Back	Saturday Seminars at the Ottoman Bank Museum Prof. Zafer Toprak: The Making of Modern Turkey Our guest speaker this month, at the "Making of Modern Turkey" seminars, organized by the Museum on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic, will be Prof. Zafer Toprak, Director of the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University, on Saturday, January 17, 2004, from 2:30 to 5:00 p.m. Organized in association with Boğaziçi University on the theme "Continuity and Disruption in the Turkish Republic" and held on the third Saturday of each month, the seminars involve a general assessment of the past century, followed by a historical discussion of the transformations triggered by the Republic. The focal point of all 9 seminars are issues concerning the state, relations between the individual and civil society, the concept of citizenship, financial and economic change, interventionist and liberal structures, legal order, basic rights and liberties, cultural and artistic progress and the understanding of modernity. The seminars which aim to bring together scholars from different arenas are held in two sessions. Following the presentation of individual papers in the first session, the active participation of listeners in the ensuing discussions is encouraged, in the second session. It is planned to later publish the papers, presented at the seminars, in the form of a book. After graduating from the Department of International Relations and Diplomacy at the School of Political Science at Ankara University, Prof. Zafer Toprak earned a Master's degree at the University of London ( School of Oriental and African Studies- LSE) and a PhD. at the Istanbul University School of Economics. Toprak, who has taught at the University of London, the Department of History at Boğaziçi University, the University of Minnesota, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, specializes in late Ottoman and modern Turkish economic and social history. He is the editorial director of the Homer Press (Istanbul), as well as on the editorial board for the magazines, Toplumsal Tarih (Social History), Istanbul, and New Perspectives in Turkey, and the publications of the Tarih Vakfı Yayınları (The History Foundation Press). Prof. Toprak, who has a number of published books and articles, was also curator of two exhibitions held in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic: "Bir Yurttaş Yaratmak-Muassır bir Medeniyet için Seferberlik Bilgileri" (Creating the Citizen -Mobilizing the Masses in the Path of Civilization) and "Demir Yol - Tren Çağı" (The Age of Railroads). He is currently director of the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University.