University of Utah Grant
In March 2009, TCA provided a multi-year grant to the University of Utah to establish a new academic program on “The Origins of Modern Ethnic Cleansing: The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Nation States in the Balkans and the Caucasus.”
Under the leadership of its Director, Prof. Hakan Yavuz, this unique program is advancing scholarship on a critical period in a region that continues to make headlines, in part due to the turbulent forces unleashed in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The program explores the shaping of modern Turkish identity through scholarly work, conferences, community participation, and support for new research, much of which focuses on a series of traumatic formative events including crises in the Balkans and the Caucasus, the loss of major territories, and forced migration that presaged the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
In 2009-10 the program included a conference on The Empire to Nation-State: The post-Berlin Treaty and its Political Consequences, which was held in April 2010 in Salt Lake City. In July a conference on, The Sociopolitical Implications of the Dissolution of the Ottoman State: Causes of the Balkan Wars and the Role of the Ottoman State was held in Istanbul. Both were well attended and resulted in the publication of their proceedings. The program also provided support to four graduate students whose work is being undertaken in several languages, Turkish, Azeri-Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic. In late 2010, the program welcomed its first post-graduate scholar who will conduct research into the Ottoman elements of Balkan history. Planning toward a conference focusing on this subject is underway.
The program made great strides in publication support in 2010, assisting publication of three books: Justin McCarthy’s study on the construction of the Turkish image in the U.S., The Turk in America: The Creation of an Enduring Prejudice; Yucel Guclu’s Armenians and the Allies in Cilicia, 1914-1923; and, Michael Gunter’s Armenian History and the Question of Genocide published by Palgrave.
For more information, please visit here.
Annotated Map of Forced Migration Grant
TCA supported the publication of an annotated map, prepared by Justin McCarthy, Professor of History at the University of Louisville, displaying the trails of 5 million Ottoman Muslims who were displaced from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea between 1770-1923. The map also records and provides historical context for the 5 million Ottoman Muslims who died between 1864-1922 in the wars that were fought to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. The map is a powerful visual tool for both the historian and the casual viewer who seeks better to understand the cataclysm that affected so many millions, Muslim and Christian alike, during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
The map can be downloaded in pdf format here. Hard copies can be requested via e-mail at info@tc-america.org.
