Dissertationsprojekt: Ideological Representations of the Balkans and Anatolia in Late Ottoman and Early Republican Intellectual Discourse

This study examines how Ottoman-Turkish intellectuals imagined the Balkans and Anatolia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of crucial political and regional transformation as the Ottoman Empire gradually lost its Balkan territories. While the Balkans were associated with loss, fragmentation, and memory, Anatolia increasingly emerged as a site of renewal and the foundation of a new national identity. Through a qualitative analysis of travelogues, memoirs and articles written by Ottoman-Turkish intellectuals on the Balkans and Anatolia, this project investigates how these two regions were represented in the intellectual discourse and how these representations contributed to the formation of a new Turkish identity. By comparing the narratives on the Balkans and Anatolia, it presents the changing perceptions of the centre and periphery, and evolving emotional and ideological attachments to place. The research aims to analyze both the internal and external dynamics that shape the geographical imagination of intellectuals by drawing on theoretical approaches such as Orientalism, Balkanism, Westernism and spatial theory. Focusing on the “inner gaze” of Ottoman-Turkish intellectuals, it emphasizes how and why they constructed the internal distinctions. Ultimately, the project offers an alternative perspective on the relationship between space, memory and identity in the Turkish modernisation process.