Halil Berktay is a Turkish historian at Ibn Haldun University and was columnist for the daily Taraf.[1]
Halil Berktay | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 27, 1947 |
| Nationality | Turkish |
| Alma mater | Yale University, Birmingham University |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Turkish history |
| Institutions | Ibn Haldun University, Sabancı University, Ankara University, Middle East Technical University, Harvard University |
Life and career edit
Berktay was born into an intellectual Turkish communist family. His father, Erdoğan Berktay, was a member of the old clandestine Communist Party of Turkey. As a result of this influence, Halil Berktay remained a Maoist for two decades before he became "an independent left-intellectual".[2]
After graduating from Robert College in 1964, Berktay studied economics at Yale University receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1968 and Master of Arts in 1969.[3] He went on to earn a PhD from Birmingham University in 1990.[3] He worked as lecturer at Ankara University from 1969 to 1971 and from 1978 to 1983.[3] He took part in the founding of the Yale chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society.[2]
Between 1992 and 1997, he taught at both the Middle East Technical University and Boğaziçi University. He was a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 1997, and taught at Sabancı University before returning to Harvard in 2006. He is currently a professor at Ibn Haldun University where he is also the head of the History Department.[4]
Berktay's research areas are the history and historiography of Turkish nationalism in the 20th century. He studies social and economic history (including that of Europe, especially medieval history) from a comparative perspective. He has also written on the construction of Turkish national memory.[3]
After Taner Akçam, Berktay was one of the first Turkish historians to acknowledge the Armenian genocide.[5] In September 2005, Berktay and fellow historians, including Murat Belge, Edhem Eldem, Selim Deringil, convened at an academic conference to discuss the fall of the Ottoman Empire.[6][7]
Partial bibliography edit
- Kabileden Feodalizme, Kaynak Yayınları, 1983
- Cumhuriyet İdeolojisi ve Fuad Köprülü, Kaynak Yayınları, 1983
- Bir Dönem Kapanırken, Pencere Yayınları, 1991
- New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History (eds. Halil Berktay and Suraiya Faroqhi), ISBN 0-7146-3468-9
References edit
- ^ Okuma Notları Archived 2008-09-13 at the Wayback Machine, Taraf.
- ^ a b Berktay, Halil (2007-04-24). "A Genocide, Three Constituencies, Thoughts for the Future (Part I)" (PDF). Armenian Weekly. p. 4. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-09-03. Retrieved 2008-09-04. (talk given at the "Armenians and the Left" symposium on March 31, 2007)
- ^ a b c d Curriculum vitæ, Sabancı University.
- ^ "Academic Staff - Department of History - Ibn Haldun University".
- ^ Gürpınar, Doğan (2013). "Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy Theories: Transformations of Turkish Historical Scholarship and Conspiracy Theories as a Constitutive Element in Transforming Turkish Nationalism". Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. 15 (4): 412–433. doi:10.1080/19448953.2013.844588. S2CID 145016215.
- ^ Conferences, personal Web site, Sabancı University.
- ^ Didem Türkoğlu, Challenging the National History--Competing discourses about a Conference, Submitted to Central European University Nationalism Studies Program In Partial Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, Budapest, Hungary, 2006