Abstract This article examines how the Ottoman intellectual Idris Bitlisi conceptualised Western Europe’s political and religious order at the turn of the sixteenth century. It argues that Bitlisi’s representation of the papacy, the Roman emperor, and the lesser Christian monarchs constitutes a systematic act of translation through which the political theology of Latin Christendom was rendered intelligible within an Ottoman-Islamic conceptual framework. Drawing on Islamicate notions of sovereignty, viceregency, and hierarchical authority, Idris Bitlisi reconstructed Western political power as a vertically ordered system comparable to Ottoman models of universal rule. The article introduces Ottoman political geography to describe this mode of reasoning, arguing that it functioned as a distinct Ottoman mode of conceptualising political order that operated differently from, yet remained structurally parallel to, Western political theology. It demonstrates that Ottoman intellectuals theorised Christian political authority through translation, producing comparative visions of global order grounded in imperial competition and universalist political discourse.
Abstract Focusing on Tevfik Rüştü Aras’s extensive foreign tour between January and March 1932, this article highlights the active and formative role of foreign ministers in diplomatic processes and leadership decisions, thus questioning their frequent portrayal as secondary figures in the literature. Aras’s journey—encompassing Iran, the Soviet Union, Germany, Switzerland, and Bulgaria—is analyzed through the lenses of diplomatic protocol, environmental constraints, time pressure, and multilateral engagement. The findings reveal Aras not merely as an executor of directives but as an agent shaping diplomacy through his tireless efforts in traveling, negotiation style, symbolic gestures, and crisis management. The study also sheds light on the high financial and temporal costs of the trip, as well as its broader implications for third-party perceptions. Stretching from a border treaty in Tehran to multilateral negotiations in Geneva, Aras’s journey illustrates that visits at the level of foreign ministers can fulfill diplomatic functions as critical as those carried out by heads of state.
Abstract The 1934 scenario competition organised by the newspaper Cumhuriyet sought to mobilise cinema as a propaganda instrument for forging new ideal citizens. Rather than finished scripts, contestants submitted short and detailed scenario synopses that were printed in the newspaper and voted on by readers; the longer manuscript of the winning entry has not been located, and the project was never filmed. Taking the published synopsis of Şevket Süreyya Aydemir’s İş Birliği (Cooperation) as its primary text, this article links the competition to contemporaneous cooperativist discourse. It argues that cinema and cooperativism were imagined as parallel nation-building technologies—one cultural, the other economic—yet both were constrained by limited resources, authoritarian politics, and a didactic aesthetic that struggled to travel from paper programmes to mass practice. By tracing the interplay of material conditions, political structure, and forms of expression, the study explains why these converging projects faltered in early Republican Turkey.
Abstract This article examines the operation of Ottoman military medicine during the Ottoman–Serbian War of 1876–1877 through the observations of British volunteer doctors and humanitarian aid organizations active in the conflict zone. Drawing on a systematic analysis of field reports and correspondence published in the British Medical Journal, plus archival materials produced by the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War, this study reconstructs medical conditions on the frontlines and in the hinterland. In addition to British medical and humanitarian sources, the study draws on documents from the Ottoman Imperial Archives and military records originating from the Ottoman and later Turkish Ministry of National Defence, consulted in the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye collections held by the Directorate of State Archives. These materials include official correspondence, reports, and administrative records relating to military hospitals, medical personnel, and the evacuation of the wounded during the Ottoman–Serbian War. The article argues that the war in question served as a testing ground for both the capacities and limits of Ottoman military medical organization. British medical observers recorded the operation of mobile hospitals, the treatment of firearm wounds, and efforts at disease prevention, while also drawing attention to persistent shortcomings in ventilation, transport, and supplies. Placed within wider 19th-century developments in war medicine, these observations highlight the role of medical care in preserving manpower and show how humanitarian practice and medical neutrality functioned within specific wartime constraints.
