"Some Practical Aspects of the Gendarmerie Reform
in Ottoman Macedonia"

The series of monthly seminars, Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, organized by the Ottoman Bank Museum in collaboration with Alpha Bank and the History Department of Boğazici University, hosts historian, Dr. İpek K. Yosmaoğlu on Friday, October 20, with a presentation in English entitled, "Marching on an Empty Stomach: Some Practical Aspects of the Gendarmerie Reform in Ottoman Macedonia." In her lecture, Yosmaoğlu will discuss Macedonia in Ottoman times and assess the Mürzsteg reform program.

"As far as the Ottoman state was concerned, Macedonia did not exist," says Yosmaoğlu. "However, by 1903, the diplomatic problem known as the ‘Macedonian Question,' had become so acute, and the activities of the ‘Macedonian revolutionaries' so hard to suppress that the Ottoman state grudgingly consented to a reform program aimed at restoring peace and order in the region. The Mürzsteg Program, as it came to be called, was principally a joint Russian and Austro-Hungarian initiative, whose main objective was to restore peace and stability in the region, which had been devastated following a general uprising in the summer of 1903. The experiment is worth a closer look, because it not only displays in stark detail the banal and everyday obstacles to military reform, but also reveals a different thread of evidence that may shed light on both inter-communal and state-society relations during a critical period in the region's history."

The monthly seminar series, Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, focuses on the Greek Orthodox populations of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. Seminar speakers provide comprehensive information on the subject and display special awareness of the delicate historical context. Admission to the seminars is free.

Economy and Society on both Shores of the Aegean
Marching on an Empty Stomach: Some Practical Aspects of the Gendarmerie Reform
in Ottoman Macedonia" Dr. İpek K.Yosmaoğlu

Dr. İpek K. Yosmaoğlu İpek Kocaömer Yosmaoğlu received her doctoral degree in Near Eastern Studiesi in 2005, at Princeton University with a dissertation entitled "The Priest's Robe and the Rebel's Rifle: Communal Conflict and the Construction of National Identity in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878-1908." In the winter of 2006, she returned to her native Istanbul to carry out research for a post-doctoral project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Research Institute in Turkey. Yosmaoğlu, who will be joining the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in fall 2007, divides her time between the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul and the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Economy and Society on both Shores of the Aegean Marching on an Empty Stomach: Some Practical Aspects of the Gendarmerie Reform in Ottoman Macedonia" Dr. İpek K.Yosmaoğlu Friday, October 20, 2006 5:00 p.m. Free admission The Ottoman Bank Museum Bankalar (Voyvoda) Caddesi 35/37 (0212) 334 22 70