> Concepts, objets et traditions anthropologiques The following periodization of historical events is intended to help to contextualize the history of anthropology in Turkey in relation to the political contexts and corresponding disciplinary developments.
1839-1876 : Decree of Reform – Tanzimat. Routes, Sites, and Sources of Ottoman Anthropology
1876
Reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II starts. End of Tanzimat – Reformation. Ottoman evolutionism coincides with the First Constitutional period
Emergent social Darwinism in a Muslim empire Translations on “science,” impact of materialism
1908 : Young Turk Revolution – II. Constitutional period Shift in Political Thought : Westernism, Ottomanism and Turkism
1908 – 1910
Sociological paradigms – Durkheim and Le Play Nationalism
1912 – 1913
Balkan Wars : Ottoman Empire loses a great deal of the Balkans
1914 – 1918
The First World War
1919 – 1923
Turkish War of Independence
1914 – 1918
Teaching of Turkish folklore and ethnography at the Dār ül fünūn – Faculty of Literature by Gyula Mészáros
1923 – 1940 : Early Republican Period. The Anthropological Landscape and Nation-Building in Turkey
1923 – 1933
Height of the racist paradigm and nationalist thought which determined anthropological research
1933 – 1940
Three important history congresses that shaped Turkish anthropology, arguing for the superiority of the “Turkish race”
Post 1945
Racist paradigm in decline, but the national paradigm still in effect
1940 – 1950
Opening of the ethnological branch within the Chair of Anthropology at Ankara University and departure from racial paradigm towards fieldwork
Emergent British functionalist school/ethnographic approaches in anthropology. Rise of village ethnographies in Anatolia
Nationalism still in effect
Monographic ethnological tradition at Ankara University. Highlighted anthropological focus on Turkish villages
Anthropology-ethnology understood in the sense of continental anthropology, i.e. “European ethnology” emerges from the department of physical anthropology at Ankara University
Intersecting fields of anthropology and sociology. Village monographs
1947 – 1948
Opening and the closing of the Folklore Department, launched by Pertev Naili Boratav at Ankara University
1950s
Transition to the multi-party system
Impact of American anthropology
US and other foreign anthropologists doing fieldwork in Turkey
1960s – 1980s
Opening of anthropology departments, Istanbul University (1968),
Hacettepe University (1971).
Opening of folklore departments, Hacettepe University (1982).
Folklore swinging between left-wing ‘revolutionaries’ and right-wing conservatives
12 September 1980
Military coup of 1980 and strengthening of neo-liberal policies strongly felt in academia. Establishment of Higher Education Council (Yükseköğretim Kurulu) in 1981 to oversee universities affairs, which influenced social science and its research throughout Turkey
Folklore reintroduced at Ankara University
1990s
Coming of the ‘returned folklorists’ from the USA
Impact of US folkoristics
Emergence of gender studies and anthropological and sociological courses on gender
2000s
2000s
Opening of the Turkish Folklore Department at Gazi Universitesi – Ankara in 2004
Universities under increasing neo-liberal politics, impact of Bologna Process, Erasmus, Erasmus +, UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage
Opening of more physical anthropology programmes within anthropology departments
2016
Attempted coup, and the departure of several social scientists from Turkey
Quo vadis, anthropology ?