İlber Ortaylı

İlber Ortaylı
İlber Ortaylı
Born	(1947-05-21) May 21, 1947 Bregenz, Austria
Citizenship	Turkish
Alma mater	Ankara University
Known for	History of the Ottoman Empire History of Turkey Seljuk Empire
Scientific career
Fields	History
Doctoral advisor	Halil İnalcık

İlber Ortaylı (born 21 May 1947) is a Turkish historian and professor of history at the Galatasaray University, MEF University in Istanbul and at Bilkent University in Ankara. In 2005, he was appointed as the director of the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul, until he retired in 2012. Ortaylı is one of the world's leading academics on Russian history.

Biography

The son of a Crimean Tatar Mirza family who fled Joseph Stalin's persecution and deportation, Ortaylı was born in Bregenz, Austria on 21 May 1947 and came to Turkey when he was 2 years old. Ortaylı attended elementary school and St. George's Austrian High School in İstanbul and then Ankara Atatürk High School. He graduated from Ankara University Mekteb-i Mülkiye (Faculty of Political Science) and completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago under Professor Halil İnalcık and at the University of Vienna. He obtained his doctorate at Ankara University in the Faculty of Political Sciences. His doctoral thesis was Local Administration in the Tanzimat Period (1978). After his doctorate, he attended to the faculty at the School of Political Sciences of Ankara University. In 1979, he was appointed as associate professor. In 1982, he resigned from his position, protesting the academic policy of the government established after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. After teaching at several universities in Turkey, Europe and Russia, in 1989 he returned to Ankara University and became professor of history and the head of the section of administrative history.

Ortaylı is known as a polyglot and in addition to Turkish, also speaks Ottoman Turkish, German, Russian, English, French and Persian.

Works

Ortaylı has published articles on Ottoman and Russian history, with a particular emphasis on cities and the history of public administration, diplomatic, cultural and intellectual history. In 2001, he received the Aydın Doğan Foundation Award. He is a member of the Foundation for International Studies, the European-Iran Examining Foundation and the Austrian-Turkish Academy of Sciences. A biographical book on İlber Ortaylı, "Zaman Kaybolmaz: İlber Ortaylı Kitabı," was published by Nilgün Uysal in 2006.

Books

Tanzimat'tan Sonra Mahalli İdareler (Provincial administration after Tanzimat) (1974) Türkiye'de Belediyeciliğin Evrimi (Evolution of municipality in Turkey; with Ilhan Tekeli, 1978) Türkiye İdare Tarihi (Administrative history of Turkey) (1979) Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Alman Nüfuzu (German influence in the Ottoman Empire) (1980) Gelenekten Geleceğe (From tradition to the future) (1982) İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı (The longest century of the Empire) (1983) Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Yerel Yönetim Geleneği (Local administration tradition from Tanzimat to the Republic) (1985) İstanbul'dan Sayfalar (Pages from Istanbul) (1986) Studies on Ottoman Transformation (1994)

Hukuk ve İdare Adamı Olarak Osmanlı Devletinde Kadı (Kadıs as a legal and administrative figures in the Ottoman State) (1994) Türkiye İdare Tarihine Giriş (Introduction to the history of Turkish administration) (1996) Osmanlı Aile Yapısı (Family structure in the Ottoman Empire) (2000) Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda İktisadi ve Sosyal Değişim (Economic and social change in the Ottoman Empire) (2001) Osmanlı Barışı (Ottoman peace) (2004) Osmanlı’yı Yeniden Keşfetmek 1 and 2 (Rediscovering the Ottoman Empire) (2006) Kırk Ambar Sohbetleri (Kırk ambar conversations) (2006) Eski Dünya Seyahatnamesi (Travelogue of the old world) (2007)