[Discussion] Ist'da Anadolu Arastirmalari Fransiz Enstitüsü 'nden dergi

[sule tarakcioglu]

The editorial board of the European Journal of Turkish Studies (EJTS)
has the pleasure to inform you that the EJTS website is now operational
< http://www.ejts.org/ > . The EJTS has a vocation to be a tool of
decompartmentalization and an information highway for researchers in
social sciences working on contemporary Turkey. Therefore, the EJTS
website provides a web guide to available resources (online journals,
institutions, libraries) ("links"), as well as lists of recent
publications on contemporary Turkey ("reviews").

Beside its informative and networking purposes, the EJTS is a scientific
journal, a test lab for theoretical tools structuring social sciences.
The journal is built around a central thematic study, guaranteeing
intellectual cohesion to each issue and reporting on what is at stake
in social research on contemporary Turkey.

The first issue, coordinated by Jean-François Pérouse, is dedicated
to the gecekondu. The objective is to review the meanings of a term that
emerged half a century ago among social scientists working on Turkey
and to provide a critical analysis of its use and abuse. Jean-François
Pérouse, in his introductive paper, suggests to deconstruct the
gecekondu. Following his example, Kemal H. Karpat analyses back his
work on the genesis, the development and welcome of his famous book
The Gecekondu. Tahire Erman and Naslihan Tok show how the gecekondu
became a place of otherness. From a space of otherness and
stigmatization, it became a space of political mobilization as shown
by Marie Leray, a political space in itself for Heidi Wedel, that
must be connected to gender. Mehmet Öztürk analyses the image of
this "other" place through Turkish movies, as a mix of "tradition"
and "modernity". Considering these categories and those of "rurality"
and "urbanity", Benoit Fliche challenges the relevance of the "urban
village" notion when applied to the gecekondu. Eventually, Tansi
Senyapili strives to establish connections between macro-economic
dynamics and the evolution of the /gecekondu /issue.

This thematic issue respects the multidisciplinary approach of the
journal: anthropologists, geographers, historians, political analysts
and sociologists contributed to it. Respecting the original approach
of each discipline, the gecekondu was subjected to various analyses,
conforming to the necessary link between theory and field research.
In our concern to make research available to the greatest number,
the papers are written in one of the four following languages:
English, French, German, or Turkish. All papers are provided
with abstracts in English.

We wish you a satisfactory exploration of the website. Please do not
hesitate to send us any remark, criticism, or suggestion, which
could help us to improve it.

Best regards,

The editorial board

Bayram Balci (Institut Français d'Etudes Anatoliennes)
Birol Çaymaz (Université de Galatasaray)
Gilles Dorronsoro (Paris I)
Benoit Fliche (Université de Provence)
Elise Massicard (CNRS)
Jean-François Pérouse (Institut Français d'Etudes Anatoliennes)
Alexandre Toumarkine (Université de Galatasaray)