The Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center presents a discussion on the book,
Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean
A panel discussion will be held at Boğaziçi University on Wednesday, November 3, to present the book Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, a joint endeavor between the Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center (OBARC), the History Department at Boğaziçi University, and the Alpha Bank Historical Archives. Sima Benaroya, director of the Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center will deliver an opening address at the event which will be in English and is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Boğaziçi University’s Natuk Birkan building. Panel participants include Prof. Edhem Eldem, chair of the History Department at Boğaziçi University, Prof. Kostas Kostis, from the Department of Political Science at the University of Athens and a consultant to the Alpha Bank Historical Archives, Dr. Hakan Erdem from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University, and the editors of the book.
The material for the book, published by the Alpha Bank Historical Archives in early 2010, was provided by a monthly seminar series held from 2004 to 2007, which focused on the Greek Orthodox populations of the late Ottoman period. Seminar speakers included Turkish and Greek historians, anthropologists, and social scientists employed in universities and research centers. The papers presented at the seminars addressed issues related to inter-communal relations, national and social identities, commercial activities, social networks, the exchange of populations, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. To foster discussion among historians from both shores of the Aegean and contribute to international research literature, the papers submitted to the seminars for three consecutive academic years were compiled into a book by Dr. Lorans Tanatar Baruh, scientific director of OBARC, and Assist. Prof. Vangelis Kechriotis, from the History Department at Boğaziçi University.
Panel Discussion on the book Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean
Date : Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Time : 5:00- 7:00 p.m.
Place : İbrahim Bodur Auditorium, Natuk Birkan Building, Boğaziçi University
Contact : (212) 292 76 05 - Özge Öner
From Ottoman Capital to Globalizing Istanbul: Architecture and the City,
1910-2010
Friday, October 15, 2010, 9:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. Saturday, October 16, 2010, 9.30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
The Ottoman Bank Museum isorganizing a symposium titled From Ottoman Capital to Globalizing Istanbul: Architecture and the City, 1910-2010 – the third in its series of symposia on Istanbul that examine the city from an economic, social, and cultural perspective. Prof. Sibel Bozdoğan is consultant and Assist. Prof. İpek Yada Akpınar curator for the symposium, which will be held on October 15 and 16, 2010, at Istanbul Technical University’s Taşkışla Building, and focuses essentially on the urban and architectural milieu in Istanbul over the last century. By exploring the themes of architecture and urbanism and providing a platform for the discussion of radical transformation, the symposium aims not only to reconsider the past and present but to offer as well an intellectual framework regarding the city’s future.
Structured around social, economic, and political refractions, the symposium examines the city’s transfomation through the emergence of new public spaces and lifestyles in three sessions organized along the following themes: “Modernization of the Capital,” “Early Republican Period and Emergence of Modern Urban Spaces,” and “Closed Economy / Populist Policy Visibility: Architecture and the City.” The symposium will conclude with a final session addressing advances in architecture and the new projects and positions adopted in the post-1980 environment of radical transformation.
According to Assist. Prof. İpek Yada Akpınar, a great many changes have occurred in Istanbul over the past 100 years and, in this sense, the turn of the 20th century meant both a beginning and an end. Today as well, the same type of intense changes are taking place in the passage to a new economic, social, cultural, and spatial platform. The beginning and the end of centuries are considered crucial turning points in terms of both past and future when examining utopian dreams of urban and architectural imagination, working on methods for their conceptualization, and questioning their viability. The symposium aims to provide new clues to grasping Istanbul’s century-long saga of intense, chaotic, fragmented, and radical transformation, in other words, to understanding its transition from Ottoman capital towards global metropolis of the third millenium.
Winners of the 5th Prize Competition for
Research on the History of Banking and Finance announced
Thewinners of the 5th Prize Competition for Research on the History of Banking and Finance organized by the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center in collaboration with the European Association for Banking History (EABH) and the History Foundation of Turkey (Tarih Vakfı) received their awards on Tuesday, December 15, at a ceremony held at Garanti Bank’s head office. The competition, sponsored by Garanti Bank, aims to promote academic research on Turkish banking, finance, and economic history, from Ottoman times to the present, and to establish a tradition in that field.
