[MES Forum] Talk on the history of Kurdistan, March 6th

[McClimans, Melinda]

Dear Forum Members,

Please join us for this talk on the history of Kurdistan. Let’s support the Department of History’s Series on Ottoman and Turkish History, one of our unique strengths at Ohio State University. Thank you!!


Forging Empire: Mining, State Making, and Ottoman Extractive Colonialism in Kurdistan

Dr. Nilay Özok-Gündoğan (FSU)

March 6, 2025, 4 - 5:30pm

Dulles Hall 168

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This talk examines the Keban and Ergani mines as sites where Ottoman extractive policies and state-making intersected in Kurdistan. Producing silver for the treasury and copper for the military, these mines sustained the empire’s fiscal and military apparatus but also exposed the limits of imperial control. Framing these dynamics as extractive colonialism, this talk explores how Ottoman sovereignty in Kurdistan was asserted yet destabilized through mining. More than sites of resource extraction, these mines became arenas of contested rule, where imperial ambitions clashed with ecological limits and local resistance.

Dr. Nilay Özok-Gündoğan<https://history.fsu.edu/person/nilay-ozok-gundogan> is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Florida State University. She is the author of The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy, and Privilege<https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-kurdish-nobility-in-the-ottoman-empire.html> (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) -winner of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association Book Prize. Özok-Gündoğan is currently working on her second book project, which examines mineral extraction and colonialism in eighteenth-century Ottoman Kurdistan.

This event is part of the Department of History Lecture Series in Ottoman and Turkish History. For questions, please contact Yiğit Akın (akin.16 at osu.edu<mailto:akin.16 at osu.edu>).


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