Turks Across Empires on the Ottoman History Podcast

February 17, 2015

Things have been pretty good lately at the Borderlands Lodge. Funny, how getting your first book behind you can relax the mind somewhat. 

That's right, I'm on the 'cast

Responding post-Charlie

January 16, 2015

A friend asked me the other day what I thought about the recent Charlie Hebdo events. What could I say? Obviously, they're terrible. 

In the wake of the murders of Charlie Hebdo's staff, there's been a fair bit of back-and-forth over the idea of re-running the cartoons. In considering this, I think it's worth making a distinction between those who would run the cartoons as part of the job of covering a news story, and those who want to see them run mainly out of an urge to make a point. 

On the one hand, I can see why press organs discussing the story would want to run some pictures in order to better illustrate the news. In such cases, people should not censor themselves, and should indeed be celebrated for their courage in standing by their principles in choosing to run cartoons that they think are essential to the story they're telling. On the other hand, those who choose to re-print the cartoons primarily to teach an imaginary audience a lesson ("This is how freedom works!") are not helping matters, no matter how well within their rights they (rightly) are. Inviting people to knock another chip off of your shoulder simply to prove your toughness ("bring it on!") is not an effective response to extremism, not when you're making life more unpleasant to potential allies. 

Republican Girls

January 10, 2015

I was working last week at the Atatürk Library in Taksim, checking out old copies of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. I didn't have anything particular in mind regarding what I was looking for. Indeed, my whole trip to Turkey has been this way--checking out library and archival holdings and seeing if I could find something interesting. 

Turkish beauties of 1930

Cumhuriyet was a semi-official newspaper in the 1920s and 30s, and very supportive of the Kemalist regime. Today it's an opposition paper, one that I read a lot in the 90s. I preferred to read Cumhuriyet because I thought its use of language was superior to that of most of the other Istanbul dailies that were available at the time, and also because it was about the only paper back then that didn't run pictures of scantily clad women that would distract me from my efforts to improve my Turkish. 

Notes from Istanbul

January 8, 2015

I've been in Istanbul for the past few weeks, working in various libraries in town and mainly searching for inspiration. With my book coming out last month and a grant from Montana State University to spend, it seemed like coming here would be a good idea.

While I don't feel particularly under the gun to get a new book project immediately underway or anything, I do have a couple of ideas that I thought might be worth exploring. Mainly, however, I wanted a change of scenery. While winter break is normally a pretty pleasant time in Bozeman--the powder has been pretty good, from what I understand--I really felt a need to get away and spend a bit of time thinking about what I'd like to do next. In any case, with a nearly five-week winter break--one of the advantages of teaching in a ski-town, I suppose--there's actually plenty of time for everything.

The Borderlands Lodge 2014 Year in Review

December 31, 2014

In many ways, 2014 was a terrible year for the world. Up at the Borderlands Lodge, however, it wasn't so bad. Actually, it was a really good year in some ways, even as I empathize with those who've been through tough times lately.  

With this in mind, here are the top events that took up the attention of the Borderlands Lodge in 2014. These are not in any particular order of importance--some of these developments are of concern to the world, others are mainly of interest to me personally. Rather, these are the things that, five years from now, I think I'll most likely remember about this year.  

Christmas in Turkey

December 25, 2014

Back when I lived in Istanbul in the 1990s, I used to love the anonymity of Christmas in Turkey. Perhaps not surprisingly, few people celebrate the holiday--about 99% of the country is Muslim, while many of the Greeks and Armenians in Turkey observe Christmas in January. In fact, most of the people that I knew in Turkey didn't realize that Christmas was December 25th. They knew that Christmas existed, but thought it was January 1. 

So, Christmas Day is pretty much an ordinary work day. That's okay, though. Indeed, because Santa Claus and a lot of other Christmas themed-stuff has been appropriated into New Year's celebrations in Turkey, I still saw a lot of familiar-looking decorations during those years. Even the plainclothes police get in on the act in Turkey.

Dreaming in Ottoman

Saturday, December 13, 2014

I was at the Apple Store recently to get the battery on my Mac replaced. Apparently, if you burn the Mac for 18 hours a day for months on end, certain parts begin to wear down. I guess that's something to keep in mind for my advancing old age. 