Joseph Glass-Ruth Kark won the best monograph prize with their study entitled “Sephardi Entrepreneurs in Jerusalem: The Valero Family 1800-1948,” while Nursel Manav’s dissertation, “Devlet-Banker İlişkileri Çerçevesinde Baltazzi Ailesi,” [The Baltazzi Family from a State-Banker Relations Perspective] received the best master’s thesis award. Hilary Cooperman-Relli Shechter earned the best scientific paper award for their work “Branding the Riders: ‘Marlboro Country’ and the Formation of a New Middle Class in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.” Honorary mentions were given to Devrim Dumludağ in the doctoral thesis category for his thesis entitled “Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Economies and Turkey: The Role of Institutions,” and to Kazım Baycar in the master’s thesis category for his essay “Ottoman Emigration to Argentina 1870-1914.” There were no research grant winners this year.
The winning works from last year’s competition, Burcu Kurt’s study, “Osmanlı Irak’ında İngiliz Nüfuzuna Tepkiler: Dicle ve Fırat’ta Seyr-i Sefain İmtiyazı Teşebbüsü (1909-1913),” winner of the best scientific paper award and Nurşen Gürboğa’s “Mine Workers, the Single Party Rule, and War: the Zonguldak Coal Basin as the Site of Contest, 1920-1947,” winner of the best doctoral thesis award, have been published and are currently available for purchase.
A two-day Oral History Workshop organized by the Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center in collaboration with Sabancı University and led by Assoc. Prof. Leyla Neyzi was held at the Ottoman Bank Museum. Attending were some 200 people including faculty members, history professors, master's and doctoral students, artists, architects, NGO representatives and museum employees. 30 of the attendants came from provinces outside Istanbul such as Ankara, Eskişehir, Mersin, Kocaeli, Kars, Muğla, Balıkesir, Kırklareli, Antalya, Aydın, Izmir and Kayseri. 70% of those attending the workshops were female, and 30% consisted of students.
The aim of the two-day workshop was to provide a common ground for history/oral history studies and memory studies as well as to promote knowledge about oral history metodology and popularize its use in Turkey. The workshop now continues with weekly group sessions organized in collaboration with Sabancı University, which will be also held at the Museum. The goal of these group sessions will be to foster scholarly oral history projects, create an oral history archive and share this material with the general public through websites and publications.
Workshop Activities
The major aim of the two-day workshop held on Saturday, January 31, 2009 and Sunday, February 1, 2009, was to investigate the contribution of oral history to the research and understanding of recent Turkish history. On the first day of the workshop, seminars led by Assoc. Prof. Leyla Neyzi addressed the emergence of oral history and its institutionalization, while on the second day, the topics addressed were oral history methodology and ethics. In the afternoons, there were question answer sessions and discussions of the participants' papers. A wide range of attendants from different backgrounds submitted a great variety of oral history studies, which nevertheless converged on certain topics such as memory, trauma, ethics, the place of oral history in social sciences, building oral history archives and recording and analyzing interviews.
Stressing the fact that oral history interviews have to go through a professional preparation and analysis process, Leyla Neyzi explained that in Turkey, where oral history is both a relatively new field of research and one somewhat disregarded by the well established discipline history, oral history and memory studies must become institutionalized in order to achieve recognition as an interdisciplinary research area. The workshop focused on examples of oral history studies undertaken in Turkey and discussed how such studies carriedout in other countries with a similar historical past had transformed both society and the understanding of history.
A panel discussion will be held at Boğaziçi University on Wednesday, November 3, to present the book Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, a joint endeavor between the Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center (OBARC), the History Department at Boğaziçi University, and the Alpha Bank Historical Archives. Sima Benaroya, director of the Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Center will deliver an opening address at the event which will be in English and is scheduled for 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Boğaziçi University’s Natuk Birkan building. Panel participants include Prof. Edhem Eldem, chair of the History Department at Boğaziçi University, Prof. Kostas Kostis, from the Department of Political Science at the University of Athens and a consultant to the Alpha Bank Historical Archives, Dr. Hakan Erdem from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University, and the editors of the book. 
