Walter G. Andrews, Research Professor Emeritus of Turkish and Ottoman Studies, died on May 31, 2020 at the age of 81. Walter received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Near Eastern Studies (1970) under the supervision of eminent Ottoman Turkish literary historian John Stewart-Robinson. His yet to be published dissertation with the title “The Tezkere-i Şu'arā of Latifi as a source for the critical evaluation of Ottoman poetry” is a major intervention in the fields of manuscript research, philologically critical reading of pre-modern sources, and literary theory in Ottoman Turkish Studies. Walter started his position as the first Turkish and Ottoman Studies professor of the UW’s newly established NELC department, having been invited to this position by the founder of the department, Prof. Farhat Ziadeh, on Professor Jere Bacharach’s recommendation. He moved to Seattle with his wife Melinda and their two daughters, Pam (Sheffield) and Lisa (Stillwell) to become a significant member of the Seattle community. From early on, Walter took part in the development of Turkish Studies in the US with his contributions to major scholarly as well as popular journals. He was also among the founders of American Association for Teachers of Turkic Languages.
With his first two monographs, An Introduction to Ottoman Poetry (1976) and Poetry’s Voice, Society’s Song: Ottoman Lyric Poetry (1985), and many articles in major journals, Walter reintroduced Ottoman Turkish poetry into the larger fields of literature and history. These works were the first major English language commentaries on Ottoman literary tradition published in more than 60 years. In its time, Poetry’s Voice was distinguished from among other brilliant works on Ottoman literary texts by its analytical interrogation of the function of Turkish poetry among the Ottoman elite. His collaborations with Prof. Mehmet Kalpaklı (Bilkent University, Turkey), who had completed his dissertation under the supervision of Walter, culminated in an original anthology, Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology, (with Najaat Black, 1995, 2006) and a major investigation on literary discourses and their role in gender system and sex, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (2005). Ottoman Lyric Poetry provides a series of readable, enjoyable translations with various supportive material, transcriptions and manuscript copies of poems along with biographical information about poets to readers of English. It was his passion to translate from Ottoman poetry, yet Walter also loved Modern Turkish poetry and he published selections from Hilmi Yavuz and Ataol Behramoğlu’s poems and translated from many other modern Turkish poets for anthologies and journals.
From early on, collaborating with his colleague, such as NELC Emeritus Prof. Nicholas Heer, Walter contributed to the nascent field of Digital Humanities. He established various collaborative projects that involved undergraduate and graduate student teams, such as the Ottoman Textual Archive Project (OTAP, est. 1986) in collaboration with Prof. Mehmet Kalpaklı and Dr. Stacy Waters, which later evolved into Newbook Digital Texts with Dr. Sarah Ketchley and Dr. Mary Childs. Recently, Walter was working on the Svoboda Diaries Project with Dr. Annie T. Chen. In 2017, he launched the Many Poems of Baki Project with a conference organized at the University of Washington in collaboration with many scholars in the field of Ottoman Studies, including Prof. Selim S. Kuru, Dr. Sarah Ketchley and Dr. Gulsah Taskin (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) as co-directors. Walter published various articles on these projects and strove for their sustainability. He developed pedagogical methods for digital project management. These projects continue keeping Walter’s legacy in the Digital Humanities alive.
Walter was a true educator. Apart from his work with undergraduates, he mentored many graduate students at the University of Washington and elsewhere. He collaborated with Prof. Selim S. Kuru to supervise several Ph.D. committees. Erdağ Göknar, Didem Havlioğlu, Zeynep Seviner, Murat Umut Inan, Sevim Kebeli, Elizabeth Nolte, and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano have become scholars of literature and literary history. He also supported many junior faculty members through collaborative work, such as Dr. Ozgen Felek (Yale University) and Dr. Ayse Dalyan (American University in Northern Cyprus). Walter was the first recipient of the Lighthouse Award by the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan as an alumnus in recognition of his dedication to the field and his original work that has served as a beacon to the scholarly community in Near Eastern Studies. He was awarded a Middle Eastern Studies Association Mentoring Award in 2008, and he received an Undergraduate Research Mentor Award at the University of Washington in 2018. He also received an Order of Merit of the Republic of Turkey in 2016, and a Long Time Service Award from the Turkish American Cultural Association (TACAWA) in the same year for his services in promotion of Turkish and Ottoman culture and literature. After his death,the American Association for Teachers of Turkic named their Ottoman Turkish Translation Award after him. Dr. Özgen Felek compiled Walter’s published and unpublished popular articles in a volume, Walter G. Andrews: Writer, Poet, Playwright, Unitarian Universalist.
NELC is committed to the legacy Walter G. Andrews left behind as a model for our students and faculty. NELC’s Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program is going to launch a “Walter G. Andrews Memorial Lecture Series” to introduce young scholars' first published project in the field of Ottoman Turkish Literary Studies. Recently, Emeritus Professor of History and one-time NELC interim chair, Prof. Jere Bacharach, donated to NELC a work of calligraphy by Walter G. Andrews dated 1969, when Walter had been working on developing his skills in Ottoman Turkish calligraphy and preparing a course on the topic. Prof. Hamza Zafer identified the couplet as an Arabic verse from the thirteenth-century Anatolian Turkish poet Yunus Emre that translates as: “We have knowledge as inheritance from the living who never dies”. The knowledge we inherited from Walter about how to be a true scholar, generous colleague, compassionate mentor, and a great human being will be a guiding light for our department.
This article is a modified version of Selim S. Kuru, “Walter Andrews (1939-2020)” Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 7:2 (2020) 175-178