issues pertaining to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent foundation and evolution of the Turkish Republic and Turkey's Kurdish question. The central argument of this thesis is that there is a symbiotic relationship between the Kurdish question in Turkey and the peculiar form of underdevelopment witnessed in ESA, which is accurately captured by the notion of de-development. De-development is an economic process generated by a hegemonic power to ensure that there will be no economic base to support an independent indigenous existence (Roy, 1995). Underlying de-development in ESA as well as Turkey's Kurdish question is the Turkish elite's paramount political-national objective of maintaining Turkey's national unity and territorial integrity.

No description available.

The Western image of Turks is identified with two distinctive stereotypes: 'Terrible Turk' and 'Lustful Turk'. These stereotypical images are deeply rooted in the history of the Ottoman Empire and its encounters with Christian Europe. Because of their fear of being dominated by Islam, European Christians defined the Turks as the wicked 'Other' against their perfect 'Self'. Since the beginning of Crusades, the Western image of Turks is associated with cruelty, barbarity, murderousness, immorality, and sexual perversion. These characteristics still appear in cinematic representations of Turks. In Western films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Midnight Express, the portrayals of Turks echo the stereotypes of 'terrible Turk' and 'lustful Turk'. This thesis argues that these stereotypes have transformed into a myth and continued to exist uniformly in Western contemporary cinema. The thesis attempts to ascertain the uniformity and consistency of the cinematic image of Turks and determine the associations between this image and the myths of 'terrible Turk' and 'lustful Turk'. To achieve this goal, this thesis examines the trajectory of the Turkish image in Western discourse between the 11th and 21st centuries. The discourse analysis focuses on the Western writings, speeches, sermons, and literary texts, including the Crusade rhetoric, Renaissance humanist discourse, Early Modern English drama, and Orientalist travelogue. To establish the continuity of the Turkish stereotypes in Western discourse, the thesis also presents a critical analysis of Western contemporary cinema, including both American and European films. The methodology of the thesis is based on two main theoretical approaches: a) representational practices, which involve the concepts of Otherness, stereotypes, myth, narrative, discourse and intertextuality; and b) Orientalism. These concepts provide a better understanding for the mythical characteristics of the Turkish stereotype. The thesis also offers an exploratory look at the social media platforms and their possible impact on the Turkish image in the future.

No description available.

Whilst the subject of the British propaganda project during World War One has attracted a reasonable amount of attention, this has focused largely on Britain’s war with Germany, on the Home Front or else on efforts to win American support. Beyond the study of events in Armenia, very little consideration has been given to how propagandists and writers responded to her war with Turkey. This thesis uses a range of materials, primarily books, pamphlets and illustrated newspapers produced by Wellington House, or by writers associated with it, to chart the nature and development of Britain’s construction of Ottoman Asia and its Muslim peoples during the war. Beginning by chronologically reviewing the development of the government’s official policy towards the Ottoman Empire, it then turns more specifically to the evolution of propaganda relating to the Middle East, concluding with an examination of fiction written largely by novelists co-opted by Wellington House. The thesis shows a relatively benign and unfocused approach giving way in mid-1916 to a more coherent and aggressive policy which continued for the remainder of the war. It demonstrates that Britain’s response was not just a reflection of static cultural assumptions as is frequently supposed but a careful balancing act as she sought to maintain the support of the Empire’s one hundred million Muslim subjects whilst also engaging in war against the Ottoman caliphate and, in due course, laying claim to her territory. The construction of the Ottoman Empire and its Muslim peoples in British propaganda was part of a bigger, and longer, picture of imperial history and ambition. Above all, it was a textual exercise in which the propagandists attempted to articulate and legitimise Britain’s entitlement to the imperial territory within her possession and that which she aspired to attain.