User:Kansas Bear/The Institute of Turkish Studies

History
Founded in 1982, with a $3 million dollar grant from the Turkish government, the Institute of Turkish Studies is the only non-profit, private educational foundation in the United States exclusively dedicated to the support and development of Turkish studies in American higher education. It is housed at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Mission

 * To support individual scholars of the academic profession in the United States, for advanced research in Turkish history and culture as well as contemporary political, social, and economic developments in Turkey;


 * To assist American universities in developing their library resources, programs of study, scholarly conferences, and outreach activities in the field of Turkish Studies


 * To support the publication of books and journals on Turkey and broaden the understanding and knowledge of Turkish history, society, politics, and economics in the United States;


 * To promote better understanding of Turkish politics, economy, and society through lectures and conferences.

Organization
Board of Governors

The Board of Governors has full responsibility for the Institute's policies and programs. The Board is composed of distinguished scholars in the field of Turkish Studies and prominent individuals from the private and public sectors in the United States.The Board of Governors meets on a regular basis to review and evaluate the Institute's activities and makes all decisions for its grant program. Appointments to the Board are made for a three year period and may be renewed.

OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS:

OFFICERS

Amb. Nabi Şensoy, Honorary Chairman and Ex-Officio Member of the Board of Governors,

Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to the US. Amb. W. Robert Pearson, ret., Chairman

David C. Cuthell, Executive Director

Walter Denny, Secretary-Treasurer

Professor of Art History, University of Massachusetts.

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD

Adnan Akant, Fischer, Francis, Trees & Watts, Inc.

Halil Inalcik, Professor of History, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey and Professor Emeritus of History,

The University of Chicago.

Heath W. Lowry, Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies,

Princeton University.

Justin McCarthy, Professor of History,

University of Louisville.

Chris M. Murphy, Library of Congress

Mike M. Mustafoğlu, Trans Global Financial Corporation.

Dr. Kenan Şahin, TIAX LL Corporation

Jenny B. White, Associate Professor of Anthropology,

Boston University.

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS:

Sarah G. Moment Atis, Professor of Turkish Language and Literature; Chair, Middle East Studies Program,

University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Carter V. Findley, Professor of History,

Ohio State University.

Fatma Müge Göçek, Associate Professor of Sociology,

University of Michigan

Avigdor Levy, Professor of History,

Brandeis University.

Gülru Necipoğlu-Kafadar, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art,

Harvard University.

Sylvia Önder, Visiting Assistant Professor of Turkish,

Georgetown University.

Leslie Peirce, Professor of History,

New York University.

HONORARY FELLOWS:

Recipients of this honor are chosen on the basis of generally recognized scholarly distinction and their long and devoted service to the field of Turkish Studies. Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of History,

Princeton University.

Donald Quataert, Professor of History,

SUNY - Binghamton

Howard Reed, Professor Emeritus of History,

University of Connecticut.

Stanford J. Shaw (Deceased), Professor Emeritus of Turkish and Judeo-Turkish History,

University of California, Los Angeles.

Madeline C. Zilfi, Professor of History,

University of Maryland.

Grants
Since 1983, the Institute has sponsored an annual grant program to scholars, colleges and universities in the United States. The principal purpose of the grant program is to support the development of research, and scholarship in the field of Turkish Studies. The grant applications submitted to the Institute are evaluated by committees comprised of the Board of Governors and Associate Members of the ITS. These standing committees present their recommendations to the Board of Governors for approval. The Institute offers grants and fellowships in the fields of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies to graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, universities, and other educational institutions through its Grant Program for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Publications
The ITS has published a few books in conjunction with other publishers. Some of the publications supported by the Institute include:


 * Gülru Necipoğlu The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2005)


 * Donald Quataert and Sabri Sayari (eds.), Turkish Studies in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University, Ottoman and Turkish Studies Publications, 2003)


 * Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)
 * Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002)


 * Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001)
 * Scott Redford, Landscape and the State in Medieval Anatolia (Oxford, England: Archaeopress, 2000)


