By Canan Bolel
Due to our wonderful students and the vibrant Turkish-speaking community in Seattle, the Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program within MELC is able to thrive. Want to learn Turkish? Join Dr. Melike Yucel-Koc next fall for Elementary Turkish 1 (TKISH 101). For other Turkic languages, talk to Dr. Talant Mawkanuli.
We’ve had an exciting schedule of events this year! With the collaboration of the Seattle Turkish Film Festival and the Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program from MELC, on November 3, Professor Melike Yücel-Koç welcomed Zuhal Olcay, one of Turkey’s most prominent theater and film actresses, to the campus. In this well-attended event titled “Turkish Cinema Through an Artist’s Lens” participants had the chance to learn about critical changes in depictions of women in Turkish cinema through the decades, the industrialization of the contemporary TV business in Turkey, and whether contemporary politics is at the heart or on the margins of all these discussions.
On November 16 we held our annual Ladino Day, which focuses on the language and culture of Sephardic Jews. This year, the event focused on “Sephardic Homelands: Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship and the Question of Belonging Today.” We welcomed Professors Rina Benmayor and Dalia Kandiyoti, who previously collaborated on the edited volume Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants: Returning to the Jewish Past in Spain and Portugal (2023). Following Professor Devin Naar’s opening talk, members of Muevos Ladineros, a group of Ladino enthusiasts who meet monthly to dive into the depths of this rich language, read poems in Ladino that encompass the diverse experiences of Sephardic Jews across continents over the decades. The following conversation between Benmayor and Kandiyoti, moderated by Naar, not only covered the motivations, progress, and results of the Spanish and Portuguese citizenships that were offered to descendants of Jewish groups expelled from Spain in 1492, but also touched on the complexities of the sense of belonging and identities of Sephardic Jews. (Want to learn the Ladino language? Start with LADINO 100, available every Winter Quarter.)
On December 2, Political Science Professor Aslı Cansunar welcomed Turkish and Armenian journalist Hayko Bağdat to the campus for a talk entitled “Truth as Resistance.” As an exiled journalist currently living in Germany, Bağdat shared his experience growing up in an Armenian-Greek household in Istanbul during the 1990s and his journey as a young journalist during Turkey’s turbulent years after the 2010s. With students, faculty, and community members in attendance, this captivating conversation at times revealed a painful reality yet also pointed to glimmers of hope for the future.