The State Of Eurasian Studies In The Usa

Uli Schamiloglu — Türkçe: Yulay Şamiloğlu
(University of Wisconsin-Madison)

The study of Eurasia is largely synonymous with the study of the Turkic world. In the United States the study of the Turkic world is divided into two separate academic traditions. One is the study of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, the other is the study of Central Asia and the rest of the Turkic world (the Caucasus, the Middle Volga region, Siberia, Xinjiang, and other regions). Few scholars claim expertise in both Turkish Studies (that is the study of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire) and Turkic Studies (the study of the entire Turkic world). There are, however, a few scholars (mostly general Turkologists) who study both. Nowadays there are also younger scholars beginning their doctoral studies after 1991 whose research interests and fieldwork include some aspect of comparison between Turkey and the modern Central Asian or Caucasian republics.

My own teacher for Turkic philology, Prof. Tibor Halasi-Kun, was sent by the foreign minister of Turkey, M. Fuat Köprülü – one of the greatest Turkologists in his own right – to serve as Professor of Turkic Studies at Columbia University. Prof. Halasi-Kun, a Hungarian Turkologist who was a former student of Gyula Németh at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, was teaching at the time in the Department of Hungarian Studies in the Dil ve Tarih-Co?rafya Fakültesi at Ankara University. He became the first Turkologist in the United States sponsored by the Turkish government. At that time Princeton University already had a prominent program in Turkish studies, and Karl Heinrich Menges was already teaching in the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University. Generally we may say that Harvard, UCLA, and other universities added their own programs later. In this manner Turkish studies began to grow in prominence in the United States, usually in affiliation with established departments and programs dedicated to the study of the Middle East. Unfortunately the Turkish government had not created a permanent endowment at Columbia University, it only provided seed money for a position. As a result no permanent structures were ever created at Columbia University. Thus Columbia University – which could once boast Tibor Halasi-Kun, Karl Heinrich Menges, Kathleen R.F. Burrill, Edward Allworth, and other scholars on its faculty at one time – no longer even teaches Turkish on its own campus.

The Turkish government probably learned a very good lesson from this experience. In more recent years it has begun a campaign of fully or partially sponsoring endowed chairs in Turkish and Ottoman studies at American universities. As a result of this campaign, there are now endowed chairs at the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Indiana University-Bloomington, Princeton University, and Portland State University. Most of these positions are devoted to Ottoman and Turkish history. The position at Portland State University is devoted to Turkish Politcal Economy and Trade, while the chair at Indiana University is devoted to Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies with an emphasis on literature. These chairs have also been viewed with some controversy on certain American campuses, especially at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), which decided to decline an offer of funding from the Turkish goverment. Courses in Turkish Studies are not limited to these institutions, however, since most major universities and colleges also offer courses in Turkish language, Turkish history, or some other aspect of Turkish Studies.

A surprising recent development is that of privately endowed chairs in Turkish Studies. The "Kenan Evren Eminent Scholar Chair in Turkish Studies" has been newly established at Florida Atlantic University. This chair, to promote the study of US-Turkish economic relations, was funded with private donations with an additional grant anticipated from the state of Florida.

One must say that Turkish Studies is in a very healthy state in North America, as reflected in part in the membership of the Turkish Studies Association. There is a large number of American scholars of Turkey who have learned Turkish and know Turkey well, either through extensive archival research or fieldwork. A particular strength of this community of scholars is that these scholars are generally highly competent in a discipline such as history, comparative literature, folklore, anthropology, political science, sociology, economics, etc., and these scholars are usually employed in departments specializing in these disciplines. This is very important in the context of the United States because it is considered essential for training high-quality graduate students who can then be competitive in the marketplace for new academic positions. It also serves to integrate Turkish Studies into a broad range of disciplines rather than “ghettoizing” it in departments of Middle Eastern languages and cultures or in interdisciplinary area studies departments devoted exclusively to the study of the Middle East. This is very important for the future of Turkish Studies in the United States.

At the same time, this does not necessarily mean that Turkish Studies is in the mainstream of Middle Eastern Studies or the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Papers devoted to the Arab-Israeli conference dominate the annual conference of this professional organization, and many historians of the Middle East trained primarily in Arabic sources do not necessarily understand the importance of sources written in Ottoman Turkish. This is slowly changing as a growing number of scholars recognize the exciting developments in Ottoman Studies and its importance for the study of the modern Middle East as a whole.

In the United States the situation of the study of the Turkic world as a whole is quite different. Most researchers in the field of Turkish Studies do not necessarily feel any connection to Turkic Studies, which is one of the main reasons why the community of scholars is split into two. There are only four universities in the United States where there is a faculty member teaching the Turkic languages and cultures of Central Asia or other parts of the Turkic world other than Turkey. These universities are the University of Washington-Seattle, UCLA, Indiana University-Bloomington, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Future retirements threaten to reduce the number of universities with a faculty member specializing in the Turkic languages and cultures.) There is also a small number of universities where there are now regular or occasional courses in Central Asian Turkic languages taught by a lecturer or a teaching assistant, including the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Columbia University, and perhaps some other institutions. In addition, there are many important scholars of Turkic Studies who teach Russian, Middle Eastern, or Asian history in departments of history and other departments at smaller universities which do not train graduate students in this field or at undergraduate colleges. Although most of the prominent professors of Turkic languages and cultures know both Central Asian Turkic languages and Turkish, I am sad to report that at Indiana University-Bloomington some faculty members firmly believe that there is no connection between Turkish language and culture and the Turkic languages and cultures of Central Asia. (This is certainly not the case at the other three institutions I have mentioned, including my own.) I believe this is a legacy of Russian colonial policy, I point to which I will return below.

