One Hundred Years of the First World War

International Conference: Not All Quiet on the Ottoman Front: Neglected Perspectives on a Global War, 1914–18

Supervised by: Prof. Dr. Raoul Motika and Dr. Alexandre Toumarkine, assisted by Gülayşe Öcal-Schiweck, MA

Event date: 04.08.–04.12.2014

Main collaborator: Tarih Vakfı

This major conference with some 80 lectures was organized jointly in 2014 with the Historical Foundation (Tarih Vakfı), an independent network of historians in Turkey, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The conference was aimed at setting new benchmarks for research on Ottoman theaters of war, especially in the area of new military history and with regard to the topics of war experience, war organization, as well as war discourse. The organizers thus sought to direct the focus of the conference to the Ottoman fronts in the north, east, and south, to mitigate national/nationalistic perspectives by way of a deliberate transnational orientation, and to privilege non-military historical aspects.

A full conference report by Zaur Gasimov can be found at: http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-5410

Thyssen Lectures 2013–2018: The Great War Beyond National Perspectives

Supervised by: Prof. Dr. Raoul Motika and Dr. Alexandre Toumarkine

Event date: 2013–2018 (once or twice a year)

Main collaborator: Boğaziçi University, Sabancı University, Istanbul Bilgi University and Tarih Vakfı

Sponsored by: Fritz Thyssen Foundation

As one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century, the First World War led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and other multi-ethnic empires, as well as to the dissolution of the old political and economic order. On the occasion of the War’s centenary, the Orient-Institut Istanbul and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, in cooperation with leading academic institutions of Turkey, explored the origins, the course, and the consequences of the “Great War” with an international series of lectures. The lecture series was also intended to shed new light on the development of states like the Republic of Turkey that emerged from the ruins of the war. As part of the Thyssen Lectures, nine internationally renowned world-war scholars will respectively hold lectures at one of Istanbul’s leading universities and at a university outside of Istanbul between 2013–2018. For this purpose, the OIl is working closely with Tarih Vakfı. The Fritz Thyssen Foundation’s financial support of this event format is helping the OII to become more integrated into the Turkish research community.

The following lectures have been held to date:

Thyssen Lectures I

Prof. em. Dr. Gerd Krumeich, Universität Düsseldorf

The First World War: From a War of the Major Powers to a Catastrophe in Europe

November 5, 2013, Dokuz Eylül University (Izmir)

November 7, 2013, Sabancı University (Istanbul)

Pera-Blätter 25

Thyssen Lectures II

Prof. Dr. Jay Winter, Yale University

Understanding the First World War: A Transnational Moment in Historical Study

April 10, 2014, Istanbul Bilgi University

Pera-Blätter 29

Thyssen Lectures III

Prof. Dr. Oliver Janz , Freie Universität Berlin

The First World War in a Global Perspective

November 3, 2014, Boğaziçi University (Istanbul)

November 4, 2014, Abant Izzet Baysal University (Bolu)

Pera-Blätter 31

 

Thyssen Lectures IV

Prof. Dr. John Horne, Trinity College, Dublin

A Colonial Expedition? The French Soldiers’ Experience at the Dardanelles

April 21, 2015, Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University (Bilecik)

1915 and the “Totalizing Logic” of the First World War

April 22, 2015, Sabancı University (Istanbul)

 

Thyssen Lectures V

Prof. Dr. Eugene Rogan, Oxford University

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

November 30, 2015, Çukurova University (Adana)

Recruiting Prisoners: The Ottomans and the British in the First World War

1. December 2015, Istanbul Bilgi University (Istanbul)

Thyssen Lectures VI

Prof. Dr. Jörn Leonhard, Universität Freiburg

Empires, Nation States and Global Violence: The First World War in Perspective

April 11, 2016 Bilkent Üniversitesi (Ankara)

April 13, 2016, Boğaziçi University (Istanbul)

Exhibition “Il est bon de respirer loin des balles et des canons”

Supervised by: Dr. Alexandre Toumarkine

Event date: 2014

Main collaborator: Institut français d’Istanbul

In cooperation with the Institut français d’Istanbul, the Orient-Institut Istanbul curated the exhibition “Il est bon de respirer loin des balles et the canons” (“It is easy to breathe far away from the bullets and the guns”), which was first shown at the Institut français d’Istanbul (IFI) and later in Bursa, Ankara, Bozcaada and Izmir. The exhibition deals with the experiences of French soldiers during the Battle of Gallipoli, which they wrote about in postcards. These documents allow for insights into the stories of ordinary soldiers, giving rise to an intimate portrait of their relations with their families and friends and their own perception of war.