This study is an attempt to reconstruct the muted violent past by breaking the monopoly of the Turkish state over the memory of the Armenian genocide.

The Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT) conducts scholarly research and supports the academic study of Turkey through the ages. The institute is closely affiliated with University’s Faculty of Humanities. Its facilities are available to students and staff of all universities in the Netherlands.

No criticism is allowed in Turkey of the mass murder of Armenians that took place a century ago. PhD candidate Alaettin Carikci examined how contemporary artists, authors, film directors and museums have nonetheless found indirect ways of expressing their criticism.

Zeynep Sarlak defended her thesis on 25 August 2020

This book argues that Armenians around the world – in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I – developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial…

On May 2nd, Petr Kocharov succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Petr on this great result.

Sevil Cakir-Kilincoglu defended her thesis on 18 December 2019

This dissertation provides an up to date description of the Indo European lexical stock of Armenian (ca. 500 entries) with systematic inclusion of unused data that are found in Armenian dialects.

This study delivers a comprehensive picture of the causes of radicalization in the Eastern and Southeastern regions of Turkey. It demonstrates how regionally specific factors enable ideologically disparate terrorist groups to recruit and radicalize from the same population.

As a critical commemoration of its centenary, this book presents a mosaic of one hundred carefully curated fragments by expert authors, shedding light on politics, economy, society, culture, gender, and arts in a hundred years of Turkey.

On the 7th of November, Rasmus Thorsø Nielsen successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rasmus on this achievement!

This dissertations studies state-society relations in 1930s Turkey, focusing on the anti-veiling campaigns in the mid-1930s and aiming to understand the ways in which the Kemalist policies were received, interpreted, negotiated, compromised and/or resisted by various actors in the provinces.

This project explores how the populations of the historically contiguous towns of Nusaybin, Turkey and Qamishle, Syria articulate citizenship in the everyday.

Leiden University is extremely concerned about the situation in Turkey and offers all possible support to its Turkish colleagues.

On 19 July Erik-Jan Zürcher, professor of Turkish languages and cultures, made a TV appearance in Nieuwsuur to talk about the actions Erdogan took after the failed coup.

This project compares and contrasts how and why several Turkish and Iranian women were compelled to participate in leftist guerilla movements in the 1960s and 1970s.

On 1 September 2022 Güldeniz Kibris successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

On 7 September 2023 Didem Durak Akser successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

As part of a cooperation agreement between the Stichting Nederlands Institute in Turkije (NIT Foundation) with Koç University in Istanbul, the institute is located within the premises of the Koç University ANAMED Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, in the central Beyoğlu district of Istanbu…

After the advent of Islam in the 7th century C.E., the strategic geographical position of Tarsus (its proximity to the sea and to the mountain pass leading to inland Anatolia) made this town the de facto capital of the thughur, a historical and geographical term created by Muslim geographers qualifying…

The University has institutes in Jakarta, Cairo, Rabat and Istanbul.

The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, called for a peace settlement between Turkey and PKK on 28 February 2015.

Please find the contact details of the NIT below.

The Europa Institute has invited Dorjana Bojanovska from Macedonia to visit Leiden Law School to conduct her master thesis research from 6 March - 31 March 2017. Dorjana is a student at the Comparative Constitutional Law program at the Legal Studies Department of the Central European University. The…

Students held a bake sale to raise money and gain attention for the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

Mariana Gkliati has recently published an article in the European Journal of Legal Studies. In her contribution, Gkliati discusses the application of the EU-Turkey Agreement, analysing the decisions of the Greek Appeals Committees on whether Turkey constitutes a safe third country. She assesses the…

This dissertation gives an ethnographic account of Kurdish dengbêj narrative from a theorethical perspective.

Thanks to modern technology, it is now possible to extract more gas and oil in the eastern part of the Mediterranean than in the past. As a result, a conflict has once again erupted between Turkey and Greece, in which Turkey is making claim to part of the Mediterranean Sea around Cyprus.

The book on Turkey. A Modern History written by Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, is now available in nine different languages. Arabic and Polish versions have now been published.

The socio-political and cultural memory of the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire played a very important role in Antiquity and later ages. This book is the first to systematically chart these multiform ideas and associations over time and to define them in relation to one another, as Persianism.

This research focuses on a historical/social analysis of a selected corpus of novels from modern Turkish literature which have the common theme of migration from Anatolian towns and villages to Istanbul, and the immigrants’ struggle in this city against various exclusion mechanisms.

With our research and teaching, we help make the world a better place. We join in the academic and public debate, and seek answers to economic and social issues – not just at the local and regional level but at the global one too.

Opportunities to join the initiative as a guest researcher and spend time in residence with GTGC in The Hague are available. If you are interested, we welcome you to contact us. Below you can find our current and former guest researchers.

Research Schools aim at collaboration between researchers from different faculties (interfaculty schools) and universities (interuniversity schools).

On 18 October 2022 ms. Comstock-Skipp successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This volume considers the military architecture and its impact on local communities in Rome's eastern frontier, which stretched from the north-east shore of the Black Sea to the Red Sea.

Thanks to its early civilisation and continuous mix of influences, the Muslim world has a rich and varied culture. The study of material culture, books, stories, films and increasingly television series teaches us about the structure of modern-day Muslim societies.

Mariana Gkliati has recently published an article at the special issue ‘Turkey's Changing Migration Regime and its Global and Regional Dynamics’ of Movements, Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies.

On 8 September the students of the European Law Master gathered in the Lorentzzaal for the festive opening of their programme.

At our regular panel discussions we bring together scholars and other experts to discuss a current topic that captures the interest of the general public as well as academics.

This dissertation attempts to describe the linguistic history of Hittite on the basis of a systematic etymological treatment of its entire inherited lexicon, precisely analyzing the phonological and morphological developments.

We live in a world of things and people in the past must have been as closely entangled with their material surroundings as we are now. In the Laboratory for Artefact Studies Van Gijn takes a close look at the biographies of objects: what kind of raw material an object is made off and what is its provenience,…

The MA in Middle Eastern Studies provides intensive and comprehensive training to prepare you for a range of careers requiring specialist language, cultural, or political knowledge.