I, Heath Lowry

Mavi Boncuk |

Heath W. Lowry
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies
Email: ataturk@princeton.edu

It was a two-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1964-1966), working in a remote mountain village in western Turkey, that precipitated what is rapidly becoming a life-long fascination with and interest in things Turkish on my part.

What had begun as a general interest began to focus on early Ottoman history during my years as a graduate student at U.C.L.A. in the late 1960s. Working with scholars such as Speros Vryonis, Jr., Andreas Tietze, Gustav von Grunebaum and Stanford J. Shaw was a stimulating experience and one which provided an extraordinary introduction to the full scope of Islamic and Turkish studies.

My education continued in Turkey (albeit informally) throughout the decade of the 1970s. In this period, in addition to teaching full-time at the Bosphorus University and serving as the Istanbul Director of the American Research Institute in Turkey, I had the opportunity to hone my craft in the frequent company of a number of outstanding scholars. These included the late Omer Lutfi Barkan, the late Nejat Goyunc, and the late Cengiz Orhonlu, each of whom were always willing to share their encyclopaedic knowledge of things Ottoman with a younger colleague.

Between 1979-1982, as a member of Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Center (Washington, D.C.), I co-directed a team of international scholars working on late Byzantine and early Ottoman historical demography.

In 1983 I, together with a distinguished group of scholars, businessmen, and retired diplomats, established the Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc. in Washington, D.C. The 'ITS,' a non profit educational foundation, has in the past two decades provided over $2.5 million in grants to scholars and universities with interests and/or programs in Turkish studies.

During my tenure as Director of the ITS (and perhaps as a reflection of the fact that the climate in Washington, D.C. tends to favor 'politics' over 'history',) I began to spend a great deal of time studying the contemporary Turkish political scene. A five year teaching stint at the U.S. State Department's National Foreign Affairs Training Center, where I provided the area studies component of the training for American diplomats assigned to Turkey, furthered my interest in present-day Turkey.

Since 1993 I have been the Atatürk Professor of Ottoman & Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University, where from July 1994-June 1999 I was the Director of the Program in Near Eastern Studies. Between 1994-1997 I served concurrently as Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Currently, I am offering seminars on early Ottoman history and undergraduate lecture courses on Ottoman history and contemporary Turkey.

Representative Publications

My most recent publications include a series of three books on early Ottoman history: Fifteenth Century Ottoman Realities: Christian Peasant Life on the Aegean Island of Limnos. Istanbul (Eren Press), 2002; The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. Albany (SUNY Press), 2003; and Ottoman Bursa in Travel Accounts. Bloomington (Indiana University: Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Publications), 2003.

Earlier publications include books on: The Islamization and Turkification of Trabzon, 1461-1483. Istanbul (Bosphorus University Press), 1981 & 1999; Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society [with: A. Bryer et. al.] Cambridge, MA & Birmingham, England (Dumbarton Oaks & University of Birmingham), 1985; The Story Behind ‘Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.’ Istanbul (Isis Press), 1990; and, Studies in Defterology: Ottoman Society in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Istanbul (Isis Press), 1992.

I am also the co-author of a recent book entitled: Challenges to Democracy in the Middle East. Princeton (M. Weiner Publications), 1997, where I contributed a chapter on: ‘Challenges to Turkish Democracy in the Decade of the Nineties,’ as well as the author of two chapters on contemporary Turkish politics in the Aspen Institute publication (edited by P. Zelikow & R. Zoellick) entitled: America and the Muslim Middle East: Memos to a President. Washington, D.C. (Aspen Institute), 1998. More recently I contributed a chapter (‘Betwixt & Between: Turkey's Political Structure on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century’) to the Morton Abramowitz edited volume entitled: Turkey's Transformation and American Policy. New York (Century Foundation), 2000.