Back	The Making of Modern Turkey Seminars resume at the Ottoman Bank Museum The Emergence of a Modern Welfare State in the Late Ottoman Period Asst. Prof. Nadir Özbek will be our guest speaker this month at the Making of Modern Turkey Seminars, organized by the Museum in association with Boğaziçi University. He will discuss the politics of poor relief in the late Otttoman Empire, suggesting that concepts such as the social welfare state, social assistance, and poverty, which have gradually gained significance in recent Ottoman studies, already existed, in a different form, in the late Otttoman period. According to Özbek, Abdülhamid II was in fact one of the initiators of the concept of the welfare state in an Ottoman context, so that the foundation of charitable associations, and various displays of assistance to the poor and medical care to the sick, under the Hamidian regime, can be considered among the first manifestations of the emergence of a welfare state. The seminar is scheduled for Saturday, October 16, at 2:30 p.m. After graduating from the department of electrical and electronic engineering at Boğaziçi University, Asst. Prof. Nadir Özbek earned a master's degree in history from Boğaziçi University as well, followed by a Ph.D. in the same discipline from Binghamton University. His book, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda Sosyal Devlet: Siyaset, İktidar ve Meşrutiyet, 1876-1914, dealing with the politics of welfare in the late Ottoman Empire, was published in 2001. Nadir Özbek is currently a faculty member of the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University. For more information on this free seminar presented by the Ottoman Bank Museum, please call 8212) 334 22 70. A robust program of lectures is offered by the Ottoman Bank Museum under the general heading the Voyvoda Street Lectures. Every Wednesday, a lecture is presented on one of 4 main themes - economic history, music and politics, Istanbul, and objects and rituals . The Making of Modern Turkey Seminars, organized by the Museum in association with Boğaziçi University, are held every third Saturday of the month.This season, the seminars will focus on the transition from Empire to nation-state and the legal, individual, and economic variables of this process.