While I was at the store, I mentioned that I work on Turkey (naturally, I was selling copies of Turks Across Empires out of the back of my car in the parking lot of the mall). It turns out that one of the employees of the Apple Store was a Turkish guy from Istanbul, who was dutifully marched out to meet and converse with me. When I told him I worked on Ottoman history, he jokingly asked me if I was planning on returning to Turkey to work as a language teacher. 

Turks Across Empires: Excerpt

Wednesday, December 3

These have been exciting times up here at the Borderlands Lodge. As I mentioned in my post from the other day, I spent the days before Thanksgiving attending conferences in San Antonio and Washington, DC, and had the good fortune to finally hold my book in my hands! It was a lot of fun, and a day that I wasn't always sure I would manage to see. 

The book is on sale on the website of Oxford University Press and Amazon, and should begin to crop up in other places, too. It's quite expensive right now, as it's a hardcover, but hopefully the hardcovers will sell out and the book will go into paper production, which will end up being cheaper. So---be sure to recommend the book to your local library, for now. Later, you can buy the paperback yourself.

Hittin' the conference circuit

November 26, 2014

As a Turk across empires, I’m no stranger to travel. Even for me, however, the last several days have been pretty tiring. ‘Tis the season for my annual scholarly conferences, so it’s been a pretty hectic week. 

On Thursday of last week I flew down from Bozeman to San Antonio in order to attend the ASEEES conference. ASEEES is the Association for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, which used to be called AAASS (fondly known as ‘Triple Ass”) until they changed it a few years back to bring “Eurasia” into their name. I think the Slavicists who run ASEEES thought they needed to acknowledge the fact that folks like me work on Muslims, yet couldn’t think of a way of doing so without mentioning “Asia.” Typical.

Meyer Mideast Talk in Bozeman

Tuesday, November 11

These are the last days of summer up here at the Borderlands Lodge. Yes, it's true--summer has continued into November in south-central Montana. Not only has there been virtually no snow in town--and only a smattering in the mountains--but also the weather has generally been warm, sunny, and relentlessly beautiful.

I've celebrated in a number of ways. One has been by hiking, with great trips in recent weeks to various spots in Montana and Yellowstone.

It's also been a pretty busy time lately--and getting busier. On Wednesday this week I'm giving a talk at the Emerson cultural center in downtown Bozeman on Wednesday. The talk, called "Tough Times in the Middle East," would be familiar to regular readers of the JMB in that it discusses politics relating to Turkey, various Kurdish forces, and the Islamic state. 5 pm is a pretty early start time, I think, so I have no idea how many people will show. If you've got friends in the County of Gallatin, tell them to stop by. 

Autumn at the Borderlands Lodge...

Monday, October 27, 2014

Well folks, these have been pretty busy and exciting times up here at the Borderlands Lodge. My book, Turks Across Empires, is apparently going into production this week, which is very exciting, and is supposed to begin shipping within the next few weeks. Those of you with academic affiliations: get your library to buy the book! Once the hardcover copies have been sold out, TAE will hopefully go into paperback and presumably be much less expensive.

On coalitions, ISIS, and the Kurds

Monday, Sept. 15, 2014

Like a lot of people, I've been appalled by what's been going on in Iraq. I wonder, however, if Obama and others are over-reacting to horrific videos that have been released in recent weeks. My sense is that ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic State/Sonic Death Monkey, or whatever they're calling themselves this week, will burn themselves out before too long. It's hard to believe that a regime so brutal could survive, particularly when they can't even decide on a name. 

In response to recent events, US Secretary of State John Kerry has come up with not one, but two coalitions to fight the Islamic State.  One of these would be made up (mainly) of NATO countries (and...Australia!), and the other consists of a collection of Muslim majority allies and friends.

End of Summer Fun at the Borderlands Lodge

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Well folks, it's been pretty busy lately at the Borderlands Lodge. Longtime Borderheads might remember that I've been writing a book this summer, and much of August was spent poring over the final draft. I made an index for the first time in my life. I looked at cover proofs and wrote pithy advertising text. I did stuff I'd never done before. 

Are you a Turk across empires?

Once my work with the book ended (it's still slated for publication next month), I had to get busy with my tenure materials. One nice thing about the digital age is that most of the documents that I needed for my file were already on my computer, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

While I've been really busy with the book and tenure, in my spare time I've been trying to stay away from my computer. I've gone on a number of great hikes this summer, which has been fabulous, in addition to reading a lot (offline, ie on the couch with my feet up and a book on my belly) when I haven't been working on work and career-related stuff. That's not such a hard thing to do when you live someplace beautiful. 

