Ottoman Summer School and Life in Cunda

I am back in Istanbul and back to blogging after a long hiatus in Cunda for my Intensive Ottoman Turkish Summer School. I hadn't planned on taking such a long break from the blog but the workload at the school didn't leave a lot of time or mental energy for writing about my experiences. Thankfully I was able to enjoy some downtime on the small Aegean island that became our home for a month and a half, but I hope you all understand why I was more likely to spend it on the beach or the soccer field than at the computer.

After a month in Istanbul getting settled into the new apartment and getting all my research permissions squared away, I went into my summer program feeling pretty confident that I could find my way around without many problems. It turns out there's nothing like a trip across Turkey without a set itinerary to shake your confidence a bit. I had bought a ticket on a ferryboat that would take me across the Sea of Marmara to the town of Bandirma on the advice that when I arrived there would be buses leaving regularly to Ayvalik, my final destination. The first leg went fine, but upon arrival in Bandirma I learned that the buses weren't running at that time and I would have to adjust my plans. Luckily, these kinds of adjustments are fairly easy to make in Turkey and a (relatively) short train, bus and taxi ride later I made it to my hotel in Cunda. The trip was longer than I expected but still enjoyable, since the train gave me a chance to relax and enjoy the scenery. I'm always amazed when traveling through the Turkish Aegean how much it reminds me of Northern California. There's something about the foothills and brown grass broken up by fields of corn, fruit trees, and vineyards that makes it feel a bit like home. Unfortunately, the pictures can't quite capture it but I'll put one up anyway.

I was one of the fortunate few in the program to have visited Cunda before this summer. When I was studying Turkish in Izmir in 2009 our group made two trips to Cunda to enjoy the boat trips that leave regularly from Cunda and its neighbor Ayvalik. The boat trips are a great experience, but since they were always part of a day trip from Izmir I had never spent more than an hour or so in Cunda at a time. It turns out there is more to the island than the series of fish restaurants that line the waterfront. The town itself is not large, mostly confined to four or five streets running parallel to the main waterfront, but it's filled with small restaurants, bars, and shops. The food was amazing and the locally produced liquor, even more so. It's a pretty typical little Aegean resort town that was big enough to have almost everything we needed during our stay but not so big that it was overwhelming. The program put us up at Kapya Apart Otel [http://kapya.com/index.php], a small hotel in the middle of town with air-conditioned rooms, a pool, and a comfortable, covered patio area. Given that almost all of the twenty or so students were housed there we occupied most of the rooms and it became like a private group house for all of us in the program. Though we had some complaints by the end of the five weeks, it sure beat any other student housing I've been in! We could gather every morning for buffet-style Turkish breakfast and we occupied the patio just about every night until at least midnight trying to puzzle through our Ottoman readings from the days classes. Luckily everyone seemed to get along and it turns out working in groups makes what can sometimes seem like an impossible language to understand be a bit more manageable.

The school itself is housed in a two-story building renovated to include classrooms, offices, a kitchen, and a patio, and is only a 3-4 minute walk away from the hotel. This was the 16th year that the program has offered intensive summer instruction in Ottoman Turkish and all the other linguistic odds and ends that one needs in order to understand Ottoman documents. It is unique in the kind of instruction that it offers and is indispensable for someone trying to learn this extremely difficult language before getting into the archives to do research. Founded by the late Harvard professor Şinasi Tekin, the school is run as a joint venture by Harvard and Koç University in Istanbul [http://ottomanstudiesfoundation.com/intensive-ottoman-and-turkish-summer-school/]. The lists of alumni that line a wall of the school are both impressive and intimidating since many of them are publishing some of the most interesting books coming out now in Ottoman History. It's a pretty high standard to hold yourself to, but it's somewhat encouraging at the same time. And for someone like me who doesn't have any other Ottoman history graduate students in my program, just getting the chance to meet other students working in the same field was a treat. It helped that they were all pretty great people in and out of the classroom and could make for some great drinking partners at future conferences. 

In hindsight, it's a bit of a miracle that we got along as well as we did, given how strenuous our daily schedule was. We started our mornings with two and a half hours of Ottoman Turkish class where we cycled through a series of printed and hand-written Ottoman documents from the 19th century. While the hand-writing was pretty tough, trying to break down the complex grammar of documents that were often made up of a single, page-long sentence and then translate that into English often proved to be a bigger challenge. Since I started studying Modern Turkish, I had been told by various people that Ottoman was basically just Turkish written in the Arabic script with a few Arabic and Persian words mixed in. Unfortunately, this could not be more wrong. The basic structure of the language is Turkish, but it also mixes in a number of Arabic and Persian grammatical structures along with the smattering of foreign vocabulary and writes it all in a hand-written script that can often feel impossible to decipher. Then just for good measure, the documents will sometimes lapse into pure Arabic or Persian for lines and even pages at a time. To be able to read any document that comes your way, it's really best to be educated in the old Ottoman style and know Arabic and Persian in addition to old Turkish so you're prepared for whatever mix a particular writer throws in your direction. So, after our Ottoman courses finished for the day we got to attend a series of support courses to help us cobble together the linguistic knowledge we would need to help us decipher the Ottoman texts. Often, this meant that two and a half hours of reading Ottoman documents was followed up by an hour and a half of muddling through 10th century Persian poetry, about an hour off for lunch, and then another hour and a half of Modern Turkish reading and conversation. With classes from 9-3:30 conducted in three languages we were pretty exhausted by the time we got out. We would often spend a few hours napping or relaxing at the beach and then gather for homework sessions that lasted until at least midnight most nights. This was maybe the hardest part about the program. While we got to spend a month and a half on a beautiful little Aegean island in easy walking distance to the beach, most days we were too tired to take advantage of it.

That being said, we did find time to get out for at least one boat cruise around the islands and to enjoy the amazing food and liquor that the island had to offer. I'll put up some special posts on the food as the week goes by when I have a chance to write them up. All in all it was a pretty amazing summer and I feel much better prepared for my coming year in the archives. It is good to be back in Istanbul with Amanda and to get settled into a more normal routine. My return was perfectly times to enjoy some of the festivities marking the end of Ramadan so I'll put together a post with some of those pictures as well. For now, it's time to get all my immigration issues settled and start getting back to work on my own research.

Our classroom

A view of Cunda from the ferry

The view from Taş Kahve during a Persian class

The Turkish Aegean countryside from the train

A class picture after our final lessons

A study session by the pool