What is Turkey research actually doing in Germany?
Shortly after the Bamberg Turkologists' Day 2018, the board of the "Society for Turkology, Ottoman Studies and Turkish Research" invited to the following congress to discuss the profile and perspectives.
But then the point disappeared from the program, even before the conference was postponed to 2023 due to the pandemic.
At the same time, however, facts are created that not only affect Turkish studies, but also Turkology.
In contrast to semi-global Turkology or "Turkish Studies", whose research subject ranges from Bottrop to Lake Baikal, Turkish Studies focus on Turkey today.
This shift in emphasis calls up the problems of de-historicization,
Studies on Turkey deal mostly with the era of Erdogan.
The time before the year 2000 is already history, and the epochs before the 20th century are being forgotten.
In this way they de-historicize their subject.
In view of the rich traditional Turkic and modern Turkish literature, the historical importance of the Ottoman Empire, which shaped the Middle East and Southeast Europe for centuries, and the dynamics of Turkey in the 20th century, as well as the historical references in Turkey today, this is a questionable format.
There is hardly any accompanying history.
The only professorship for the history of the Ottoman Empire located in Bochum shows the well-known problem: networked in groups because without their own research impulses.
It offers nothing for Turkey Studies.
Turkish Studies have great difficulty in defining their subject, because they don't want to be "just" philology.
Instead, they turn into post-disciplinary all-rounders.
This is problematic for two reasons.
Firstly, because research into the rich Turkish literature has almost come to a standstill.
The series of German translations in the "Turkish Library" published by the orientalist Erika Glassen and the Turkologist Jens-Peter Laut, which cannot be praised enough, is hard to imagine in Turkish Studies.
Secondly, because the subjects of Oriental Studies, Islamic Studies, Sociology, Political Science, Religious Studies and Anthropology, with their respective subject cultures, theories, methods and subject-specific issues, conduct relevant research,
Turkey Studies consequently expose themselves to the danger of dilettante if they cross over to their fields without appropriate competences.
Or else, Turkish studies are used by these subjects, but are then also subject-specifically oriented.
The implicit defining criteria of "Turkey Studies" are therefore pre-scientific and consist of political geography and language.
Studies on Turkey have to fear that they will not be needed because the others can do it better.
"Turkey Studies" is an umbrella, not a subject.
The implicit defining criteria of "Turkey Studies" are therefore pre-scientific and consist of political geography and language.
Studies on Turkey have to fear that they will not be needed because the others can do it better.
"Turkey Studies" is an umbrella, not a subject.
The implicit defining criteria of "Turkey Studies" are therefore pre-scientific and consist of political geography and language.
Studies on Turkey have to fear that they will not be needed because the others can do it better.
"Turkey Studies" is an umbrella, not a subject.
Strong in opinion and weak in method
The nation-state reference has a substantive consequence.
The Turkey Studies, with their focus on the AKP era, are concerned precisely with the smashing of the national narrative that prevails in Turkey, the critique of monocultural identity, the heterogeneity of the population and its cultures, and the memory of the violent tendencies toward homogenization.
However, the discussion is often not scientific, but through the politicization of the content as the downside of politics in Turkey.
This tendency is reinforced by the numerous scientists and political activists who have come to Germany as politically persecuted and are promoting a pseudo-scientific "AKPology".
Therefore, the scientific output of the scholarship holders of the Academy in Exile, which is not beyond all doubt, is extremely poor.
These Turkey studies are reminiscent of Sovietology at the time of the Cold War: combative, opinionated, weak in theory and methods and empirically one-eyed.