İlber Ortaylı, an historian, academic, and public intellectual, died today at the age of 78 after being treated in intensive care for several days.
A prominent public intellectual, Ortaylı appeared on several TV programs throughout decades and wrote columns for aily newspapers, popularizing Ottoman history among the public.
From 2005 to 2012, he directed the Topkapı Palace Museum in İstanbul.
Ortaylı earned his doctorate from Ankara University's School of Political Sciences in 1978 with a thesis on local administration during the Tanzimat period. He became an associate professor in 1979 and full professor in 1989, serving as head of administrative history at Ankara University from 1989 to 2002.
He taught as a visiting professor at universities including Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Princeton, Moscow, Oxford, and Cambridge, and later at Galatasaray and Bilkent Universities.
Ortaylı authored over 40 books, including İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı (The Empire's Longest Century) (1983), Osmanlı’yı Yeniden Keşfetmek series, Tarihin İzinde (2008), and Bir Ömür Nasıl Yaşanır? (2019). His writings covered Ottoman history, administration, diplomacy, and cultural topics.
Born on May 21, 1947, in Bregenz, Austria, in a refugee camp, Ortaylı's family, who are of Crimean Tatar descent, fled Stalin's persecution and immigrated to Turkey when he was two years old.
He grew up trilingual in Turkish, German, and Russian, later becoming proficient in Italian, English, French, Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Latin. His education began at St. George's Austrian High School in Istanbul and Ankara Atatürk High School, followed by studies at Ankara University and the University of Vienna. (VK)
