"The Ottoman History" is first taught at ASPU

Baku/29.09.21/Turan: Since that academic year, the Tusi Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University started teaching the course: "Ottoman History". This was reported to Turan by one of the co-authors of the course, department chair, Doctor of Historical Sciences Sevinj Aliyeva. The second co-author is Mehman Agayev, PhD in History.

"For a long time, the history of Turkey was presented by the Soviet educational system from the Russian Empire foreign policy standpoint and its decades-long struggle with the Ottoman Empire. Following the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of Azerbaijan's independence, interest in the history of the Turkic peoples increased; however, serious remnants remained in the teaching system. For instance, the history of the Turkic peoples was studied only in the Soviet period, not in previous periods of their history.

For a long time, the history of the USA and Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa was taught separately within the framework of the course of Universal History. Countries of the capitalist and socialist camps, as well as developing countries were considered to comply with class approach.

At the same time, the Russian-Iranian wars, the history of Turkey and Iran, not to mention the Muslim countries, were considered in the framework of the Russian-Turkish, Russian-Iranian wars or liberation from the Golden Horde yoke. The greatest Turkic military leaders and rulers were portrayed as tyrants and despots who destroyed European and Christian cultures and threatened the security of Europe. Turkey was often presented as an instrument of European politics.

The study of Ottoman history is accounted for by the fact that Azerbaijan is related to Turkey by historical, geographical, cultural and religious proximity. You might as well say that Turkey is the only Turkic state that existed for a long period of history to have a huge impact on the entire Islamic world.

In many textbooks, the Ottoman history is offered from the Western European and North American historical science perspective which considered the Islamic world and Asian cultures as backward entities. The Marxist approach of the Soviet period was not much different from the above.

It has to be noted that the Ottoman history is a part of the universal history of the huge Turkic-Muslim world, a model of tolerance and public administration, with a chronology of more than seven centuries, S. ALiyeva noted.

Editor of the new edition - head of international relations department of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the NASA, Doctor of Philosophy in History Gulyar Kavkazly; reviewer is an adviser of the education department of the Turkish Embassy to Baku, Doctor of Philosophy in History Nihat Boyukbash. -0-