Introduction

Welcome to JOTSA's latest issue!

2020 has been a difficult year for everyone globally, including our fellow scholars and students in the field of Ottoman and Turkish Studies. We have each experienced professional and personal challenges, directly or indirectly, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hearts go out to those who suffered that impact more directly, suffered from the infection, lost jobs, lost family members, friends, and teachers to the virus in this year of great losses. We send our best wishes to all those affected, and we hope that you and yours are safe and healthy.

The JOTSA team continues its commitment to keeping our field alive and presenting the latest scholarship to our readers even in these challenging times. With the support of our wider OTSA family, colleagues, friends, and students, we learn new ways to be resilient in the face of challenge and grow. This volume is a testament to our communal hard work and dedication to Ottoman and Turkish Studies.

We are delighted to present our readers a very special issue, which is full of exciting scholarship and thought-provoking new work. The centerpiece is a themed issue entitled "Entangled Literatures and Histories in the Premodern Ottoman World," guest edited by N. İpek Hüner Cora and Michael Pifer. The inspiring introduction by the guest editors is followed by seven fascinating essays, including a contribution by the late Walter G. Andrews co-authored with Ayşe Dalyan. Sadly, we lost him shortly after he finished revising this essay; he did not survive to see it in print. The themed issue carries the profound imprint of his scholarship and contribution to Ottoman and Turkish literature and history. We hence dedicate this volume of JOTSA to his memory and remember him with a memorial written by one of his colleagues Selim Kuru.

In this issue, readers will also find three other articles addressing different aspects of late Ottoman and modern Turkish history, diplomacy, and literature, followed by twelve book reviews showcasing the latest additions to scholarship in our field and an interview with Machiel Kiel.

It is with this issue that we begin our new publishing schedule. As in the past JOTSA will be published biannually, but rather than appearing in the spring and fall, the journal will be distributed in the summer and winter. This change was made to better align with the needs of Indiana University Press.

We would also like to take this opportunity to announce a new initiative that will be realized in collaboration with Columbia Global Centers Istanbul: Voices of Emerging Scholars series. Organized by our Editorial Board member Zeynep Çelik, a series of webinar workshops will highlight the research of emerging scholars in late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican history. In our upcoming issues, JOTSA will publish the workshop papers in this series with the hope of promoting the work of our junior colleagues.

As always, we would like to express our appreciation to Indiana University Press and its staff for publishing and distributing the journal. JOTSA continues to be available online and in print. All issues of the Turkish Studies Association Journal (TSAJ), the Turkish Studies Association Bulletin (TSAB), and the Turkish Studies Association Newsletter are available on JSTOR and Project MUSE. Additionally, we thank all the anonymous reviewers who have so willingly given their time to peer-reviewing this issue's articles. We understand that this is a sacrifice of precious time and sincerely appreciate their efforts in making this a high-quality journal. We would like to thank our consulting editor Kent Schull (Binghamton University, SUNY) for his dedicated support and our Graduate Assistant Editor, Asiye Demir (University of South Carolina), the members of our Editorial Board, and our dedicated team of Book Review Editors: Metin Atmaca (Ankara Sosyal Bilimler University), Ahmet Tunç Şen (Columbia University), Senem Aslan (Bates College), Ayşecan Terzioğlu (Sabancı University), and Nilay Özok Gündoğan (Florida State University).

JOTSA's editors and editorial board wish to thank the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) for its continued support of the journal in providing publication subvention...