Centre d'études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques

A l'heure où la "question albanaise" et le statut du Kosovo demeurent d'actualité, mais aussi où les rapports entre islam et Europe sont débattus au sujet de l'adhésion éventuelle de la Turquie à l'Union européenne, il n'est pas inutile de revenir sur la formation de la nation albanaise, la seule nation majoritairement musulmane qui ait acquis un Etat sur le vieux continent au moment de la première vague de formation d'Etats-nations. Ce livre a pour but de montrer comment l'albanisme, c'est-à-dire l'affirmation d'une identité albanaise au sens moderne, s'est développé, en lien avec les transformations sociales et politiques de la société provinciale ottomane.

International audience

This edited collection looks at how political parties in Turkey actually work, inside and out. Departing from traditional macro-level analyses, the book offers a new sociological approach to the study of political parties, treating them as non-unitary entities composed of many different groups and individuals who both cooperate and compete with one another.\n\nThe central proposition of the book is that parties must be studied as clusters of relationships in specific locales rather than as unitary ‘black boxes.’ This ground-up approach provides new insights into the internal workings of political parties; why parties gain and lose elections and other political resources ; and the ways in which power is negotiated and exercised in Turkey and beyond.\nChapters include studies of Islamic and Islamist parties from the 1970s to the present, ethnic Kurdish parties, center- and extreme right parties, and the far left, as well as independent candidates. The authors pay particular attention to relations – and the blurry boundaries-- between parties and civil society groups, religious associations, non-governmental organizations, ethnic and socio-economic groups, and state institutions, and to the variability of external and internal party politics in different geographies such as Adana, Mersin, and Diyarbakir. (Résumé éditeur)

National audience

International audience

This paper analyses the place of religion in Albania, a former atheist country, with a Muslim majority, but without an official religion. It focuses on former and new dynamics on the Albanian religious scene since 1990 : the ambiguous place of religion in the Albanian society (both marginal and central), and the local, national and transnational dynamics of the religious developments. Then it studies the specifities of each community : the Islamic community, Bektashism, the orthodox community ; the Catholic and Protestant Churches, and Eleonora's Holy Mission.

After dropping rapidly and steadily over two decades, fertility in Iran stabilized between 2001 and 2011 at around 1.9 to 2 children per woman, before starting to rise slightly between 2012 and 2016, then falling fairly quickly. This coincided with the implementation of the Islamic Republic’s new population policy, with its aggressive and coercive measures, one of whose goals was to reverse the downwards trend in fertility. Given changes in proximate and remote determinants of fertility in Iran, and the decline in fertility since 2016, it is assumed that this new population policy triggered a reduction in intervals between births between 2012 and 2015, leading to a slight rise in the fertility of already married couples. The other latent objective of the Islamic Republic’s new population policy is to drive Iran’s population up to 150 million inhabitants in the near future. This is utopian given Iran’s demographic dynamics, but it conceals the political and ideological goal of asserting Iran’s demographic and geopolitical significance within the region, by drawing on a novel immigration policy to make up for its low fertility.

International audience

Research carried out under the leadership of Patricia Poggi (World Bank) Etude réalisée sous la direction de Patricia Poggi (Banque mondiale)

Les auteurs montrent – dans le contexte de la guerre civile syrienne – comment l’appartenance à des groupes de manifestants contre le régime constitue un capital social autonome à la fois du capital social antérieur et des autres formes de capital, notamment économique et culturel. Il montre ainsi comment un événement permet la formation de capital. Le capital social n’apparaît pas comme un simple démultiplicateur des capitaux économiques et culturels existants, mais possède sa propre logique de formation et d’accumulation. Dans une phase ultérieure, ce capital social se convertit en positions au sein des institutions révolutionnaires, qui apparaissent alors comme du capital social objectivé. Les dotations initiales en capitaux redeviennent alors déterminantes pour comprendre la probabilité d’accès à différentes positions.

This social, cultural, and political history of Slavic Muslim women of the Yugoslav region in the first decades of the post-Ottoman era is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the issues confronting these women. It is based on a study of voluntary associations (philanthropic, cultural, Islamic-traditionalist, and feminist) of the period. It is broadly held that Muslim women were silent and relegated to a purely private space until 1945, when the communist state “unveiled” and “liberated” them from the top down. \nAfter systematic archival research in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria, Fabio Giomi challenges this view by showing: \n\n How different sectors of the Yugoslav elite through association publications, imagined the role of Muslim women in post-Ottoman times, and how Muslim women took part in the construction or the contestation of these narratives. \n How associa­tions employed different means in order to forge a generation of “New Muslim Women” able to cope with the post-Ottoman political and social circumstances. \n And how Muslim women used the tools provided by the associations in order to pursue their own projects, aims and agendas. \n\nThe insights are relevant for today’s challenges facing Muslim women in Europe. The text is illustrated with exceptional photographs.

Provincializing the history of the Ottoman Empire, this book provides a critical approach to the projects of ‘modernity’ that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past two centuries. Leaving their mark on this period are; the turmoil of insurgency in Greece and Egypt, a growing intervention of European Powers in Eastern Mediterranean politics, and the unfolding of large reform projects within the administration of the Ottoman Empire. Whilst these developments have prompted enduring debates over Middle Eastern paths of transformation, the case of Cyprus has remained isolated from these discussions, something this book seeks to address. One of the first research monographs to appear in English on Cyprus during the eventful times of the Ottoman ‘long’ 19th century, this book consistently seeks to provide a dialogue between source analyses and theoretical frameworks. Exploring the myriad relationships between this singular locality and the regional – not to say global – dynamics of empire, trade and social change at that time, A Provincial History of the Ottoman Empire will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in the Middle East and Modern History.

