My background

Born and raised in eastern Turkey—both a small village and in the city Kars, I matured with an awareness of higher education only as a very distant ideal that was quite far from my own family’s daily concerns. Though school was important, it was never stressed as much as were the ideals of family, work, and faith. In the context of my schooling, however, I benefited greatly from a few of my elementary and secondary teachers who were not afraid to encourage the interests and the progress of a young girl.
I carried this early interest in learning with me when I left home to be an undergraduate student at Atatürk University in Erzurum. My love of languages and of learning about the histories of the Ottoman Empire and the early republican period led me to become a historian. Aware of the transformative role played by education in my own life, the topic of my doctoral thesis and my first book engaged with the politics of education and schooling in a context of frustrated modernization, nation-building, and imperial decline.