While so many American scholars of Turkey know Turkish fluently that it is practically universal, the same is not true of American scholars specializing on Central Asia or other parts of the Turkic world. There are several reasons for this. One of them has been the rather limited opportunities in the past for the study of Turkic languages and cultures other than Turkish, as well as limited access during the Cold War to those countries where these languages are spoken. Another important reason is that a great many of the scholars who write about the Turkic peoples of the former USSR are specialists in Soviet Studies for whom Russian has been the most important research language. While a very few senior Soviet Studies specialists have studied Turkic languages as well (most of these are former students of Alexandre Bennigsen at the University of Chicago or of Edward Allworth at Columbia University), most did not have either the opportunity or inclination to do so.

Of course, as always, there is hope in the younger generation of scholars being trained in discipline departments at universities where Central Asian Turkic languages are taught, such as at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and elsewhere. Sudents at other universities who do not have access to academic year programs in Turkic languages often take summer courses in these languages at other universities such as Indiana University-Bloomington or the University of Washington-Seattle. My own experience has been that the current generation of American graduate students are happy to study the non-Russian languages of the republics of the former USSR. From among the Turkic languages our graduate students have studied or written dissertations using materials in Uzbek, Kazak, Tatar, Bashqort, Gagauz, and other languages. Rather than viewing the Turkic peoples with antipathy, they usually are quite interested in the Turkic languages while they study them; later they fall in love with the peoples and cultures that they study in-country while doing research for their dissertation. Therefore there will be a tremendous change at American universities in the future once the younger generation of scholars begins to enter into more prominent positions at American universities.

Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the United States government has taken a new look at the level of training at American universities specializing in international area studies. Currently the United States funds “National Resource Centers” for the study of various regions of the world through its Title VI program. Recent legislation has earmarked an additional $20 million per year for the study of foreign regions, especially the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, with Afghanistan considered to be the epicenter of what most urgently needs to be studied. This is likely to result in increased Federal funding for those universities which currently teach Turkic languages and cultures, and it is possible that some new universities will be tempted to establish new programs in this field. The funding that the Federal government has offered to support students studying Central Asian Turkic languages is also supposed to increase dramatically.

Certainly one of the most important reasons for low level of knowledge of Turkic languages among senior specialists on the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union is the legacy of Russian colonialism and Soviet-era laws in which Russian was the official language of interethnic communication, as a result of which the languages of nationalities (including Turkic languages) were relegated to a second class status. While American scholars of Turkey have no difficulties in learning Turkish, the Russian populations in the non-Russian republics of the USSR complained bitterly (and still do) about having to learn the language of the “natives”. This psychological obstacle to the study of “native languages” has no doubt influenced the generation of Soviet Studies specialists who are now in prominent positions at American universities. In many cases these scholars have relied strictly on Russian-language sources and Russophone informants who simply did not advocate the study of Turkic languages or the importance of having first-hand experience with the languages and cultures of the “natives”.

Another problem facing Turkic Studies is the heavy burden of the legacy of “Soviet science”. First of all, the language, culture, identity, and history of each of the modern “nationalities” of the USSR was institutionalized on the basis of the Soviet model of nationalities. Just about each nationality was defined as a separate and distinct ethnic group from the most ancient archeological period until the modern period. Each was given a history that linked it to that modern ethnonym and territory in which it lived, even though many of these enthnonyms and territories were no older than the Soviet era. This model denied the common cultural heritage shared by various Turkic or Muslim peoples, since pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism were seen as dangerous enemies by both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. One can search in vain for a history of the literatures of the Turkic peoples published in the USSR that addresses the common features shared by various Turkic literatures. In fact, what we find is that in histories of the literatures of the Azeris, Tatars, Bashqorts, Türkmen, Uzbeks, Kazaks, Kyrgyz, and others simply assume that they are separate and distinct throughout history (even though many of them will go back to the earliest Turkic runic inscriptions). This model has been profoundly influential not only the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union and their descendants now living in some cases in their own independent republics, but on American scholarship as well. As just one example I can cite the series Studies of Nationalities of the USSR published by the Hoover Institution Press. The volumes in this series devoted to the the Volga Tatars, the Azerbaijani Turks, the Kazaks, and the Uzbeks are heavily derivative of Soviet scholarship on these peoples and the assumptions that underly them.

I have already mentioned the world “colonialism”. It is now recognized that colonizing societies invariably portray the societies which they are colonizing in negative stereotypes. Indigenous peoples are seen as savage, barbaric, and unable to govern themselves, Muslims are seen as fanatics, etc. This was typical of Imperial Russian scholarship on the Turkic peoples, who were often portrayed quite negatively. This attitude towards the Muslim Turkic peoples was continued to a certain degree in scholarship produced in the Soviet Union as well. This means that Imperial Russian and Soviet-era scholarship placed an exaggerated importance on Islam, while overlooking various other developments among the Turkic peoples. Muslim Turkic scholars were studied as contributing to “religious reform”, even though they were also contributing to the development of modern identities and national ideologies and were often interested in educational and cultural reform as well. This body of Imperial Russian and Soviet-era scholarship has been profoundly influential on American scholars as well. One of the goals of future scholarship on the Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire and the USSR must be to recognize the negative assumptions underlying earlier Imperial Russian and Soviet scholarship on the Turkic peoples and to study the languages, cultures, and history of these peoples with the same professionalism that would be expected of the study of peoples of other parts of the world. We must also recognize that the “divide and rule” policies of the Soviet government (and, sad to say, the current government of the Russian Federation) means that much work remains to be done in achieving a better understanding of those aspects of the cultures of the Turkic peoples of the former USSR which are a common heritage as well as those elements which are unique to each individual people