Cet article analyse les fondements de l’autorité dans le soufisme tels que des soufis égyptiens contemporains les ont exposés dans leurs écrits. Cette autorité repose sur l’accès à la proximité divine, la walâya, traduit en français par sainteté. Le saint (walî), vivant ou mort, est le pivot de toute réalisation spirituelle et le garant du salut dans le monde ici-bas et dans l’au-delà. Cette conception de la sainteté a jusqu’à aujourd’hui des implications spirituelles et sociales dans tout le monde musulman. Les observations faites sur les relations entre un saint vivant et ses disciples dans une région du sud de l’Égypte montrent les liens profonds entre des traditions religieuses locales et une doctrine de la sainteté élaborée par les grands penseurs mystiques de l’islam.

International audience

In this paper, I analyze Yugoslavia’s endeavors to create stronger connections with Latin American governments and left-wing organizations from the early 1950s until the early 1960s. My central claim is that during those years Belgrade pursued a systematic policy that made it that by the early 1960s the Yugoslavs had become a serious factor in the region. I also contend that the Yugoslav policy of non-alignment proved to be a double-edged sword: Belgrade’s neutralism and its prestige as an alternative to the Soviet model paved the way for it to garner influence in Latin America, but its less militant stance and its refusal to take part in bloc divisions became a limitation in the 1960s, when the region became a hotbed of Cold War conflict and many of Yugoslavia’s local partners came to see non-alignment as impracticable.Drawing mainly from Yugoslav archival sources, my analysis focuses on the activities of the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Yugoslavia, an organization charged with establishing connections with left-wing political movements abroad. More succinctly, I also account for the growing diplomatic importance of international cultural cooperation and for the part played by Yugoslav experts specialized on Latin American affairs.

C’est sur un discours de rupture que les islamistes ont conquis les mairies au milieu des années 1990, en s’élevant contre un « système » décrit comme injuste et corrompu, et en capitalisant sur les désillusions de l’électorat à l’égard des partis établis. Dans quelle mesure cependant ont-ils introduit de nouvelles pratiques, une fois installés aux commandes municipales ? Si les mairies islamistes ont mis en place des changements symboliques faisant la part belle à l’islam, leurs traits oppositionnels ont vite laissé la place à la production d’espaces conservateurs et à un discours de la bonne gestion. Les mairies islamistes turques ont introduit de nouveaux modes de gouvernement, au niveau de la consultation des citoyens, de la transparence et de la probité, mais elles les ont plus souvent vantés dans leurs discours que mis en pratique, confirmant ainsi une continuité avec les équipes précédentes. Enfin, les mairies islamistes ont opéré un tournant libéral ; leur alliance avec les couches populaires – leur principal soutien électoral – s’est produite à travers l’organisation de la bienfaisance à grande échelle, qui permet en outre d’intégrer dans les réseaux municipaux associations, donateurs et cercles entrepreneuriaux. Cette approche par le biais des pratiques de pouvoir permet de reconsidérer la spécificité islamiste, question qui ne concerne pas seulement l’AKP.

International audience

Pour expliquer l’émergence de mobilisations pacifiques en Syrie à partir de mars 2011, les auteurs montrent dans un premier temps l’inadaptation des approches en termes de choix rationnel ou de théorie des mobilisations des ressources. Ils développent un modèle de mobilisations par délibération qui met au centre des mobilisations individuelles la participation à des groupes restreints dans lesquels se transforment leurs valeurs, leurs calculs et leur sociabilité. Par ailleurs, pour expliquer la résilience du régime et le passage à la guerre civile, les auteurs avancent le concept de crise polarisante, caractérisée par une faible autonomie des secteurs, un élargissement des activités tactiques des acteurs et une utilisation stratégique de la violence par l’État.

Archaeologists often come across ancient human burials during excavations. Less often, however, do human burials come across archaeological excavations. This happened though, at a site in southeastern Turkey a few years ago. When a funeral procession interrupted operations on the mound of Ziyaret Tepe, archaeologists confronted the dilemma of maintaining an excavation site as a scientific space in real-world contexts that are anything but sterile (void of contemporary meaning) or controlled (void of competing claims). The funeral event exposed the salience of the mound as both a sacred and scientific landmark, and brought to the fore numerous historical, political and cultural factors that rarely receive acknowledgement in the field or in publication. We outline these various influences on archaeological practice at Ziyaret Tepe, and use this unexpected funeral to advocate for a community archaeology that broadens the value of excavation by respecting a site's valence as something other than a scientific space.

This book analyses the development of Sufism in Ottoman Egypt, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examining the cultural, socio-economic and political backdrop against which Sufism gained prominence, it looks at its influence in both the institutions for religious learning and popular piety. The study seeks to broaden the observed space of Sufism in Ottoman Egypt by placing it within its imperial and international context, highlighting on one hand the specificities of Egyptian Sufism, and on the other the links that it maintained with other spiritual traditions that influenced it. Studying Sufism as a global phenomenon, taking into account its religious, cultural, social and political dimensions, this book also focuses on the education of the increasing number of aspirants on the Sufi path, as well as on the social and political role of the Sufi masters in a period of constant and often violent political upheaval. It ultimately argues that, starting in medieval times, Egypt was simultaneously attracting foreign scholars inward and transmitting ideas outward, but these exchanges intensified during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the new imperial context in which the country and its people found themselves. Hence, this book demonstrates that the concept of 'neosufism' should be dispensed with and that the Ottoman period in no way constituted a time of decline for religious culture, or the beginning of a normative and fundamentalist Islam. Sufism in Ottoman Egypt provides a valuable contribution to the new historiographical approach to the period, challenging the prevailing teleology. As such, it will prove useful to students and scholars of Islam, Sufism and religious history, as well as Middle Eastern history more generally