UNIVERSITY OF SZEGED DOCTORAL SCHOOL OF HISTORY MODERN HISTORY PROGRAM Kutse ALTIN TAYYİB GÖKBİLGİN HISTORIAN AND MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE TURKISH AND HUNGARIAN ACADEMIES Ph.D. Dissertation Supervisor Prof. Dr. Papp Sándor Szeged, 2021. I, Kutse Altın, declare that this dissertation was authored exclusively by me, except where explicitly stated otherwise by reference or acknowledgement, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a degree or professional qualification. Szeged, July 14, 2021 Signature 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express special thanks to “Hocam” Prof. Dr. Sandor Papp. The support and supervision he provided during my doctoral training is too valuable to be expressed in words. I would like to thank him not only for his contribution to my dissertation, but also for the time he devoted to me with his mentorship and generosity. Without his support, kindness, and encouragement, I would never have been able to complete this work. It was a privilege to work under his guidance. I would like to thank the Tempus Public Foundation for the funding opportunity of the Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship, which supported my PhD journey for five years. I would also like to thank the Ernst Mach Grant, which gave me the opportunity to conduct my research in Vienna for nine months, and to Prof. Dr. Claudia Römer, for her contributions to my work. I sincerely thank the reviewers Dr. János Hóvári, and Dr. Gábor Fodor for their extremely constructive and encouraging comments. My appreciation also goes to my beloved sisters, Rumeysa Kiger and Dr. Özlem Canyürek for their eternal support since 2010. I want to thank my fellow survivors Barış, Mutlu and especially to Murat, who has been a confidant, therapist, and a dear friend to me. Without his tremendous understanding and ability to make me laugh over the last few years, it would be so hard to overcome the toils we all faced together. As a woman who is fortunate enough to reach this age, I became aware that every piece of action that does not liberate serves oppression; in this sense, I should also thank to the women in my family, to my grandmothers, Kamile Çalışkan Altın, Rubiye Yılmaz Dursun, and to my mother Nursel Dursun Altın. Greetings to all who have touched my life for better or worse and played a role in the process of my growing up. 3 TABLE OF CONTENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………. 3 INTRODUCTION …………..………………………………………………………………. 5 CHAPTER 1: The Formative Years of the Historian: Political Transitions and Educational Policies ……………………………………………………………………………………... 15 CHAPTER 2: The Making of the Historian: Historiography in the Early Years of Turkish Republic and Gökbilgin's Advancement in the Academic Career ……………...…………………………………………………………………..…………… 49 CHAPTER 3: The Discourse, Legacy and Methodological Approach of the Historian …… 90 CHAPTER 4: Personal Archives and Ego-documents: a Historian’s ‘Identity Kit’ ……... 130 4. 1. Correspondence with Hungarian Academics: Exchange of Ideas and Methods …….. 138 4. 1.1. Education ………………………….……………………………………….. 139 4. 1.2. Ottoman Studies ………………………………………………………….… 145 4. 1.3. Political Turmoil ………………………………………………………….... 158 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………… 180 THE WORKS OF TAYYİB GÖKBİLGİN ………………………………………………. 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………………… 201 APPENDIXES ………………………………………………………………………….…. 221 4 INTRODUCTION Right before Covid-19 had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and when the extent of its spread had not yet been understood, I had completed my two weeks of research at The Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies and was going back to my home of Szeged. While I was handing my backpack over for the x-ray machine at London Luton Airport, I met two middle-aged Turkish Cypriot men. During our short conversation over coffee, they asked me what I did, and I told them that I was working towards a Ph.D. in history. These two cheerful men stated that they loved history and were always reading books and watching historical movies and documentaries. I believe encounters like this happen all the time to people who define themselves as historians and openly share this in their daily conversations. We all know that nearly everyone has an opinion about some aspect of history and the different views of the past. Therefore, I do not find it necessary to share the enthusiastic comments of these two men on Sultan Süleyman and the execution of his son Şehzâde Mustafa by his order, or how they made me think about the history of mentality through a very precious wooden dining table that was referred to as the governor's table in Cyprus. After having transferred their own historical knowledge to me, they had probably become curious about what I could offer them, so they asked what I was working on. When I told them that I was currently preparing a study on a historian, the younger one, with his magnificent Cypriot dialect, said, “You have a point! We're talking