President's Note

President's Note Baki Tezcan The "President's Note" briefly summarizes recent news from the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (OTSA). Time-dependent news and information are sent to members by email and/or posted to H-Turk, our H-Net network (https://networks.h-net.org/h-turk). We also share our announcements, including those for our monthly "What is up in Ottoman and Turkish Studies?" (W'OTSAp) Zoom meeting series and occasional Zoom meetings in the series "Turkey Now!" and "The OTSA Co-Op," with non-members through monthly e-mails. If you would like to receive these announcements, please send an e-mail to us at [email protected]. OTSA is a membership organization. OTSA holds its regular members' meeting, including the announcement of awards, in conjunction with the annual Middle East Studies Association conference in the fall of each year. Annual dues entitle members to receive the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, stand for election to become Board members and officers, and to serve on OTSA committees. Annual dues and contributions fund the annual OTSA awards and cover the minimal administrative costs of the organization as well as those associated with publishing and delivering JOTSA. Recognizing that earning power varies enormously among our current and potential members, we invite you to choose the membership category that best fits your budget. There is no difference among most of the categories in the status and benefits they offer—except our new "International Membership," which does not include a hard copy of our journal. If you are currently not an OTSA member and would like to join, please access our website at http://www.ottomanturkishstudiesassociation.org/ and click on "Subscribe Now" under "Membership & Donations." A warm welcome to newly joining and rejoining members. Hoş geldiniz! [End Page 5] OTSA@50 While we consider our association to have been established in 1971, its incorporation in Wisconsin appears to have taken place in 1973; thus, OTSA is formally fifty years old this year. Ottoman and Turkish Studies has a longer history than fifty years in the United States. And one could add a whole lot more to everything that has been said and written on Ottoman and Turkish Studies in the US.* My colleague and former OTSA President Mark Stein contributes to that literature with a short piece on the transformation of the Turkish Studies Association (TSA) to OTSA in this very issue. I think the best way to summarize the latter half of OTSA's fifty years, which is not documented in the TSA Bulletin's Spring 1997 issue, would be to share with you the list of our Book Prize winners. Established as the "Institute of Turkish Studies Prize for the Outstanding Contribution to Ottoman and Turkish Studies" in November 1985, the annual prize was going to be given, in alternate years, to the best book and to the best article in the field of Ottoman and Turkish studies. The first prize for the best book was awarded by a committee chaired by Grace Smith in 1986. In November 1991, the book prize was named after M. Fuat Köprülü, and continued to be given every other year from 1992 to 2012. From 2013 on, the prize became an annual one. Finally, in 2022 it was renamed OTSA Book Prize. The increasing diversity of the topics covered in these books in the last twenty-five years speaks to the impressive growth of our field. Baki Tezcan OTSA President Professor of History University of California, Davis [End Page 6] Year Prize Winner (Name) Text and Publication Info 2022 Faisal Husain Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2021). & Murat Metinsoy The Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923–38 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Honorable Mention: Ümit Kurt The Armenians of Aintab: The Economics of Genocide in an Ottoman Province (Harvard University Press, 2021). 2021 Can Açıksöz Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey (University of California Press, 2020). 2020 Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh The Missing Pages: the Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript from Genocide to

Political science · Islamic Studies and History · Middle East Politics and Society · Turkey's Politics and Society