With a new book into the new school year: Ataturk and the Turkic world

On August 22, in 2022 year, the library of the Department of Oriental Philology and Translation at Abai KazNPU has been enriched with a new textbook. The book is one of the significant works related to the history of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire, Kemalism and the history of the Turkic world. The author is Professor Dr. Mehmet Saray, a man of venerable age, an eyewitness of many historical events (he is over 80 years old). He is a member of a number of public and academic organizations, such as the Scientific Organization of Turkic History, head of the Scientific Council of the Ataturk Research Centre, and principal adviser to the Commonwealth of Turkic Countries Department at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the director of such research projects as «Pan-Turkic History», «Pan-Turkic Literature», «Pan-Turkic Terminological Dictionary» and «Pan-Turkic Alphabet». From 1990 to 2000 he was a professor at the Turkish Military Academy.

About 40 scientific papers by Mehmet Saray have been published in Turkish and English, and more than 150 articles have formed the basis of many master`s and doctoral dissertations. In 2004 he was elected head of the Ataturk Research Center at the Ataturk Association of Culture, Language and History and held this position until 2006. From 2007 to 2010 he headed the Center for Contemporary History Research at Yeditepe University. At present he is a retired scholar.

Mehmet Saray published «Atatürk and the Turkic World: Atatürk`s Politics of Linguistic and Cultural Community in the Turkic World» - «Atatürk`ün Türk Dünyasında Dil ve Kültür Birliği Siyaseti» in Istanbul in 2015, which, having made it to the grant registry of the «Translators Union» under the Turkish Ministry of Culture, has taken its place in the list of works to be translated into foreign languages. Ergali Esbosynov, a Turkish language teacher, participated in the international competition and was approved as the main specialist responsible for scientific editing and translation of the text into the Kazakh language (Contract: TC Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, TEDA Sözleşmesi, 02 Ocak, 2018. no. 2017/1-122).

Thus, our colleague was able to prove his professional abilities in an international translation competition. The scientific work, published in Kazakh, covers virtually all aspects of Orientalism and is considered one of the sources for research by undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. At the same time, this work covers Turkology, regional studies, political science, country studies, history of Asia Minor and Central Asia, and Turkish history. It is also known that there is a serious scientific groundwork on such scientific problems as Ottomanism, Kemalism, the history of the Little Entente and the policy of Tsarist Russia toward Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkan countries. These aspects are explored directly through archival documents and historical publications.

We express our gratitude to our colleague Yergali Esbosyn who did such a difficult and responsible job of translating the book with honor and to the management of »Daryn Baspasy» for the publication of this work.