 * Caesar E. Farah, The Politics of Interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon 1830-1861 (Oxford, London: The Center for Lebanese Studies, 2000)
 * Palmira Brummett, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908-1911 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000)
 * Howard Crane (ed. & transl.) The Garden of Mosques: Hafiz Hüseyin al-Ayvansarayî’s Guide to the Muslim Monuments of Ottoman IstanbulNetherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2000)
 * Dictionary of Turkish Acronyms and Abbreviations: A selected List (1928-1995) Compiled by Suzan Akkan, (Madison, Wisconsin: Turco-Tatar Press, 1999)
 * Kemal Silay (ed.), Turkish Folklore and Oral Literature: Selected Essays of Ilhan Basgöz(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Turkish Series, 1998)
 * Daniel Goffman, Britons in the Ottoman Empire (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998)
 * John Goulden (transl.), Adalet Agaoğlu, Curfew (The University of Texas at Austin: The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1997)
 * Reşat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdoğan (eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997)
 * Seyfi Karabas and Judith Yarnall (transls.), Poems by Karacaoglan, A Turkish Bard (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Turkish Series, 1996)
 * Avigdor Levy (ed.), The Jews of the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, New Jersey: Darwin Press: 1994)
 * Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1994)
 * Kemal Silay, Nedim and the Poetics of the Ottoman Court (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Turkish Studies Series, 1994)
 * Henry Glassie, Turkish Traditional Art Today (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1993)
 * Halil Inalcik, The Middle East and the Balkans Under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society, (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Turkish Series, 1993)
 * Heath W. Lowry and Donald Quataert (eds.), Humanist and Scholar: Essays in Honor of Andreas Tietze, (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1992)
 * Aron Rodrigue (ed), Ottoman and Turkish Jewry, Community and Leadership (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Turkish Series, 1992)
 * Fatma Müge Göçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (NewYork & Washington, DC: Oxford University Press & ITS), 1987)
 * Aptullah Kuran, Sinan : The Grand Old Master of Ottoman Architecture (Washington, DC & Istanbul, Turkey, ITS & Ada Press, 1987*)

Controversy

 * In the 1980s, the Turkish government began founding a series of chairs in Turkish studies at major American universities(including the Ataturk chair in Turkish studies at Princeton), and research centers like the Institute of Turkish Studies, founded in Washington, DC. These endeavors were to give a polished look to the academic's genocide denial. Some of the key members of the Institute are Stanford Shaw, Heath Lowry, and Justin McCarthy also argue against the Armenian Genocide. In 1985, Lowry was instrumental in getting 69 academics to sign a letter against the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The letter was then printed in the New York Times and Washington Post.


 * Amy M. Rubin, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, disclosed a petition of scholars that charge the Turkish government with a campaign to manipulate history to enforce its views of the Armenian Genocide. A year later, a story ran in the New York Times accussing Princeton of "fronting for the Turkish government". The university had accepted a large gift from Ankara to establish an Ataturk chair of Turkish studies, with the first occupant being Heath Lowry, executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, in 1994.


 * Donald Quataert, an associate professor of history at the University of Houston, had recieved funding from the Turkish government. Quataert served as chairman of the Institute of Turkish Studies board of governors from 2001 until Dec. 13, 2006, when he was forced to resign by Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy after he refused to retract a scholarly book review in which Quataert said “what happened to the Armenians readily satisfies the U.N. definition of genocide.”  . A few years before, Quataert said, members of the board checked on what they thought was an irrevocable blind trust "and to our surprise it turned out to be a gift that could be revoked by the Turkish government." But in the fall, around the same time that Congress was debating the Armenian question, Quataert was asked to speak at a conference about what had happened at the institute. He told members of the Middle Eastern Studies Association that the ambassador told him he must issue a retraction of his book review or step down -- or put funding for the institute in jeopardy.
 * Since the May 27 letter from the scholars association was sent, several associate and full members of the board have left. Marcie Patton, Resat Kasaba and Kemal Silay resigned; Fatma Muge Gocek said she would resign as well.