GTOT Awards 2018
for Outstanding Theses and Dissertations in the Fields of Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies
Laudations for master’s theses, Bamberg, 19 September 2018
presented by Maurus Reinkowski, member of GTOT board
I have the honor to present three Master’s theses presented not in increasing or decreasing order of excellence, but simply following the alphabetic order of the family names.
Léa Delmaire
Construction et déconstructions d’une maladie sociale. Les politiques de lutte contre la tuberculose en Turquie (1948-1960) [Construction and Deconstruction of a Social Disease. The Politics of Fighting against Tuberculosis in Turkey in the years 1948 -1960] submitted in 2017 at Sciences Po in Paris.
Léa Delmaire has completed in 2014 a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences at Sciences Po. In 2016 she obtained a master’s degree in philosophy at Paris IV, followed by second Master’s in Social Sciences at Sciences Po – the very Master’s thesis for which she is awarded today with this prize by the Society for Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies. At the present she is writing her dissertation at Sciences Po under the direction of of Elise Massicard and Paul-André Rosental. The dissertation will delve deeper into the topic that Léa Delmaire has already been working at.
Léa Delmaires Master’s thesis was written under the direction of Pap Ndiaye. With more than 150 pages it comes close to a dissertation in format, scholarly eruditeness and elaborateness. The thesis falls into three parts, (1) actors, (2) forms of presentation and interpretation, and (3) the increasing appearance and public dominance of an internationally informed and composed expert class that is guided by the ideas of developmental aid and modernization.
In her interpretation of the Turkish state Léa Delmaire follows the results of the research group TRANSTUR (that had been active in the years 2008-2012), that means she stresses the necessity to relativize the centrality of the Turkish state. Furthermore, Léa Delmaire has adopted recent research that conceives of disease not as an invented, but without doubt as a socially constructed phenomenon. She is able to go far beyond earlier research on tuberculosis in Turkey that was dominated by medical and positivist viewpoints – an approach that led to ignore the social and economic epiphenomena, let alone conditions of tuberculosis. The master thesis is characterized by a differentiated and in the same time clear language that is devoid of theoretical jargon. Yet, Léa Delmaire does not shy away from philosophy, as we know. The difference, made by Gilles Deleuze between ‘disciplinary societies’ (sociétés disciplinaires) and ‘societies of control’ (sociétés de contrôle), is productively integrated into the argumentation of her thesis.
Léa Delmaire humbly mentions some limitations of her master’s thesis such as a too heavy focus on Istanbul and a strong stress on the upper echelons of the ‘health complex’ of Turkey, but these are very clearly not limitations, but they are a natural precondition for successfully completing a master’s thesis. Lea Délmaire ventures far into various fields and disciplinary strands such as history of institutions, history of sciences, history of international organizations. This work does not walk on well-trodden paths and is in substance and in research outcome a most remarkable and highly praiseworthy master’s thesis.
Dominik Pollner
Europe’s Gatekeeper: A Dialectical Analysis of Turkey’s Signing of the March 2016 Agreement submitted in 2018 at both Bilgi University, Istanbul, and Viadrina European University, Frankfurt, Oder.
Dominik Pollner holds a bachelor’s degree in Political sciences from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. In this year, in 2018, he has obtained a Master of Arts in European Studies from Viadrina European University at Frankfurt Oder and a Master in European Studies from Istanbul Bilgi University.
Dominik Pollner’s master’s thesis, supervised by Can Cemgil at Bilgi and by Timm Beichelt at Viadrina. aims to explain why Turkey signed the refugee deal with the EU in 2016. The thesis does answer this research question in a comprehensive and theoretically informed way. It follows the dialectical and social-relational model of Teschke and Cemgil (2014) that suggests to go beyond the shortcomings of both foreign policy analysis and international relations theory.
Dominik Pollner provides a thorough discussion of the existing literature both in terms of content and in theoretical terms and shows a good command of the state of the art. Dominik Pollner has chosen a dialectically oriented theoretical approach in order to grasp the situation in its complexity.
This Master’s thesis offers a new understanding of the situation and of the rationalities behind the refugee agreement of 2016. It devotes itself to a quite understudied perspective as it focuses on the Turkish point of view. It also adopts an original theoretical framework leading to a more comprehensive, empirically grounded understanding focused on agency, which proves to be convincing, especially in terms of problematizing the ‘context’. The findings of this work are not entirely astonishing in terms of new sources or new empirical material, but Dominik Pollner’s analysis is particularly strong as it presents a convincing and comprehensive understanding of a complex situation.
The highly elaborated academic style of the thesis and its reflexivity indicate a high scientific potential and are thus a particular trait of this highly praiseworthy master’s thesis.
Rashid Rysaev
Ïrk Bitig – ein Orakelbuch oder ein manichäisches Werk? Inhaltliche und sprachliche Analyse der Handschrift unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der religiösen Lage Zentralasiens im 8.-10. Jahrhundert [Ïrk Bitig – a Book of Oracles as Popular Religion or a Work of Manichaeism? A Textual and Linguistic Analysis of a Manuscript with Particular Consideration of the Religious Situation of Central Asia from the 8th to the 10th Century] submitted in 2017 at the University of Göttingen.
Rashid Rysaev holds a Bachelor in Asian and African Languages and Literatures (with a particular focus on Turkish) from Kasan Federal University in Russia. He came with a grant of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to Göttingen and submitted in 2017 his master’s thesis. At the present is member of a research group “Preservation by Dissociation? Current Discourses on Language Policy and Language Planning in the Republic of Turkey”, guided by Ruth Bartholomä at the University of Freiburg.
Rashid Rysaev’s Master’s thesis was supervised by Jens Peter Laut. As the title tells, Rashid Rysaev’s work, very rich in content, deals with the old-Turkic work “Ïrk Bitig – Book of Oracles”, dating back to the 9th century, and raises the question whether it must be understood as influenced by popular religion or Manichaeism.
The thesis is divided into three parts, (1) research history, (2) a dense description of the religious situation in Central Asia between the 8th and 10th century, and (3) an extensive analysis of the work itself, regarding its form, content and language. It is through this close text analysis that Rashid Rysaev not only argues convincingly that “Ïrk Bitig” – though being written in a mainly Manichaean environment – must be read as a work being influenced predominantly by popular religion and thus refers to shamanic, Tengrian beliefs of the Old Turks and their successors, the Old Uigurs. He also takes the book as a solid proof of a highly developed Old Uigurian literary tradition and thus draws a line between the stylistic and literary characteristics of early Orkhon and Jenissei inscriptions and later (Old Turkic) works.
As the jury, we found particularly remarkable how Rashid Rysaev managed to embed his subject into the multi-religious atmosphere of Central Asia of the time when the book was written – which he describes very knowingly and vividly. Rysaev finally comes to the conclusion that the work is indeed determined by popular religious influences.
Rysaev finds a very good balance between a solid and encompassing presentation of the work’s research history, including a detailed overview of this history in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union, relevant secondary literature and his own findings.
In conclusion, Rysaev presents a highly interesting, solid piece of research, going far beyond what can be expected by a master’s thesis, and at the same showing that classical Turkological subjects are thrilling and illuminating. With his convincing and interesting interpretation Rysaev offers manifold opportunities for follow-up research.