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The Hemshin are without doubt one of the most enigmatic peoples of Turkey and the Caucasus. As former Christians who converted to Islam centuries ago yet did not assimilate into the culture of the surrounding Muslim populations, as Turks who speak Armenian yet are often not aware of it, as Muslims who continue to celebrate feasts that are part of the calendar of the Armenian Church, and as descendants of Armenians who, for the most part, have chosen to deny their Armenian origins in favour of recently invented myths of Turkic ancestry, the Hemshin and the seemingly irreconcilable differences within their group identity have generated curiosity and often controversy. The Hemshin is the first ...
The meeting of the Russian and Qing empires in the nineteenth century had dramatic consequences for Central Asia’s Muslim communities. Along this frontier, a new political space emerged, shaped by competing imperial and spiritual loyalties, cross-border economic and social ties, and the revolutions that engulfed Russia and China in the early twentieth century. David Brophy explores how a community of Central Asian Muslims responded to these historic changes by reinventing themselves as the modern Uyghur nation. As exiles and émigrés, traders and seasonal laborers, a diverse diaspora of Muslims from China’s northwest province of Xinjiang spread to Russian territory, where they became en...
The Caspian Region, Volume 2 - together with Volume 1 - offers new issues and approaches to give readers a fuller understanding of this part of the world, as well as correcting some erroneous notions.
Speaking Soviet with an Accent presents the first English-language study of Soviet culture clubs in Kyrgyzstan. These clubs profoundly influenced the future of Kyrgyz cultural identity and fostered the work of many artists, such as famed novelist Chingiz Aitmatov. Based on extensive oral history and archival research, Ali Igmen follows the rise of culture clubs beginning in the 1920s, when they were established to inculcate Soviet ideology and create a sedentary lifestyle among the historically nomadic Kyrgyz people. These "Red clubs" are fondly remembered by locals as one of the few places where lively activities and socialization with other members of their ail (village or tribal unit) cou...
This book includes studies conducted on the basis of field research by academics specialised in social anthropology in various universities in Turkey. Anthropological studies on migration date back a long way. Leaving their desk in the office, anthropologists have taken to the field, placing participatory observations and in-depth interviews at the centre of their research. The story of this book emerged from the thoughts of anthropologists, who had made presentations on migration, coming together during a symposium and discussing how to write about such a topic. A qualitative research method was used in work containing examples from Ankara, Istanbul, Burdur, Van, Ardahan, Sivas and Hatay. T...
A Dark Path to Freedom tells one of the most exciting life stories of the twentieth century. Born on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Ruzi Nazar was charming, brilliant and passionately committed to Central Asia's liberation from Soviet rule. He was a Red Army officer during World War II, then a fugitive in postwar Germany's underworld, and finally emigrated to the US, mixing with the powerful and famous and rising high in the CIA. He became a US diplomat in Ankara and Bonn, and an undercover agent in Iran. Nazar's foresight was as impressive as his career. He predicted that Communism would collapse from within, briefing Reagan before the Gorbachev talks. A moderate Muslim, his warnings about Islamist radicalism fell on deaf ears. This remarkable biography casts unique light on the lives of those caught up in World War II and the Cold War, and the independence struggles of nationalities oppressed by Communism. -- Inside jacket flap.
The fading of the post-WWII order called for Turkey to take on a new role in this new multi-centred and multipolar era with new players emerging from different regions. The new Enterprising and Humanitarian Foreign Policy is an effort to locate Turkey better in the 21st global politics. While the literature on principles of Turkish foreign policy is abundant, the actual mechanisms by which these principles are implemented in practice are still ambiguous to most scholars and foreign policy practitioners especially within the country's newly developed Turkish foreign policy framework. This edited volume therefore aims to shed light on this little-explored aspect of Turkish foreign policy. By critically analyzing several cases from different geographical locations, this volume explains why Turkey developed a new foreign policy framework, and by which mechanisms this new foreign policy framework has been implemented around the world. This volume also critically explores how the new Turkish foreign policy framework customizes its tools and capacities in different geographical regions around the world.
This book questions the efficiency of propaganda and the affiliated intelligence functions of international organisations by sampling NATO and, to some extent, the UN in peace operations. It examines NATO operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan in detail as comparative analysis, and considers the commitment of the US military since this is the main driver of the bulk of NATO activities. In addition, the book covers the communication and intelligence activities of the opposing elements in both Bosnia and Afghanistan to offer another comparative approach.
I find in this volume an admirable mix of empirical material – on, for example, religious socialization and perceptions of gender – and reflective pieces, which interrogate the place of religion in Turkish society. Key in this respect is the fact that Turkey is not simply a Muslim society but a distinctive one, not least in terms of the functional differentiation of the modern republic and its consequent effect on religion – a situation that offers a unique challenge to sociological enquiry. The book concludes with a series of chapters that deal with the particularities of the modernization process in Turkey and the tensions (social, cultural and political) that have emerged as the modern state developed – a stage by stage process. Prof. Grace Davie, University of Exeter, Great Britain