In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 1:1-2 (2014): 23-35 Howard Eissenstat Children of Özal: The New Face of Turkish Studies It would be difficult to overstate the transformations that have reshaped Turkish and Ottoman Studies in the past generation: more—and more theoretically informed—scholarship, new areas of research being explored, more connections between disciplines, new programs and institutes being opened, more study abroad opportunities, more international collaboration, and, perhaps most importantly, an increase in the number and overall quality of graduate students entering the field. A generation ago, Turkish Studies held a decidedly marginal role within area studies, garnering limited interest and sitting at the periphery of both Middle Eastern and European Studies. When I first went on the job market, nearly a decade ago, I would sometimes need to explain why exactly a specialist in Turkish Studies would be a good fit for a Middle East history position (that it would be a bad fit for most European history positions was self-evident). Such a question seems difficult to imagine today. This shift, I would argue, was caused by factors largely outside of the academy; nonetheless, the repercussions for the field have been profound and intellectually exhilarating. The study of modern Turkey in North America still faces hurdles and blind-spots. Nonetheless, it is hard to see the changes that the field has experienced in the past two decades as anything less than extraordinary. As Nicholas Danforth recently wrote in an insightful review essay for Nationalities Papers, “it is possible that today, Turkey is undergoing its greatest historiographical revolution since the one that followed its proclamation in 1923.”1 That this shift is located in a wider political context is hardly surprising. The relationship between Cold War strategic concerns and the development for Area Studies in the United States is well known.2 Middle East Studies, no less than other sub-disciplines, was a beneficiary of America’s new global interest in the fifties and sixties.3 U.S. involvement in the region only expanded at the end of the Cold War, and particularly after the al Qaeda attacks of September 2001, popular interest  Howard Eissenstat is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History at St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY; email: heissenstat@stlawu.edu The author would like to thank Kent Schull and Robert Zens for their insightful comments and suggestions on this essay. 1 Nicholas Danforth, “The Writing of Modern Turkey,” Nationalities Papers 41:6 (2013): 1136. 2 Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 124-29. 3 Cangül Örnek, “From Analysis to Policy: Turkish Studies in the 1950s and the Diplomacy of Ideas,” Middle East Studies 48:6 (2012): 942. Howard Eissenstat 24 soared, even as government funding for Middle East Studies came under attack from conservatives who worried that specialists were not sufficiently supportive of U.S. policies abroad.4 Within academia, enrollments at all levels of study increased dramatically and many new positions opened up, particularly at small and mediumsized universities which had once covered the Middle East sparsely, or not at all. While it benefited from this wider interest in the Middle East, Turkish Studies also benefited from Turkey’s increased wealth and prominence. Turkey’s economic and political vibrancy engendered greater public interest, while a surge in tourism and study abroad opportunities in Turkey have given an ever wider number of young people “the Turkey bug.” Policy thinkers and pundits increasingly spoke of a “Turkish model for the Middle East” (though the actual content of this model was often left vague). Yet, the heart of Turkish Studies’ new vibrancy, I would argue, is the way that scholarship has intersected with the dramatic changes that Turkish society has undergone since 1989. Turkish Studies and the Turkish State: A Troubled History The monumental nature of this shift is highlighted by the field’s changing relationship to Turkish state policy. While questions about ties to the U.S. security interests have been less contentious in Turkish Studies than for many subfields of Middle East Studies, the field’s relationship with the Turkish state has...

pdf

Share