Cem Türköz

University

 N/A (Harvard University, PhD, 2026)
Country of origin: Türkiye

Short vita

Cem Türköz is a historian of the early modern Ottoman Empire whose research spans intellectual history, book history and manuscript studies, the histories of philosophy and science, and the social history of scholars. He holds a BA in Philosophy and History of Mathematics and Science from St. John’s College, an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University (2026). His doctoral dissertation, which he is currently developing into his first monograph, The Making of an Ottoman Tradition of Natural Philosophy, ca. 1500–1800, reconstructs a hitherto neglected tradition of Avicennian Peripatetic philosophy in the Ottoman Empire centered on Athīr al-Dīn Abharī’s thirteenth-century madrasa textbook, Hidāyat al-Ḥikma. Alongside his three-month research fellowship at IZEA (1 October 2026–31 December 2026) as part of the “Multiple Enlightenments: 18th Century to Today” program, he holds a concurrent postdoctoral appointment in the Department of History at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul. He is a member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).

Research Project:

Between Istanbul and Berlin: ʿAzīz Efendī, Heinrich von Diez, and the Making of an “Enlightenment Friendship”

Summary: This project recovers a hitherto overlooked episode in the Ottoman reception of the Enlightenment and the history of early modern Ottoman natural philosophy by tracing the “Enlightenment friendship” between Giritli ʿAlī ʿAzīz Efendī (d. 1798), the first permanent Ottoman ambassador to Prussia, and the Berlin Orientalist Heinrich von Diez (d. 1817), his Prussian counterpart and chargé d’affaires at the Sublime Court. Drawing on their extant correspondence, a philosophical treatise that grew out of their exchanges, and a range of additional archival materials in Berlin and Istanbul, the project presents the intellectual camaraderie between these two men as a case study of the “Global Enlightenment,” one in which diplomacy served as an artery of transcultural exchange and natural philosophy, the preeminent Enlightenment science, occupied pride of place. The project will culminate in a monograph tracing how diplomacy, natural philosophy, and the circulation of texts and knowledge linked the late eighteenth-century Ottoman and Prussian empires, while contributing to ongoing debates on the Ottoman Enlightenment, the nascent field of Ottoman philosophy, and the broader history of Ottoman–Prussian intellectual encounters.