big here, but what would we be discussing without the historians who tell us the stories of the past.” It was probably the high point of this research adventure to hear this key sentence of my work from Hayri Bey, a Cypriot who is an ice cream maker in London. In fact, the question for this introduction would have been why we should study historians, but Hayri Bey answered 5 this question in a very simple and concise way. However, since this is an academic study, I am obliged to expand on this issue a bit more and re-summarize it with footnotes and references. In one interview, one of the renowned Ottoman historians Cemal Kafadar defined history as a craft.1 Kafadar stated that there is no difference between a carpenter and a historian and added that a historian is in no way superior to a carpenter. These two craftspeople share the same virtues, and getting to know the material is at the top of these virtues. Carpenters and historians must know their material well. They must be patient and contemplate what they can extract from this material accurately. They must continue to practice all the time to find the best way to use the material and to make improvements in each phase. Therefore, a critical examination of the material is crucial for both a carpenter and a historian. Kafadar reflected that a historian who interprets archival documents or contemplates a diary shares a common process with a carpenter who examines what can be created from a walnut tree. Thus, efforts towards comprehending the material are a common virtue for both craftspeople. The phase that comes after comprehension is the interpretation of the material. The results that materials alone can offer without being interpreted are limited. Only after a careful interpretation can the material represent something more meaningful. As Edward Hallet Carr states “History means interpretation.”2 At this stage, it becomes inevitable that differences will emerge in the virtues of these two craftspeople and the way we value those virtues. The moral, political, or religious virtues of a carpenter will not cause us to question the way they choose and use the material. However, such questioning gains great importance when it comes to a historian. The difference is because a walnut tree is and will still be meaningful even if it is not reconstructed by a carpenter. However, as Carr points out, facts, 1 Emre Can Dağlıoğlu, Emrah Göker, and Ümit Kurt. "Cemal Kafadar’la Söyleşi." Modus Operandi: İlişkisel Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 1 (2016). 2 Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?, ed. R. W. Davies, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1987), 23. 6 as the material of the historian, are dead and meaningless if they are not interpreted.3 Therefore, we encounter formulated concepts such as objectivity, unbiased judgment, accuracy, pure representation of the facts or past, accountability, and self-distancing. Along with these concepts, new questions arise as to how historians shape the material to make it accessible so the public can see “what actually happened”. How do they interpret the material not just for telling a story of what happened, but to reach for what was behind the significance or appearance? What are historians’ motivations in reconstructing the past and how do historians construct their historical claims in whichever past they choose to discuss? These concepts and questions lead us to a historical study of the production of historians. In this case, historians and historiography become a part of the historical process, just like a table produced by the carpenter, in this example, the governor's table. As a historian, Tayyib Gökbilgin was among the pioneers who shaped Ottoman studies and Historiography. Gökbilgin was a committed scholar, steadfastly collecting primary resources and studying them carefully. Even a brief glimpse into his life and his career shows that he played an essential role in Ottoman studies and in developing the methods of how to explore this subject. His familiarity with several eastern and western languages, including Hungarian, enabled him to do research and produce writings in those languages. Starting from the early days of his career, he prepared articles for the Encyclopedia of Islam. During his life, he wrote six books and over three hundred articles. Soon after his graduation from the Faculty of Language, History, and Geography, he was selected as a member of the Turkish Historical Association and was also a member of other major associations, participating in international congresses at home and abroad. He established the Department of the History of Ottoman Institutions and 3 Ibid., 30. 7 Civilization at İstanbul University. He pioneered an academic level of studies of Ottoman history in accordance with contemporary methodologies. He worked on many archival documents that had not been previously studied, and published them with great meticulousness. He conducted a great deal of pioneering research not only in Turkish archives but also in the archives of Hungary and Venice.