This Wide Angle video segment illustrates Islamic and secular elements of life in Turkey, and introduces Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president of Turkey, and his reforms.

This SALT Interpretation Pack has been designed as a resource for educators and students as they explore the themes of the "Becoming Istanbul" exhibition at SALT Beyoğlu in Istanbul, Turkey. Designed for use in high school classrooms, its contents include activities, multimedia resources, terminology and opportunities for discussion. Educators are encouraged to adapt, shape and build upon these materials to best meet the needs of their students and teaching curricula.

The second comprehensive exhibition at SALT Beyoğlu, "Becoming Istanbul" explores contemporary Istanbul through an interactive database of over 400 media. An up-to-date collection of artists’ videos, photography series, documentaries, news reports, cartoons and architectural projects, the database is organized according to 80 concepts that instrumentalize typical discourses relating to the city and suggest new points of view.

Subject consists of five sections. After a general survey of the field, students consider cases of stable civilian control, stable military rule (coups), and transitions from military to civilian rule. Cases are selected from around the world.

This Wide Angle video segment compares two families in Turkey– one more religious, and one more secular.

This course will examine European politics, specifically analyzing its process of integration into a supranational entity: the European Union. It will teach the student about key historical events and trends, why Europe is unique, and possible scenarios for Europe's future. It will examine the sovereign state system that emerged from the Wars of Religion, the intricacies of the European Union in the post-World War II environment, major states that make up the EU or play a key role in European politics, and many important contemporary issues that the EU and Europe face. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: summarize the emergence of modern Europe and the challenge of competing European nationalisms and nation states to European peace and prosperity; describe the emergence of the post World War II European peace project that has taken primary form in the development of the contemporary institutions of the European Union while addressing the public and foreign policy issue areas of primary concern to Europeans, including economic, development, and security issues; assess the challenges confronting traditional national state identity among the political communities of West Europe since World War II, which has gained renewed focus with the end of the Cold War and the re-emergence of the question of the relationship of Western Europe to Eastern Europe; analyze the international and national public policy challenges that continue to determine both the policy agenda within the European Union and the institutional evolution of the European Union to meet these challenges. (Political Science 323)

A flyover of Istanbul using Landsat imagery from April, 1980

Examines interactions across the Eurasian continent between Russians, Chinese, Mongolian nomads, and Turkic oasis dwellers during the last millennium and a half. As empires rose and fell, religions, trade, and war flowed back and forth continuously across this vast space. Britain and Russia competed for power over Eurasia in the "Great Game" of geopolitics in the nineteenth century, just as China, Russia, and others did in the twentieth century. Today, the fall of the Soviet Union and China's reforms have opened new opportunities for cultural interaction. Topics include: the religious traditions of Central Asian Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and Confucianism; caravans and travelers like Marco Polo and Rabban Sauma, the first Chinese to travel to the West; and nomadic conquest and imperialist competition, past and present. Source materials include primary documents, travelogues, films, music, and museum visits.

General Gerd Schmuckle served in the Federal Republic of Germany's Ministry of Defense from 1956 to 1962 under defense minister Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss was charged with building up the Bundeswehr, the newly formed federal armed forces. In this video segment, Schmuckle describes Germany's reaction to the U.S. doctrine of massive retaliation, which de-emphasized a conventional buildup-one that Germans advocated-and depended on thousands of nuclear warheads deployed on German soil. When French president Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, his main concern-developing an independent national deterrent-halted a preliminary treaty for Franco-German nuclear cooperation. Germany had little choice but to acquiesce to deterrence as formulated by the United States. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Education of Robert McNamara,' Schmuckle elaborates on these and other topics. In building up the Bundeswehr, Strauss pushed to have some voice in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) decision-making, worked to overcome European mistrust of a rearmed Germany, and fought to regain its stature in Europe. Unsure whether exclusive reliance on a U.S. nuclear deterrent would be sustainable in the long term, Schmuckle recaps Germany's efforts to build a pan-European defense force-a proposal that failed to gain traction. He also supported NATO general Lauris Norstad's proposal that NATO become a fourth nuclear power. However, Britain's 1957 white paper Defense: Outline of Future Policy announced the island's intent to build an independent nuclear deterrent and reduce troop levels in Germany, which quashed the notion of NATO as a major nuclear power. The following year, de Gaulle proclaimed developing an independent nuclear force his government's highest priority. As a result, Schmuckle explains, Germans haven't significantly influenced the stationing of nuclear warheads and NATO decision-making. He recalls opposing U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara's theories of escalating warfare and preemptive strikes, and he protested against a dramatic increase in conventional forces, which he regarded as totally unrealistic. In the age of nuclear weapons, Schmuckle asserts, 'war does not make any sense any longer in Europe.'

