CMES Professor Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies, was one of three recipients of Turkey’s 2010 Presidential Grand Awards in Culture and Arts. In a ceremony at the Çankaya Presidential Palace on December 15, 2010, Turkish President Abdullah Gül presented Professor Kafadar with the award for his work in history. The two other recipients were Ergin İnan, for painting, and the Istanbul Modern Arts Museum.
Turkey’s Presidential Culture and Arts Grand Awards are awarded each December. In his speech during the ceremony, President Gül discussed the significance Turkey places on the arts, culture, and science and said, “The best demonstration of this is that we appreciate the very assets of Turkey and introduce them to the Turkish public and the whole of the world with these awards we present every year.”
CMES director Baber Johansen said,
CMES is delighted to learn of this award to Professor Kafadar. His pioneering research on the political, social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire, his outstanding role in forming a highly qualified student generation in the fields of Ottoman and Turkish history, and his tireless efforts to introduce students and the general public to prominent Turkish scholars in both fields have long been known to his students and colleagues. Turkey’s 2010 Presidential Grand Award in Culture and Art honors in Professor Cemal Kafadar a brilliant scholar.
After the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies in Barcelona honored Professor Roger Owen in July 2010 with the prestigious ‘WOCMES Award for Outstanding Contributions to Middle Eastern Studies,’ and after MESA in 2010 created a book prize carrying the name of Professor Owen, this award to Professor Cemal Kafadar by Turkey’s President is the third academic honor awarded in 2010 to a member of the CMES faculty by international and foreign institutions. CMES is proud to congratulate Professor Cemal Kafadar on this honor.
Professor Kafadar is a distinguished historian who has contributed significantly to the development of Ottoman and contemporary Turkish studies. He has been a member of the Department of History at Harvard since 1990 and is a core member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies faculty. He served as director of CMES from 1999 to 2004 and for the 2009–10 academic year. Professor Kafadar is interested in the social and cultural history of the Middle East and Southeastern Europe in the early modern era, and teaches seminars on archival research and on popular culture. His publications include Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (University of California Press, 1995), Suleyman the Second and His Time, edited with Halil Inalcik (Isis, 1993) and Kim var imiş biz burada yoğ iken (Metis, 2009).