In August 2015 we lost an inspiring scholar of Ottoman history, Vangelis Kechriotis. Vangelis was born in Athens in 1969. He studied history first at Athens University and then at Essex and Leiden universities. His dissertation, The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire: A Non-Muslim Ottoman Community between Autonomy and Patriotism, proved to be an influential work in understanding the intellectual and ideological currents of late nineteenth to early twentieth century Ottoman Empire. He was also the editor of Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States, which provided invaluable primary sources on nationalisms in the Balkans.
In Spring 2004, I remember walking into a class on Nationalism in the Balkans and meeting this sympathetic instructor with a Greek accent. I had no clue at the time that this class would be one of those encounters that shapes one's academic career. That was how I met Vangelis Kechriotis and how he became a mentor in my initial steps into academia. Our paths crossed multiple times in different classes, conferences, or simply on the Boğaziçi campus. He was a brilliant scholar, great person, and an activist. He opened new horizons for his students, helping us go beyond the dry explanations of political structures of the nineteenth century. He helped us understand the people, their ideas, and the conditions they lived in; going beyond the hollow stereotypes of nationalist historiographies. He had an engaging style as a professor making room for enthusiastic intellectual debates in class and in time I got to know him as a person. He would stand with the students in front of the Rectorate in protest to demand an explanation for a police raid on campus. You could talk about the invention and appropriation of national identities a century ago at one point and at another you could chat with him about the birth of his daughter Rana or Easter cookies.
The news about his health took many by surprise—many couldn't associate cancer with him, hoping it to be one of those stories with a happy ending. It was a shock to hear that we lost him. It is a loss for Ottoman history and the Boğaziçi community. He developed many projects on the cultural and political history of the late Ottoman Empire, especially concerning Greek and Jewish communities, urban life, and nationalism. He was an active member of the History Foundation in Istanbul and helped organize panels, workshops, and conferences on late Ottoman history. He then became the associate chair of the Foundation and encouraged others to pursue and usher forth important projects pertaining to Ottoman history.
He was engaged in Turkish and Greek politics as a public intellectual. He wrote opinion pieces for various media and gave interviews regarding the appropriation of memory and current social movements in those regions. Recently he organized workshops to shed a historical light on the Gezi protests that shook the social movement scene in Turkey in the summer of 2013. He pushed for a “history of the present” that emphasizes the role of the historian as an activist. No doubt his colleagues and students will continue to advocate for this perspective.
He will be very much missed, most of all by his partner Ceyda Arslan Kechriotis and his daughter Rana.