Malaysian jetliner downed over eastern Ukraine: What next?

Friday, July 18, 2014

Up here at the Borderlands Lodge, we've been closely monitoring the big news surrounding the downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. People are still trying to figure out the facts, of course, but at this point it looks like separatists in eastern Ukraine likely brought it down. 

Flight path of the doomed jetliner

The Borderlands Lodge rises up from the ashes...

July 9, 2014

Well Borderheads, it's been a pretty wild few weeks, that's for sure. The Borderlands Lodge has been the site of some major brushfires lately, all of which are at least partly of my own making. That's life in the borderlands, I guess. 

The work began immediately after my return from Turkey in the second week of June. I'd had a great month of vacation, and came back to the Bozone feeling pretty refreshed. And then I got the copy-edited version of my manuscript. 

So, my life was pretty much taken up with my book until about one week ago. In fact, it was Independence Day that I sent off my final version. I'll have a look at the proofs later this summer, so I've been told, but all substantial changes have been made. 

I feel good about it. Writing a book is a totally stressful process. It's also been fun, but putting the finishing touches on something that's been part of your life for more than a decade isn't easy. I got interested in the pan-Turkists at the end of my second year at Princeton, back when I was an MA student. I started learning Tatar in the summer of 2002, at Kazan State University. That was also my summer researching in government archives for the first time. I got my feet wet at the NART archive in Kazan, then had an absolutely humiliating experience in St. Petersburg--where the Russian state history archive (known as RGIA) had been transformed into a netherworld dystopia in the months prior to its move from the embankment.

RGIA was a bit intimidating back in 2002

Who's got İhsanoğlu-mania?!?

June 17, 2014 The opposition parties in Turkey have chosen a presidential candidate: it's Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu! Who? What?   The first round of the election will be on August 10, and will proceed to a second round if no one wins more than 50% of the vote. While Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan has not yet formally declared himself a candidate, pretty much everyone expects him to run--and win.

Misreading Iraq, reading the world

June 15, 2014 One of the many unpleasant aspects involved with reading about the current crisis in Iraq undoubtedly relates to having to subject myself to American press coverage of the Middle East. Such was the case with a video appearing in the Washington Post the other day. The video, produced by senior national security correspondent Karen DeYoung, purports to 'explain' the 'Sunni-Shiite divide' in the span of just a couple of minutes. Predictably, the story it recounts begins a long, long time ago.... Media coverage of non-western countries tends to focus upon the alleged timelessness of contemporary conflict.

The Iraq Crisis: What it could mean for US, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan

June 13, 2014 On the flight back to the Borderlands Lodge from Istanbul yesterday, I read with great interest about the recent developments taking place in Iraq. To say the very least, it was very disturbing.   From the accounts I've seen, fighters from ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also sometimes known as ISIL—the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) had overrun Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and an important oil-producing center. And now they are apparently advancing on Baghdad.

Anatolian Express XVI: Back in the City of the Sultans

June 11, 2014 My day started very early in Bodrum on Monday, with the night clerk at my hotel calling me at 5:30 am to wake me up. I had a shuttle bus to the airport to catch in forty-five minutes and had barely slept a wink the night before. I blame this condition on a lack of alcohol, as I'd refrained the night before from indulging in the rakı and watermelon fest that had typified the rest of the evenings on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. Figuring I had to get up early, I'd toned things down a bit, but then wasn't really all that tired by the time my head hit the pillow. Serves me right for trying to organize things too much. It was pretty cool walking through the streets of Bodrum in the early morning. Normally, everywhere is packed with sweaty grim-faced tourists running the gauntlet of Turkish touts shouting out their wares in English. At such an early hour in the morning there were no tourists to be found, though it's not as if the streets were deserted. A number of the shopkeepers were setting up for the day, one that wouldn't end for them until after eleven o'clock at night.  I got to the airport without issue--other than the fact that our bus pulled over on the side of the highway for ten minutes while we waited for a late traveler to board. I was flying Onur Air, my old fave from the grand old days of the 1990s. The steward's badge indicated that his name was, in fact, Onur, which was vaguely amusing. Traveling in style with Onur & Friendz

