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.

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.

Zeynep Sarlak defended her thesis on 25 August 2020

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

Sevil Cakir-Kilincoglu defended her thesis on 18 December 2019

The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) has expressed its concern about reported infringements of academic freedom in Turkey. The ECPR, of which Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science is a member, urges the Turkish political authorities to ensure that all academics can do their…

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.

In the confrontational ‘House of Misconceptions’, visitors put themselves in another person’s shoes and have to justify their existence. The performance is the result of a unique collaboration between the Liquid Society art collective and Professor of Law and Society Maartje van der Woude and her st…

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…

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 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…

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.

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

For fifteen years, Recep Uysal carried out research on positive psychology in Turkey; it is even the subject of his PhD. That was until he had to flee Turkey and start again from scratch in the Netherlands. Re-entering the academic world was a challenge, but he rediscovered his love for the field in…

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.

Lecture, Panel Discussion

“Courses” offers interested scholars and students open-access course material which can be used in class.

This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

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…

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

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

Welcome to the website of Turkish Studies at Leiden University. On this website you will find information on the work and the activities of the people studying the Ottoman Empire and Turkey at Leiden University.

Turkey's Belle Epoque and the Transition to a Modern Nation State

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…

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, Faculty Lecture

In less than a week’s time, millions of Turkish people are going to decide who will govern their country for the next five years. These elections promise to be the most closely contested in years, with the opinion polls showing very small differences and everything at stake, including for Europe. Alp…

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

Lecture, LUCIS What's New?! Series

Lecture, Book Launch

Debate, Panel Discussion

Please find the contact details of the NIT below.