Academic Grants

In March 2009, TCA provided a multi-year grant to the University of Utah to establish a new academic program “The Origins of Modern Ethnic Cleansing: The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Nation States in the Balkans and the Caucasus.”

Under the leadership of its Director, Prof. Hakan Yavuz, this unique Turkish Studies program is advancing scholarship on a critical period in a region that continues to make headlines, in part due to the turbulent forces unleashed in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The program explores the shaping of modern Turkish identity through scholarly work, conferences, community participation, and support for new research, much of which focuses on a series of traumatic formative events including crises in the Balkans and the Caucasus, the loss of major territories, and forced migration that presaged the establishment of the Turkish Republic.

The first interdisciplinary conference organized by the Turkish Studies program was held in April 2010 in Salt Lake City on “The Empire to Nation-State: The post-Berlin Treaty and its Political Consequences”. These conference proceedings resulted in the publication of a 600-page volume book War & Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and the Treaty of Berlin.  The same year in July a conference on “The Sociopolitical Implications of the Dissolution of the Ottoman State: Causes of the Balkan Wars and the Role of the Ottoman State” was held in Salt Lake City. The selected papers were published in a 884-page long book War and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913, and Their Sociopolitical Implications. In May 2012, a conference on “The Ottoman Empire and World War I” was held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  The proceedings of this conference are soon to be published by Feroz Ahmad and Hakan Yavuz. This past June, the fourth conference organized by this program titled “The Caucasus at the Imperial Twilight: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Nation-Building, from 1870’s to 1920’s” was held in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Since its inception the program has also made great strides in publishing support having assisted the publication of several scholarly works including Justin McCarthy’s study on the construction of the Turkish image in the U.S., The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice (2010); as well as The Armenian Rebellion at Van (2006) by Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Taskiran and Omer Turan. The program has also supported a lecture series at the University of Utah and some of these lectures were also published such as the Turkish-Armenian scholarly debates featured in the Middle East Critique (Vol. 20, No. 3,  Fall 2011).  In addition to these books, the program has been active in supporting and promoting alternative perspectives on the events of 1915.

In 2010-2011, the TCA grant assisted with the publication of War & Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and the Treaty of Berlin, a 600-page book that is the collection of proceedings for a conference organized by the Turkish Studies Project in 2010 on the Treaty of Berlin. A second book, War and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and Their Sociopolitical Implications, a compilation of conference papers that were delivered in May 2010 at the University of Utah, was published in November 2013 with support from TCA. TCA’s support to the Turkish Studies Project also helped with the publication of Edward J Erickson’s book, Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency in 2013. To order these publications, please visit the University of Utah Press.

In June 2013, the Turkish Studies Project organized a conference titled “The Caucasus at the Imperial Twilight: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Nation Building, from 1870s to 1920s.” This conference, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, examined the formation and evolution of ethnic and national identities in the Caucasus. It was the fourth conference series that the Turkish Studies Project has organized. In October 2013, the Turkish Studies Project participated in the Middle Eastern Studies Association’s (MESA) annual meeting on a panel titled “Rethinking Naitonalism in the Late Ottoman World,” to share and discuss its research on the late Ottoman Empire.

Today, the program continues to provide support to graduate and post-graduate students whose work is being undertaken in several languages, Turkish, Azeri-Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic. In this manner, the program has helped the advancement of a new cadre of scholars making original contributions to the study of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey and its surrounding region.

TCA supported the publication of an annotated map, prepared by Justin McCarthy, Professor of History at the University of Louisville, displaying the trails of 5 million Ottoman Muslims who were displaced from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea between 1770-1923. The map also records and provides historical context for the 5 million Ottoman Muslims who died between 1864-1922 in the wars that were fought to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. The map is a powerful visual tool for both the historian and the casual viewer who seeks better to understand the cataclysm that affected so many millions, Muslim and Christian alike, during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

The map can be downloaded in pdf format here. Hard copies can be requested via e-mail at info@tc-america.org.

On the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the start of the first Balkan War, which broke out on October 8, 1912, TCA supported the publication of an annotated map displaying the geography of atrocities committed during the Balkan Wars, including the death and forced exile of approximately 1.5 million Muslims from Ottoman Europe. The map also chronicles the settlement in Eastern Thrace and Western Anatolia of the surviving Ottoman Muslims, who had once represented a majority in their Balkan homelands. Prepared by Justin McCarthy, Professor of History at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, the map aides to better understand the devastating effects of the Balkan Wars on Ottoman Muslim communities.

The map can be downloaded in pdf format here.  Hard copies can be requested via e-mail at info@tc-america.org.