Onur Çezik

Onur Çezik is a doctoral student who is interested in Ottoman, Balkan, and Turkish history. He completed his MA in Comparative Studies in History and Society at Koç University, Turkey, where he worked as a TA/RA. He graduated from Yeditepe University as a Valedictorian in the departments of History and Political Science and International Relations in 2021. Besides, he also has a minor degree in English Language and Literature at Yeditepe University, Turkey. His research interests are primarily concerned with the political, social, and diplomatic histories of the late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey.

His doctoral research aims to explore Ottoman Macedonia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the shifting dynamics of state governance. With a focus on Salonika, Monastir, and Kosovo, his project intends to highlight these provinces' interconnectedness and incongruity in terms of their local economy, culture, population, competing nationalisms, and geographical conditions. One of the crucial objectives is to scrutinize the Ottoman state's reformist, imperial, and colonial agenda by delving into its governing strategies in Macedonia from 1878 to 1912 and circulating discourses about the local communities.

His master's thesis examined the Ottoman and British press opinion and diplomatic relations during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. He attempted to show how newspapers were instrumentalized in shaping public perceptions regarding the Balkan Wars and diplomatic relations, and how various discourse practices were employed in British and Ottoman accounts. He searched the multifaceted historical traces of the Balkan Wars by analyzing to what extent the public was a part of these encounters and how the state apparatus attempted to influence public perceptions through the media about British-Ottoman societal engagements with and homefront reactions to the war.

Alongside his education at Yeditepe and Koç University, respectively, he held different research posts at Yeditepe, Koç, and Kadir Has Universities in Turkey. At Yeditepe University, he worked as a project manager in a TUBITAK project titled "The Examination of Post-Course Student Perception(s) and Course Learning Outcomes within the Context of Comparative Political Systems Course." During his undergraduate years, he was a project intern in a TUBITAK-funded project titled "Animal Trade from Anatolia to Istanbul (1783-1920)" at Koç University. Besides, Onur Çezik worked as a graduate research fellow in a TUBITAK project titled "Shipbuilding and Labour Migration in the Black Sea Coast and Istanbul, 1827-1878" at Koç University and Kadir Has University, respectively.

Education

• MA, Koç University
• BA, Yeditepe University

Publications

Book Reviews

• "Moral Crisis in the Ottoman Empire: Society, Politics, and Gender during WWI" by Çiğdem Oğuz. Book Review, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, (2024) 20 (2): 245–247
• "Grounded Nationalisms: A Sociological Analysis" by Siniša Malešević. Book Review, The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, (2022) 50 (4): 1063–1065
• "An Ottoman Era Town in the Balkans: The Case Study of Kavala" by Velika Ivkovska. Book Review, The Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Indiana University Press, (2022) 9 (1): 340-342

Presentations

• "The Story of Those Who Passed Away and Immigrated: A Comparative Analysis of Serbian and Ottoman Literature on Death, Immigration, and Bravery in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13", Koc University Comparative Literature Graduate Workshop, Oct '28 & Nov '25, 2022, Istanbul
• "The Population Exchange From the Eyes of The Times Newspaper: British Policy towards the Population Exchange and the Public Opinion of the Era," 100th Anniversary of the Exchange Turkey-Greece Relations Congress. May 21-22, 2022. Samsun

In Progress

• CEZIK, Onur, AGIRLI, Ilayda and ARIN, Zeynep "Unravelling Post-Course Student Perceptions and the Higher Education in Covid-19: The Case of Comparative Political Systems Course." Research Article