This Wide Angle video segment explores economic and religious development in Kayseri, a city in central Turkey.

Interlinked Challenges features bits of information about global challenges from the last 400,000 years. Challenges include: biodiversity, climate change, eco-migrations, economy, energy, food, health, hunger, population growth, poverty, security, sustainability, transportation, urbanization, and water.

Info bits are drawn from articles, podcasts, blogs, press releases, institutional reports, testimonies, encyclopedias, books, and documentaries. Each bit is referenced, date stamped, linked to the original article, tagged on multiple themes, and assigned a related image, which has its own description, author credit, date stamp, image permission, and back link. Connections are made to bits of info from the 2007 IPCC Report on Climate Change.

SALT Beyoğlu’nda düzenlenen “Istory” [Benim Hikayem] ve SALT Galata'da düzenlenen "Foto Galatasaray" sergilerindeki temaları açıklayan bu Yorumlama Rehberi, eğitimciler ve lise öğrencileri için bir kaynakça olarak hazırlanmıştır. Eğitimcilerin, rehberin içeriğindeki aktiviteler, multimedya kaynakları, terminoloji ve tartışma olanaklarını öğrencilerinin ihtiyaçlarına en iyi cevap verecek şekilde düzenleyerek müfredatlarına uyarlamalarını öneririz.

"Foto Galatasaray" projesi, 1935’ten 1985’e kadar Beyoğlu Galatasaray’daki mütevazı stüdyosunda kesintisiz olarak fotoğrafçılık yapan Maryam Şahinyan’ın (1911, Sivas-1996, İstanbul) tüm mesleki arşivinin yeniden görselleştirilmesi üzerine kuruludur. Foto Galatasaray’ın, tamamı siyah-beyaz negatif ve cam negatiflerden meydana gelen fiziksel arşivi, İstanbul’un yakın dönem klasik fotoğraf stüdyolarından bugüne eksiksiz şekilde ulaşabilmiş en nadir örneklerdendir. 1985’te Şahinyan’ın stüdyoyu devretmesinin ardından el değiştiren arşiv, Aras Yayıncılık’ın sahibi Yetvart Tomasyan’ın deposuna taşınmıştır. 25 yıllık bir bekleyişin ertesinde arşivde yer alan 200 bine yakın negatif, sanatçı/araştırmacı Tayfun Serttaş’ın oluşturduğu bir ekip tarafından iki yıllık bir sürede tasnif, temizlik, sayısallaştırma, sayısal restorasyon ve kategorizasyon aşamalarından geçerek korunmaya alınmıştır.

Hrair Sarkissian 2010 yılında İstanbul’da iki ay geçirerek, Arkeoloji Müzesi ve Topkapı Sarayı kütüphanelerinden Taksim’deki Atatürk Kütüphanesi’ne, Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı’ndan Osmanlı Bankası Arşiv ve Araştırma Merkezi’ne çeşitli yarı özel ve devlet kütüphanelerinin ve arşivlerinin tarih bölümlerini belgeledi. Sergide yer alan fotoğraflar, raflara yığılmış ve nadiren açılıyor gibi görünen dosyaları, içinde bulundukları karanlık ve ezici mekânların mevcut aydınlatmasında gösterir. Bu fotoğraflar, her bir arşivin içerdiği bilginin karmaşıklığını, sanatçıya miras kalan tarihin teyit ya da inkâr edilişini ve şimdiki zamandaki varoluşunu ifade eder.

This SALT Interpretation Pack has been designed as a resource for educators and students as they explore the themes of Hrair Sarkissian's "Istory" and Tayfun Serttaş's "Foto Galatasaray" exhibitions at SALT Beyoğlu and SALT Galata in Istanbul, Turkey. Designed for use in high school classrooms, its contents include activities, multimedia resources, terminology and opportunities for discussion. Educators are encouraged to adapt, shape and build upon these materials to best meet the needs of their students and teaching curricula.

