Halil Berktay is a Turkish historian at Ibn Haldun University and was columnist for the daily ''

Taraf ''Taraf'' ("Side" in Turkish) was a liberal newspaper in Turkey. It had distinguished itself by opposing interference by the Turkish military in the country's social and political affairs. It was distributed nationwide, and had been in circulati ...

''.

Life and career

Berktay was born into an intellectual Turkish communist family. His father, Erdogan Berktay, was a member of the old clandestine Communist Party of Turkey. As a result of this influence, Halil Berktay remained a Maoist for two decades before he became "an independent left-intellectual". (talk given at the "Armenians and the Left" symposium on March 31, 2007) After graduating from Robert College in 1964, Berktay studied economics at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

receiving his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

in 1968 and

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Th ...

in 1969.Curriculum vitæ

Sabancı University Sabancı University ( tr, Sabancı Üniversitesi), established in 1994, is a young foundation university located on a 1.26 million squaremeter campus which is about 40 km from Istanbul's city center. Its first students matriculated in 1999. ...

. He went on to earn a PhD from

Birmingham University , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

in 1990. He worked as lecturer at Ankara University from 1969 to 1971 and from 1978 to 1983. He took part in the founding of the Yale chapter of the

Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...

. Between 1992 and 1997, he taught at both the Middle East Technical University and

Boğaziçi University Boğaziçi University ( tr, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi), also known as Bosphorus University, is a major research university in Istanbul, Turkey. Its main campus is located on the European side of the Bosphorus strait. It has six faculties and tw ...

. He was a visiting scholar at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1997, and taught at

before returning to Harvard in 2006. He is currently a professor at Ibn Haldun University where he is also the head of the History Department. Berktay's research areas are the history and

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

Turkish nationalism Turkish nationalism ( tr, Türk milliyetçiliği) is a political ideology that promotes and glorifies the Turkish people, as either a national, ethnic, or linguistic group. The term " ultranationalism" is often used to describe Turkish nationa ...

in the 20th century. He studies social and economic history (including that of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, especially

medieval history In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

) from a comparative perspective. He has also written on the construction of Turkish

national memory National memory is a form of collective memory defined by shared experiences and culture. It is an integral part to national identity. It represents one specific form of cultural memory, which makes an essential contribution to national group coh ...

. After

Taner Akcam Taner (from Turkish ', "dawn", and ', "man") is usually a Turkish masculine given name and surname. It may also refer to Taner, a former imperial Chinese commandery. Given name * Ahmet Taner Kışlalı (1939−1999), political scientist, au ...

, Berktay was one of the first Turkish historians to acknowledge the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...

. In September 2005, Berktay and fellow historians, including

Murat Belge Murat Belge (born March 16, 1943) is a Turkish academic, translator, literary critic, columnist, civil rights activist, and occasional tour guide. Career Belge was a member of the organizing committee for a two-day academic conference that st ...

, Edhem Eldem, Selim Deringil, convened at an academic conference to discuss the

fall of the Ottoman Empire The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922) began with the Young Turk Revolution which restored the constitution of 1876 and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system for the Ottoman parliament. At the same ti ...

.Conferences
personal Web site, Sabanci University.Didem Turkoglu,
Challenging the National History--Competing discourses about a Conference
', Submitted to Central European University Nationalism Studies Program In Partial Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, Budapest, Hungary, 2006 As a supporter of open dialogue in Turkey regarding the

and Turkey's denial of it, Berktay has received threats in his country. He has two daughters, Ada Berktay and Aslıgül Berktay, from two separate marriages. Berktay uncovered that the Turkish government purged a lot of the evidence and documents on the Armenian genocide from the Turkish archives. According to him, the purge was "most probably implemented by Muharrem Nuri Birgi, a former Turkish ambassador to London and NATO and Secretary General of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs". Berktay also claimed that "at the time he was combing the archives, Nuri Birgi met regularly with a mutual friend and at one point, referring to the Armenians, ruefully confessed: 'We really slaughtered them'". Currently, he is head of Department of History at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Partial bibliography

* ''Kabileden Feodalizme, Kaynak Yayınları'', 1983 * ''Cumhuriyet İdeolojisi ve Fuad Köprülü, Kaynak Yayınları'', 1983 * ''Bir Dönem Kapanırken'', Pencere Yayınları, 1991 * ''New Approaches to State and Peasant in Ottoman History'' (eds. Halil Berktay and Suraiya Faroqhi),

References

External links

*. {{DEFAULTSORT:Berktay, Halil 1947 births Living people 20th-century Turkish historians Turkish atheists Sabancı University faculty Cretan Turks Robert College alumni Yale University alumni Taraf people Alumni of the University of Birmingham Historians of Turkey İbn Haldun Üniversitesi faculty Turkish former Muslims 21st-century Turkish historians