Enes Şamil Kiraz

I am a DPhil student in History at St. Catherine's College, and I am broadly interested in the Russian and Ottoman empires at the turn of the 20th century. My DPhil dissertation is on the Russo-Ottoman borderlands in the Caucasus from the Treaty of Berlin of 1878 until the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. My thesis explores how the two empires interacted, how the local populations coexisted, and how inter-regional and inter-imperial relations intersected in the Caucasus in the post-Berlin Treaty environment.

I hold a BA degree in History and a Minor degree in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University. Before joining Oxford, I finished my MA in International Relations at Bilkent University with a thesis entitled "A Tale of Two Wars: The Russo-Japanese War and the Ottoman Public Opinion". During my MA, I served the faculty as a part-time research assistant.

Publications:
“Becoming Russia or Becoming Japan? The Russo-Japanese War and the Ottoman Public Opinion.” Turkish Historical Review 16:1 (Spring 2025).
Review of Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State, by Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky. Slavonic and East European Review 102:3 (July 2024): 579-581.