İlber Ortaylı (born 21 May 1947) is a Turkish

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and professor of history of Crimean Tatar origin at the

MEF University MEF University is a non-profit private university in Istanbul, founded by the İbrahim Arıkan Education and Scientific Research Foundation. It opened in the academic year 2014–2015. It is the first university in the world to adopt the "flipp ...

Galatasaray University Galatasaray University ( tr, Galatasaray Üniversitesi, french: Université Galatasaray) is a Turkish university established in İstanbul, Turkey in 1992, following an agreement signed in the presence of President François Mitterrand of France ...

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

and at Bilkent University in

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...

. In 2005, he was appointed as the director of the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul, until he retired in 2012.''İlber Ortaylı''
Dr Ortaylı is an explicit denier of the

Armenian Genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...

Biography

Family and personal life

He was born on 21 May 1947 in a refugee camp in Bregenz, Austria where his parents, Crimean Tatars, had fled to avoid

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

's persecution. His family immigrated to

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

when he was 2 years old. Ortayli is maternally a descendant of Crimean Tatar Mirza nobility. He grew up trilingual, learning German from his father and Russian from his mother. As a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

historian he is proficient in Turkish, Crimean Tatar, Italian, English, French, Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Russian and Latin.Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism - ''İlber Ortaylı''
/ref> His published articles are mainly in Turkish, German and French and a variety of them are translated into English. During his studies in Turkey, he worked as a travel guide, which, according to him, influenced his approach to history. It cultivated his apprehension in practice and gave him an opportunity "to teach history" to different groups of people with various backgrounds. He credits his experiences as a travel guide in his writing of "popular history" books and essays. He made acquaintance with intellectuals from both Turkey and other countries. Notable are

Halil İnalcık Halil İnalcık (7 September 1916 – 25 July 2016) was a Turkish historian. His highly influential research centered on social and economic approaches to the Ottoman Empire. His academic career started at Ankara University, where he completed h ...

, Murat Bardakçı, Irene Melikoff,

Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...

Andreas Tietze Andreas Tietze was an Austrian scholar of Turkish lexicography and language. Biography Tietze was born on April 26, 1914, in the early months of World War I to art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat. He studied at the University ...

. His biography ''Zaman Kaybolmaz: İlber Ortaylı Kitabı'' (''Time Does not Disappear: Book of İlber Ortaylı'') was published in 2006. The book includes a long journalistic conversation with Nilgün Uysal, passages from his childhood, student years in Ankara, Vienna and Chicago, his recent reflections on near history events and anecdotes from the years when he worked as a travel guide all over Turkey.

Academic career

Ortaylı started elementary school at St. George's Austrian High School in İstanbul and later transferred to Ankara Atatürk High School. He studied Public policy at Ankara University

Mekteb-i Mülkiye The Faculty of Political Science of the University of Ankara ( tr, Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi, more simply known as "''SBF''") is the oldest faculty of social science in Turkey, being the successor of the "Mekteb-i Mülkiye" ( ...

(School of Political Science) and later left for Vienna to attend

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

where he studied both Slawistik and Orientalistik while working with

. He received his master's degree under the supervision of professor

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

and obtained his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

at Ankara University in the School of Political Sciences. His doctoral thesis was ''Local Administration in the Tanzimat Period'' (1978). After his doctorate, he joined the faculty at the School of

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

s 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 Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

, in 1989 he returned to Ankara University and became

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

and the head of the department of administrative history.

Public figure

Works

Ortaylı published numerous articles focused on diplomacy, cultural history and intellectual history. Some examples are: * ''Ottoman History'' * ''Russian history'' (e.g. ''"Romanovs and Constantinople''" and ''"19th century Russian Empire"'') * ''Ottoman-Habsburg Relations'' * ''German Influence in the 19th century Ottoman Empire'' (as his masters degree thesis) * ''Travel writing In the Ottoman Empire'' * ''History of Turkish Drama'' He also published articles on urban history like ''Latins of the Pera district of the Constantinople'' for Istanbul and various historical cities which were once under the Ottoman influence; history of provincial administration focusing on the transformation of institutions in the Ottoman Empire from the beginning to the 19th century.

Awards

In 2001, he received the Aydın Doğan Foundation Award for his work "Family in the Ottoman History". In 2007, he received the Medal of Pushkin for his ''"great contribution to the spread and study of the Russian language, the preservation of cultural heritage and the rapprochement and mutual enrichment of different nations’ and people's cultures"'' under a decree signed by

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

and announced officially by the Kremlin, the ceremony took place at the Russian Consulate in Istanbul. In 2011, he was chosen as honorary member to the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Affiliations

He is a member of the Foundation for International Studies, the Societas Iranologica Europeae and the Austrian-Turkish Academy of Sciences, Tarih vakfı (Economical and Social History Institute of Turkey)Austrian-Turkish Forum of Sciences (OTW)
''Prof. Dr. İlber Ortaylı''
/ref>

Books

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ortayli, Ilber 1947 births Living people People from Bregenz People from Istanbul Turkish scientists Turkish historians Turkish non-fiction writers Turkish people of Crimean Tatar descent Austrian people of Turkish descent Historians of Turkey Galatasaray University faculty Bilkent University faculty Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences alumni University of Chicago alumni University of Vienna alumni Ankara University faculty St. George's Austrian High School alumni Honorary members of the Turkish Academy of Sciences