The "Foto Galatasaray" project is based on the re-visualization of the complete professional archive of Maryam Şahinyan (Sivas, 1911 – Istanbul, 1996), who worked as a photographer at her studio in Galatasaray, Beyoğlu from 1935-1985. The archive is a unique inventory of the demographic transformations occurring on the socio-cultural map of Istanbul after the declaration of the Republic and the historical period it witnessed; it is also a chronological record of a female Istanbulite studio photographer’s professional career. Consisting entirely of black-and-white and glass negatives, the physical archive of Foto Galatasaray is a rare surviving example of the classical photography studios of Istanbul’s recent past. After Şahinyan left the studio in 1985, the archive was transferred to a storehouse belonging to Yetvart Tomasyan, owner of Aras Publishing. Twenty-five years later, approximately 200,000 negatives in the archive were, over the course of two years, sorted, cleaned, digitized, digitally restored, categorized and protected by a team under the direction of artist/researcher Tayfun Serttaş.

In 2010, Hrair Sarkissian spent two months in
İstanbul documenting the history sections of
various semi-private and public libraries and
archives in the city, from the Archaeological
Museum and Topkapı Palace libraries to the
Atatürk Library in Taksim, the Ottoman Archives
of the Prime Ministry General Directorate of State,
and the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research
Centre. The second exhibition in the "Modern Essays"
series, Sarkissian’s photographs of rows of shelving
caught in time and racks of files that appear rarely
opened - of dark and oppressive spaces shot with
only the light available - express the complexity
of information these archives contain, and their
role in denying or confirming the artist’s inherited
history and existence within the present.

The primary influence of the Ottoman Empire on Western music, including a significant influence on the composers of the First Viennese School, came through the Ottoman military bands. The most lasting effect of this influence has been on the band traditions of Western Europe and the U.S.

In one of the greatest ecological disasters of our time, the ancient marshlands of Mesopotamia are systematically being converted to dry salt flats as a result of human mismanagement of the regions water resources. Landsat satellite imagery reveals that in the last 10 years, wetlands that once covered as much as 20,000 square km in parts of Iraq and Iran have been reduced to a small fraction of their original size. The authors of a new report released by the United Nations Environment Programmes (UNEP) at the 11th Stockholm Water Symposium on August 13, 2001, warn that the marshlands could completely disappear within the next 3-5 years unless dramatic steps are taken immediately to reverse the damage being done. The UNEP Executive Director described the wetlands condition as a major environmental catastrophe that will be remembered as one of humanity's worst engineered disasters. He noted that the tragic loss of this rare wetland has occurred in approximately the same period since world leaders pledged to safeguard the environment at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Regarded by historians as one of the cradles of civilization, the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent has supported Marsh Arab society for millennia. But through the damming and siphoning off of waters from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the countries of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria have decimated the ecosystem and, with it, a culture rooted in the dawn of human history (dating back to ancient Sumeria about 5,000 years ago).

Surveys major political, socio-economic, and cultural changes in the Middle East after 1900. Investigates the deconstruction of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of new nations and nationalist identities, and the development of states and societies. Examines contemporary issues in historical perspective: Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Gulf War, oil and regional security, impact of the Iranian revolution, Islamic movements. Heavy emphasis on primary sources, such as novels and historical documents. This course explores the 20th-century history of the Middle East, concentrating on the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, and Iran. We will begin by examining the late Ottoman Empire and close with the events of 9/11 and their aftermath. Readings will include historical surveys, novels, and primary source documents.

Dean Rusk-the sole cabinet member addressed by President John F. Kennedy as 'Mr. Secretary'-was the second-longest-serving secretary of state: his service spanned the Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, from 1961 to 1969. This video segment illustrates Rusk and Kennedy's close relationship during the Cuban missile crisis and conveys the president's emotions and approach to decision-making as events unfolded. His interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'At the Brink' reveals Rusk to have been a very trusted adviser whose counsel was reserved for the president. While Rusk was part of the Executive Committee inner circle during the missile crisis, he was also a separate entity: he reserved his recommendation 'until the president and I heard from all of these working groups.' Throughout the two-week crisis, Rusk avidly pursued a diplomatic resolution, helped build consensus, and facilitated out-of-channel communications. Beyond the missile crisis, Rusk talks about European fears that the United States' commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be weakened by the 'flexible response' strategy.

This is an educational website devoted to the famous archaeological site in Turkey of one of the oldest cities in the world. The website depicts not only end-products of discoveries and interpretations but goes through the entire history of a 25 year excavation process.

