Секция III
66
Ferhat Korkmaz (Batman University, Turkey)
Ottoman-Russian Relations as Reflected
in 19
th
Century Turkish Literature
The paper deals with the Ottoman perception of Russia in the 19
th
century, spe-
cifically in the period following the «War of 93», that is the Russian-Turkish war
of 1877–1878.
In the history of Turkish culture and literature, Russian culture and geog-
raphy are firstly handled in great detail in
Acâyib-i Âlem
novel written by
Ahmet Mithat Efendi in 1882. The novel is written immediately after the war
of 1877–1878.
In our study we will examine the way of description of Russian geography
in this Turkish novel in terms of Ottoman-Russian relations, and analyze such
aspects of this description as the structure of cities, human relations, economic
and demographic structure, historical and cultural marks etc. The aim of our
work is to determine perception of Russia in the above-mentioned 19
th
century
Turkish novel, and examine the shaping of the image of Russia in the Turkish
culture.
M. Asım Karaömerlioğlu (Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey)
The Impact of Populatıon Concerns
on the Evolutıon of Turkısh Hıstorıography
This paper intends to shed light on the underestimated impact of population
concerns on the ways in which historians and social scientists grasped the contours
of modern Turkish historiography.
The rapid social and political changes during the time of Turkey’s foundational
era in the 1920s made the population concerns urgent and outstanding themes
of political reality. The “disappearence” of the non-Muslim populations and a
huge loss of Muslim populations during the troubled times of the Balkan Wars,
World War I and the War of Indepence made it all the more necessary for the
Turkish Republic to tackle the question of population in a serious way. Indeed,
after such a demographic earthquake, the elites of the new regime started a
campaign of “more population” and devised spectacular ways to increase the
population of the country. Birth control and abortion were outlawed together
with incentives to those who had six or more children such as exemptions from
the infamous Road Tax. In fact, many of the hotly-debated issues of the time
such as nationalist discourse, strong state tradition, social class issues and many
more can never be fully comprehended without taking into account the urgent
necessity to populate the country. At the time, “quantity” rather than “quality”
of the population mattered and many of the state social policies were based on
