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Cultural Studies in Turkey: Education and Practice

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 2-3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10714410490480386

1556-3022

Gönül Pultar, Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç,

Balkans: History, Politics, Society

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See her Schwarzer Tee mit Drei Stück Zucker (Black Tea with Three Lumps of Sugar; 1991); Die Frau mit Bart (The Woman with [a] Beard; 1994); and Es Wird Diamanten Regen von Himmel (Diamonds Will Rain from the Sky; 1999). 2. See her Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei, Hat Zwei Türen, Aus Einer Kam ich Rein, Aus Der Anderen Ging Ich Raus (1992), translated into English as Life is a Caravanserai: Has Two Doors, I came in One, I Went Out the Other (2000); Mutterzunge: Erzählunge (1998), translated into English as Mother Tongue (1994); and Die Brücke von Goldenen Horn (The Golden Horn Bridge; 1998). 3. See e.g. Azade Seyhan, Writing Outside the Nation (2001) for an intelligent discussion of the authors mentioned above. 4. The second language of Turkish intellectuals, besides Arabic and Persian, was for a very long time French. The U.S.I.S. especially, in collaboration with the Fulbright commission, had to spend billions of dollars during the Cold War, in this country with common borders with the Soviet Union, to reverse the trend and establish English as the lingua franca of the Turkish intelligentsia. 5. See Laurence Raw, “Perspectives on British Studies in Turkish Universities” for a discussion of the establishment in Turkey of “British Studies,” an “interdisciplinary approach to contemporary Britain,” in practice British Cultural Studies, designed to “attract students away from American Studies,” which the British Council saw as being American Cultural Studies. David Punter confirms Raw's statements when he writes that, “British Cultural Studies, I take it, is a discipline which is designed—or is being designed in practice—specifically for teaching outside Britain,” then indicates that “British Cultural Studies and the agencies which provide and foster it are already elements in a map, a map which also includes other, nationally diverse, agencies which are in some sense providing a parallel service—the United states Information Service, the Goethe Institute, and so forth” (65, 67). 6. Selves at Home, Selves in Exile: Stories of Emplacement and Displacement (2003), edited by Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç et al., is the most recent volume. 7. Another outcome was the publication of Iğnem Iplig˘im, Diktiğim Kimliğim (Fabrics and Fabrications; 2000) by Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç, a member of the department, and its Chair at present (2000-) in which she analyzes products of popular culture, visual arts, material culture and literature to illustrate how labor history, sociology, anthropology, women's studies and literary criticism can be employed to shed light on various aspects of culture. 8. See Hülya Adak, “Sabancı Üniversitesi ‘Kültürel Etüdler’ Programı (The Sabancı University “Cultural Studies” Program)” for a brief overview of the program and the seminars it has been organizing, by a member of its faculty. Another member of faculty of the program, Annedith Schneider, discusses at length this new program, in an article that is understandably laudatory of it, yet somewhat hazy, to say the least, on the general Turkish situation presented in her introduction (see her “The Institutional Revolutionary Major: Questions and Contradictions on the Way to Designing a Cultural Studies Program in a New Turkish University”). 9. See Işıl Baş, “Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Eleştiri ve Kültür Araştirmaları Yüksek Lisans Programı 2002–2003 Yılında Öğrenime Başladı (The Boğaziçi University Critical and Cultural Studies Program Started in the Academic Year 2002–2003),” for a brief overview of the program, by its coordinator. 10. These are Bahattin Akşit (METU), Çiğdem Balım (Univerisity of Manchester), Mutlu Binark (Gazi University, Ankara), Gülriz Büken (Bilkent University, Ankara), Talat Halman (Bilkent University), Ayşe Lahur Kırtunç (Ege University, Ankara), and Yıldırım Yavuz (METU). 11. One such book was Istanbul: Küresel ile Yerel Arasinda (1999, the Turkish translation of Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local; 1999). 12. A poet in his own right, Professor Halman has made translations of poetry from English and Persian into Turkish, and of both poetry and prose from Turkish to English; has edited, besides collections of his own journalistic writings, various collections of selections from Turkish literature; and co-authored Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes (1983). Some of his translations are: A Dot on the Map: Selected Stories and Poems by Sait Faik (1983) Faik, Sait. 1983. A Dot on the Map: Selected Stories and Poems by Sait Faik, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Turkish Studies Publications. Trans. Halman with editorial assistance by Jayne L. Warner, with an introduction by the translator [Google Scholar]; Yunus Emre: Selected Poems (1993) Yunus, Emre. 1993. Yunus Emre: Selected Poems , 2nd ed., Ankara: Turkish Republic Ministry of Culture Publications. Trans. Talat Halman [Google Scholar]; and, translated with Ruth Christie and Richard MacKane, Beyond the Walls: Selected Poems of Nazim Hikmet (2002) Hikmet, Nazım. 