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Anatolia and the Turks

Anne Badgley

Tuesdays, 9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
September 27 - November 8, 2005
D.O.C. House

This course will be a follow-up to "How Turkey Came To Be" given last spring. We’ll see how the Seljuk Turks, first as marauders, then as settlers crushed the arrogant, inept Byzantine Emperor. They revitalized Anatolia as far west as Konya, their capital. They established higher learning, built roads and created great hostels to encourage trade, and introduced their own style of architecture But the first wave of Mongols, slaughtering and using scorched earth policies, reduced the Seljuks to vassals.

The Mongols could kill but not rule, and the Ottoman Turks, in turn, drove out the Mongols. Eventually, the fall of Constantinople gave Anatolia to the Ottoman Turks, who built one of the world’s great empires, lasting five centuries. After World War I, the country was saved from European dismemberment of the empire by Kemal Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish Republic.

There will be a reading list for those interested. The format will be slide lectures with historical text.

Participants going to Turkey in March/April 2006 will have precedence.

Anne Badgley, McGill University, B.A. (Montreal), American University, D.C. B.A. and M.A. Art History; St. Thomas, Houston U. of Marilyn, both Art History. She taught at George Mason U., Fairfax, VA, until her geologist husband was sent to Turkey for an extended stay in 1980 — resident of Norwich.