A First Issue Letter from the Editors
In Turkey, there has been a growing interest in Africa for at least the past ten years. This is a reflection of expanding and intensifying economic, diplomatic and cultural relations between Turkey and the various African countries. However, there has been no parallel growth in knowledge in comparison to this growth in interest. To the Turkish public, and particularly to Turkish intellectuals, Africa remains a great enigma, a dark continent full of obscurities. The current state of knowledge and of perspectives on Africa is very limited, poor and prejudiced.
There is of course an accumulating knowledge, but the problem is that this knowledge is not systematic and historical. Additionally, it is distorted by false and biased perspectives. The first-hand knowledge of Turkish entrepreneurs, teachers and doctors living in different parts of the continent seems to be generating a peculiar “Turkish orientalism”. These Turks often place their pure and altruistic intentions of being in a naïve and needy Africa in contrast to the Western world’s opportunist, exploitative and cruel presence in the continent that has persisted for so many centuries. In addition to this “neo-Ottoman orientalism”, there are countless daily geo-political analyses by various strategists, but these are superficial and remain, by their very nature, oriented toward state/national interests. To be sure, there are also some social scientists working on Africa, but unfortunately they are very few and since they work individually and not collectively, their efforts are not enough to overcome these problems.
All of these problems and one-sided perspectives demonstrate a pressing need for a collective effort of social science on Africa which can provide new insights, orientations and a stronger awareness about the continent’s past and present. The Center for African Studies (CAS) of Ankara University was founded in 2008 with these thoughts and goals in mind. Toward these ends, the most important initiative of the center was to
Ankara Üniversitesi Afrika Çalışmaları Dergisi Cilt 1 • Sayı 1 • Güz 2011
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start an M.A. program of African studies in 2010. Thanks to this interdisciplinary program, students are getting courses on African anthropology, history, geography, economy, politics and law. In the medium term, the realistic goal of the M.A. program is to provide students with a general intellectual formation regarding Africa. With the benefit of various forms of institutional support, students can conduct field research in Africa during the process of writing their theses, thereby further strengthening this formation. We also hope that some of these students will eventually go abroad to join the PhD programs of African studies centers in various parts of the world. Only then can these young scholars solidify and consolidate the African studies in Turkey in the long run.
AFRİKA: Ankara University Journal of African Studies is a new
activity of CAS which aims to encourage and carry forward the study of Africa in Turkey. The journal is open to all researchers working on Africa in various disciplines of social science. Actually, we should say Africas as opposed to Africa, since there are in fact many Africas. Africa is a landmass whose surface area is larger than Europe, the USA and China combined. It is a continent of great diversities. Therefore, we hope to receive specific studies, in either Turkish, English or French, which focus upon different and particular Africas. Only as such can we go beyond the very general and often biased comments on Africa. Ebru Çoban Öztürk’s article in this issue on the Rwandan Genocide is a fine example of this concern.
Yet, while there are many Africas, there is also a global Africa. As the historian Michael O. West has written, “The global Africa idea holds that Africans and people of African descent worldwide share a common set of historical experiences, most notably slavery, colonialism, racial oppression, and their many consequences.”1
Although the existence of the African diaspora (Africans or people of African descent who, by choice or force, are living outside of Africa) goes back hundreds -if not thousands of years, social scientists are more concerned with the modern world, or to be more precise, the modern world-system. If there is a price of the modern world, black Africans are the ones who have paid that price the more than any others. These people, who share the same skin color, have been among the poorest, the most oppressed and the most excluded of every country they have lived in. And sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest continent-wide region in the world. For these reasons, studying global Africa also means studying the emergence, functioning and future of the modern world.
1
Michael O. West, “Global Africa: The Emergence and Evolution of an Idea”, Review, C. 28, No. 1 (2005), s. 86.
A First Issue Letter from the Editors
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This shared historical experience and destiny of African peoples has created in global Africa a strong and profound culture of black consciousness, radicalism and resistance. Black thinkers have undermined the legitimacy of Western universalism/enlightenment and offered new ways of thinking about continental Africa, global Africa and the world order. Emerging African studies in Turkey has a lot to learn from this tradition. Publishing Barış Ünlü’s article on Frantz Fanon and Jeffrey Howison’s on Walter Rodney -two very influential intellectuals of global Africa- in our first issue is therefore not a coincidence. The first issue of AFRİKA is thus a call for thinking on a wider Africa in a wider world without being locked up in specific Africas.
The field of mainstream African studies in the 20th century emerged and developed to support certain governmental and capitalist interests throughout the world. This might be the case for Turkey in the 21st century as well. But there also emerged alternative and critical studies of Africa in the USA, Europe and Africa in reaction to these mainstream “Africanists”. The AFRİKA journal is also hoping to open an alternative road for African studies in Turkey. Yet, this road is full of difficulties, of which the hardest one is to find enough social scientists studying Africa. Therefore, attracting and maintaining the active support of people who care about, who are interested in and who work on Africa is of great importance for us. The new journal AFRİKA is thus a call for collective working, and it is with great excitement that we publish this first issue.
