The Great War in the Middle East seen through the lens of Ottoman memoirs and archival documents.

17.02 | 17.00 | A TSN lecture by Selim Deringil

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This presentation is based on Deringil’s most recent book, The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands. Turkish Memoires and Testimonials of the Great War. The so called “Eastern Theater” of the Great War has traditionally been treated as a side show of the Western Front. However the war that was fought between the Entente and Axis power in Middle East had a critical bearing on the fate of the war in the west, and therefore a parallel reading of both theaters is a must. This presentation is based on the critical reading of five Ottoman memoirs of eye witness accounts of Turkish observers of the last years of the Ottoman presence in the Arab lands.

Selim Deringil is a historian specializing in the history of  the late Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. He was a member of the history department of Boğaziçi University until his retirement in 2010. He now teaches at the Lebanese American University in  Beirut. His previous publications include: The Well Protected Domains. Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Late Ottoman Empire 1876-1909. (I.B Tauris 1998); Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire. (Cambridge University  Press 2012); The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands. Turkish Memoires and Testimonies of the Great War. (Academic Studies  Press 2019).