Andrei Gromyko served as Soviet foreign minister from 1957 to 1985. Beginning in 1943, when Soviet premier Joseph Stalin appointed the 34-year-old ambassador to Washington, Gromyko was an indispensable formulator of Kremlin policy toward the United States. Ultimately, he dealt with nine U.S. presidents. In this video segment, Gromyko chronicles the arms race, beginning in the 1950s under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. At the time, each superpower had the ability to inflict "unacceptable damage" on the other. Still, neither side acted to stop the arms race until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev opened the new era in the mid eighties. Under the leadership of Gorbachev, Gromyko concludes, Soviets have embraced the "principle of rational sufficiency" and initiated unilateral steps to stop the arms race. The interview Gromyko conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age is a wide-ranging reflection on nuclear strategy, foreign policy, and superpower diplomacy during the four-and-a-half decades since the dawn of the nuclear age. Gromyko begins the interview with a look at the Potsdam Conference, at which U.S. president Harry S. Truman informed Soviet premier Joseph Stalin that an atomic bomb had successfully detonated. Truman was perplexed by the non-reaction of the Soviet leader, who then submitted a private order to accelerate the Russian bomb project. Gromyko remembers how, following the war, it felt, at age 37, to challenge the experienced architects of the Cold War and the policies they conceived: the Baruch Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan. He recalls that Soviet proposals to ban all nuclear weapons and to place strict controls on facilities pursuing nuclear energy were "categorically rejected." Western powers, Gromyko asserts, missed the opportunity to stop the arms race before it began. He points to "a drastic hardening" of foreign policy, citing former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech as an "open declaration of the Cold War." Gromyko reserves his strongest criticism for the "doctrine of intimidation," the United States' classified National Security Memorandum 68, which marked a dramatic shift in U.S.-Soviet relations. His description of the 1962 Caribbean crisis stands in stark contrast to U.S. officials' accounts of the same episode, known as the Cuban missile crisis. He provides detailed recollections of his conversation with President John F. Kennedy during this period, concluding that it was "probably the most difficult meeting I experienced in all my 48 years of meeting presidents of the United States." Gromyko moves ahead to the period of detente. His retelling of last-minute changes prior to the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I differs from that of national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Gromyko discusses the key Soviet objection to U.S. proposals during SALT II negotiations: the United States, which targeted the Soviet Union with forward bases around the world, demanded drastic reductions in the Soviet Union's principal deterrent-the heavy intercontinental ballistic missile. At Vladivostok in 1974, the two sides agreed on a basic framework for the SALT II Treaty, which was signed five years later. Reflecting on the trends he has observed during his long career as Soviet foreign minister, Gromyko sees more continuity than difference: each administration has tried to achieve military superiority, and the Soviet Union, always one step behind, has pressed to maintain "virtual parity" to safeguard its national interests. Much was achieved during detente, he recalls. While that term is no longer used, Gromyko sees parallels with-and holds out hope for-the current process of "deepening mutual understand and trust."

1994 Excavations at Pınarbaşı, Karaman Province, Turkey: Excavations began at Pinarbasi in August and September 1994, and continued in September 1995. The site is in the lands of Suleimanhaci village, Karaman province, on the south side of the central Anatolian plateau, only about 20 km from Çatalhöyük. This is a salvage excavation, jointly organised by the University of Edinburgh, Department of Archaeology (Dr Trevor Watkins) and the Karaman Museum (Cengiz Topal). The group of sites at Pinarbasi is of particular interest because there appears to be a series of rock-shelters occupied in final pleistocene and early neolithic times, and an open village settlement of epi-palaeolithic or early neolithic date (i.e. possibly greater than 10,000 years old). The work is being carried out as part of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, and the sites were identified by Drs Douglas Baird and Trevor Watkins in September 1993 as part of the Çatalhöyük Regional Survey. In the first season, the main objective was to assess two parts of the site which were most at risk. Area A is the open village settlement, situated below the cliffs and the rock-shelters, on an isthmus surrounded by a small lake. Area B is one of the rock-shelters. In the open village settlement the 1994 sounding showed superficial remains of classical date, a thin stratum of early third millennium BC occupation, and a thicker deposit representing structures, a burial and occupation deposit of a settlement of early prehistoric date. The first radiocarbon dates are in the late 8th millennium BC (uncalibrated). The rock-shelter has an isolated pit which has produced the fourth millennium BC date, and coherent strata of occupation deposit and a large, stone-built structure that date to the sixth millennium BC. The indications from the chipped stone assemblage are of an industry similar to that at Çatalhöyük, but there are also strong residual elements of earlier assemblages, representing probably an earlier, aceramic neolithic occupation.