Deree – The American College of Greece (Athens) and Bahçeşehir University (Istanbul) proudly launched the new “Culture of Peace” academic initiative with the international workshop “Constantinople/Istanbul: One Capital, Two Empires” on October 17, 2025. The event brought together scholars of Byzantine and Ottoman Studies to explore the historical, cultural, and social legacy of a city that has long stood at the crossroads of civilizations.
The workshop opened with welcome addresses from Hümeyra Adıgüzel, Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Administrative, and Social Sciences at Bahçeşehir University, and Helena Maragou, Dean of the Frances Rich School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Deree – The American College of Greece. Workshop organizer Feryal Tansug (Bahçeşehir University) introduced the goals of the series: fostering academic collaboration between Türkiye and Greece, encouraging innovative perspectives on shared histories, and promoting a lasting culture of dialogue and cooperation. Her co-organizer, Alicia Simpson (Deree – The American College of Greece), introduced the workshop’s aims within the expanding scholarship on Constantinople/Istanbul, highlighting the city’s continuity across the Byzantine and Ottoman periods, recent interdisciplinary urban studies, and the challenges of diachronic analysis.
Across four interdisciplinary sessions, speakers examined Constantinople/Istanbul from multiple vantage points. The first session on historical and literary perspectives featured Haris Theodorelis-Rigas (Koç University) on the long-distance “Helleno-Ottomanism” of the historian Skarlatos Byzantios, and Veysel Öztürk (Boğaziçi University) on the ideological gaze and erasure of urban plurality in Yahya Kemal’s poetry. The second session, dedicated to peoples and cultures, brought together Kutlu Akalın (Medeniyet University), who explored perceptions of the heterodox “others” in Late Antique Constantinople, Siren Çelik (Marmara University) on ethnic and cultural plurality in the late Byzantine period, and İlay Romain Örs (Deree – The American College of Greece) on the experiences of the Rum Polites, the Greek Orthodox community of Istanbul.
The afternoon session on health and healing spotlighted the social history of care, with Koray Durak (Boğaziçi University) discussing hospitals, shrines, and healing spaces in Byzantine Constantinople, and İsmail Yaşayanlar (Düzce University) examining the multifaceted uses of Byzantine cisterns in fin-de-siècle Istanbul. The final session shifted the focus to material culture and global exchange networks, featuring Nicolette Trahoulia (Deree – The American College of Greece) on luxury textiles in Constantinople, and Miyuki Girardelli (Istanbul Technical University) on the circulation of Chinese and Japanese porcelains and objects in the Ottoman court.
The event concluded with reflections on future collaborative initiatives within the “Culture of Peace” series. By bringing together historical, literary, and material approaches, the workshop underscored the city’s remarkable legacy as a shared heritage and a space of ongoing cultural encounter.
The following day, Saturday, October 18, participants enjoyed a guided tour of the historic Galata–Karaköy district of Istanbul, led by art historians Bilge Ar (Istanbul Technical University) and Ivana Jevtić (Koç University).