Anatolian Express XV: Bodrum, Gümüşlük & Yalıçiftlik

Sunday, June 8, 2014 I rolled into Bodrum on Friday after a three-hour trip from Marmaris. It was easy traveling on a little (one-buttock seats) but uncrowded bus. The weather was sunny and warm, and we drove through a nice new highway that took us through the mountains. As was the case with most of the trips I've taken during this past month, the ride was considerably shorter than my guidebook, published just seven years ago, indicates. It's testament to the degree to which Turkey's infrastructure has been developing in recent years. From the bus as we pulled into Bodrum

Anatolian Express XIV: Marmaris and İçmeler

Thursday, June 5, 2014 On Wednesday morning I got up early-ish and had my final breakfast in Fethiye before hitting the road for Marmaris. Fethiye had been fun. I'd like the place where I was staying, especially as they had a nice veranda that had a view of the harbor and the hills beyond. I'd gotten into the habit of drinking rakı and eating watermelon there at night. Of course, people in Turkey would usually include white (feta) cheese as well, but I guess two out of three wasn't so bad in this instance. The trip to Marmaris ended up taking about three hours on a little bus. We traveled through bright green valleys and attractive mountains not unlike those I'd seen between Antalya and Fethiye. The bus pulled into Marmaris in mid-afternoon, and within an hour or so I was installed at my hotel and ready to check out the town.

Anatolian Express XIII: Fethiye and Karmylassos

Tuesday, June 3, 2014 Sunday was a long day. It started off in Gaziantep at four o'clock in the morning with my alarm clock ringing. As fun as my trip through the southeast had been, it was time to get moving. I had a plane to catch in a couple of hours. When planning this trip, the idea had been mainly to see places I'd never been to before. I therefore ended up seeing some places--like Sivas--that some might consider just a wee bit prosaic, while other destinations during this voyage--such as Urfa and Mardin--are fascinating but off the beaten track, at least as far as Turkey is concerned. After the past few weeks of travel, however, I figured I could use a little time resting and relaxing in the sun. That is what has brought me here to Fethiye. I think Fethiye is actually a bit farther east than this map indicates, but you get the general idea

Anatolian Express XII: Feeling nutty in Antep

Sunday, June 1, 2014 Those of you who know me are aware of the fact that I'm not much of a 'foodie.' Something about that term has always rubbed me the wrong way. I guess I've just met too many Americans whose only interest in foreign cultures related to eating. In a place like Antep, however, eating is the thing to do. The place is widely considered to have some of the best food in Turkey. Antep is also known as "Gaziantep"

The Geziversary: Taksim Square and Turkey one year later

Saturday, May 31, 2014 As many of you know, today marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Gezi Park conflicts. The actual sit-in began earlier in May of last year, but May 31 was the day that the police cleared the park for the first time, setting the stage for the counter-attack by the protesters and three weeks of a cop-free zone in the city-center districts of Taksim and Beyoğlu.

Anatolian Express XI: Amazing Mardin

Friday, May 30, 2014 Yesterday was one of the best days so far on this trip. I traveled the furthest east and south that I'll go during these travels, and also felt like I'd come the closest to accomplishing what I'd set out to do in embarking on this trip--putting the past couple of years behind me and beginning the process of thinking about what I'd like to do next with my life. I also saw some beautiful sites and met nice people. What more could you ask for in a daylong excursion to Mardin?

Anatolian Express X: The Haunting Euphrates

Wednesday, May 28, 2014 The last couple of days have been really busy. On Tuesday I visited Göbeklitepe and Harran, and today I went to Halfeti. All of these places are within a couple of hours of Urfa. Göbeklitepe is an apparently revolutionary archeological find. It's thought to be a temple of some sort dating back more than eleven thousand years. This is what a National Geographic article from a few years ago had to say about it: Known as Göbekli Tepe (pronounced Guh-behk-LEE TEH-peh), the site is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, except that Göbekli Tepe was built much earlier and is made not from roughly hewn blocks but from cleanly carved limestone pillars splashed with bas-reliefs of animals—a cavalcade of gazelles, snakes, foxes, scorpions, and ferocious wild boars. The assemblage was built some 11,600 years ago, seven millennia before the Great Pyramid of Giza. It contains the oldest known temple. Indeed, Göbekli Tepe is the oldest known example of monumental architecture—the first structure human beings put together that was bigger and more complicated than a hut. When these pillars were erected, so far as we know, nothing of comparable scale existed in the world.