2002. Beyond the walls: selected poems of Nazım Hikmet, London: Anvil Press Poetry. Trans. Ruth Christie, Talat Halman and Richard Mackane [Google Scholar]. He is the editor of Turkey: From Empire to Nation (1973); Modern Turkish Drama: An Anthology of Plays in Translation (1976); and Contemporary Turkish Literature: Fiction and Poetry (1982). 13. Imparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı (The Longest Century of the Empire; 1983); Studies on Ottoman Transformation (1994); Osmanlı Imparatorlugˇu'nda Iktisadi ve Sosyal Degˇişim (Economic and Social Change in the Ottoman Empire; 2000); Osmanlı Toplumunda Aile (Family in Ottoman Society; 2000); and Gelenekten Geleceğe (From Tradition to the Future; 2001) are some of the titles of his numerous books. 14. A left-leaning intellectual, Professor Turan served as undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture, and as President of Türk Dil Kurumu (Turkish Language Institute) and later of Dil Dernegˇi (Language Society) when that association was formed to protest the Türk Dil Kurumu being entrusted in rightist hands. 15. The texts of some of the presentations are on the website of the Group. 16. The proceedings of the conference are now being edited by Tahire Erman (Bilkent University), Gönül Pultar and Dikmen Yakalı (Birmingham University). 17. The next conference of the Group, entitled “Identity and Culture,” and co-organized with Boğaziçi University, will take place in Istanbul on 14–17 June 2005. 18. Nazim Hikmet (Ran), the twentieth-century Turkish poet best known outside of Turkey, is ethnically of Polish descent—and was born in Thessaloniki, in what is now Greece. Of the two best lyrical poets of the Turkish language in the twentieth-century, Ahmet Haşim is ethnically an Arab from Baghdad; while Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, an ethnic Turk, was born in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia. The twentieth-century novelist best known outside of Turkey, Yaşar Kemal Gökçeli, is an ethnic Kurd. The early works of this author who first earned his bread as an itinerant story-teller (he is probably one of the last of the practitioners of this dying profession) were transcriptions of folk legends floating in his native Southern Anatolia; their worth lies more than anything else in his use of the Turkish language, with lyrical passages consisting of page-long sentences. 19. See the feature film Hititler (The Hittites; 2003), directed/produced by Tolga Örnek. 20. Renat Taziev, Ronald Hatto and François Zdanowicz call Turks a mega-ethnicité in “La Turcophonie: Naissance d'un Nouveau Monde? (The Turcophony: Birth of a New World?).” 21. A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East (1989). 22. He himself relates it with superb aplomb in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1922–1926). 23. These issues were the themes of the papers presented at the conference on “Tatars and Tatarstan” organized at Marmara University (Istanbul) on 27 February 2003, especially that of Timour Kozyrev (Boğaziçi University), entitled “Tatar Milli Kimliğinin Oluşumu (Formation of Tatar National Identity).” 24. See, besides the oeuvre in Turkish, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (1962); and Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1989); and as editor, Cultural Transitions in the Middle East (1994); and Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey (2003). 25. To illustrate, a panel entitled “Turkish Culture between Ottomans and Turks,” held at the 4–6 December 1998 meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in Chicago, IL, was a cultural studies exercise, not so advertised. Besides two Turkish scholars, Walter Andrews (University of Washington) presented a paper entitled “Stepping Aside: Ottoman Literature in Modern Turkey,” in which he proposed to abandon the clichéd binaries modern-traditional, etc. in assessing Ottoman literature, and adopt a Deleuzian–Guattarian reading. Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey (2002), edited by Deniz Kandiyoti and Ayse Saktanber, two Turkish scholars, is also another such work. 26. The Armenians are the most articulate in this subject but Serbs and Croatians, who destroyed much of Ottoman-Turkish cultural patrimony in Bosnia, have been just as “obliging,” and in fact turned out to be, with the ethnic cleansing they resorted to, much more homicidal than the Armenians' terrorist organization ASALA. 27. “Reconfiguring Modernity: From Modernization to Globalization.”