Books in the Ottoman and Turkish Studies series

The Great War is still seen as a mostly European war. The Middle Eastern theatre is, at best, considered a sideshow written from the western perspective. This book fills a gap in the literature by giving an insight through annotated translations from Ottoman memoirs of actors who witnessed the last few years of Turkish presence in the Arab lands.

Recent historical studies on the Ottoman Empire have taken for granted that subjects of the Ottoman polity flourished under a so-called ""Pax Ottomanica"". This volume probes the rosy narrative of Ottoman tolerance that has long dominated the discussions.

This book is an invitation to rethink our understanding of Turkish literature as a tale of two "e;others."e; The first part of the book examines the contributions of non-Muslim authors, the "e;others"e; of modern Turkey, to the development of Turkish literature during the late Ottoman and early republican period, focusing on the works of largely forgotten authors. The second part discusses Turkey as the "e;other"e; of the West and the way authors writing in Turkish challenged orientalist representations. Thus this book prepares the ground for a history of literature which uncouples language and religion and recreates the spaces of dialogue and exchange that have existed in late Ottoman Turkey between members of various ethno-religious communities.