Anatolian Express IX: Urfa

Tuesday, May 27, 2014 My day started early, at 5.45, with a call from the front desk at my hotel in Malatya. It was time to start getting ready to head to the bus station. For some reason, it's difficult finding transportation between Malatya and Urfa--a first, frankly, for me in Turkey, where it seems like it's almost always possible to find transportation at the ready between any two points. Yet I'd been having trouble, in my one night in the Apricot City, finding a bus leaving at a decent hour. The closest I'd managed was a small (one-buttock seats) bus to Adıyaman with an outfit called 'Petrol Turizm,' with the assumption that I could eventually find another small bus taking me the rest of the way to Urfa. In the end, I opted for the big bus leaving at 6:30 am. At least I'd end up having more time in Urfa, I figured.

Post-election Ukraine: Staying focused on Kyiv

Monday, May 26, 2014 Now that the presidential election has been held in Ukraine and the so-called 'Chocolate King' has apparently won in a cakewalk, the news regarding Ukraine seems--at first glance--to be getting somewhat better. After all, it appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin has pulled back forces from the Ukrainian border. Has Russia indeed 'lost' in eastern Ukraine? That seems to be the conclusion of some observers. In a recent article in Forbes, one Paul Roderick Gregory writes glowingly on this topic, and even seems to be encouraging the Ukrainian government to try to re-take Crimea. Gregory writes that 'there is growing consensus that Vladimir Putin has abandoned his campaign to take control of east Ukraine."  All not sweet for the 'Chocolate King'

Anatolian Express VIII: A taste of Malatya

Sunday, May 25, 2014 It's been a long day, one that started early in Sivas. I ran out of my hotel, grabbed a couple of poğaças and a newspaper, then ran back and had breakfast before my taxi came. I was on my way to Malatya.

Anatolian Express VII: Sivas and Divriği

Saturday, May 24, 2014 I had three great days in Kapadokya, but it was time to move on. As awesome a place as Kapadokya is, I also wanted to spend some time in some real places in Turkey--actual cities where normal people live, rather than just tourist enclaves. While Kapadokya is an amazing place that I totally recommend seeing, it wasn't the only sort of place I was looking to spend time in this summer. I got up at seven in the morning on Friday and had one last breakfast at the Paradise Hotel, watching the hot air balloons float over the fairy chimneys. I then packed up my stuff, walked to the bus station and headed to Kayseri. We were in a little minibus, and I sat up next to the driver. He was a wrinkled white-haired dude named Vahdet who had retired two years ago from a career as an Army officer. As we chatted, he asked me the usual questions--where am I from, am I married, how old am I, etc. It turns out he was one year younger than me. After an hour on the road, we arrived at the Kayseri bus station, where Vahdet dropped me off. I bought a ticket forward to Sivas for a bus leaving about forty-five minutes later. Within a few hours of driving through austere terrain, we arrived in Sivas.

Anatolian Express VI: Encomia for Kapadokya

Thursday, May 22, 2014  I woke up early on Tuesday morning in Ankara, freezing cold in my room. Ankara was nice, but damp and chilly. May 19th—a national holiday—had been a fun time to be in the capital, but I was ready to leave. Kapadokya was calling.

Anatolian Express IV: Thinking Beyond Erdoğan

Monday, May 19, 2014 Well, it's certainly been an interesting first several days in Turkey this year. As was the case last year, when my arrival in Turkey coincided with the explosion of a peaceful sit-in at Gezi Park into a nationwide series of protests, my visit this year has been met by yet another instance in which the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be coming apart at the seams. So much drama, so much unnecessary strife. Now, not only has an aide of Erdoğan been photographed kicking a protester in Soma just days after the mine disaster there, but the good Prime Minister himself has also been accused of punching a protester in, of all places, Soma.

Anatolian Express V: Ankara Getaway

Monday, May 19, 2014  It's been a fun first week back in Turkey, with the first four days spent in Istanbul. But as great as Istanbul is, I also needed to get away from there. One thing I really wanted to do this summer was travel, rather than just hang out in one place the way I usually do when I'm researching. After the last eighteen months or so, I'm interested in catching my breath and spending a bit of time by myself thinking about what to do next. So, after passing a bit of time in the City by the Bos, I decided to head east, to Ankara. Ankara? Really? Yes, really. Greetings from Sunny Ankara!