Dr. Timur Kocaoğlu, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at James Madison College, and Associate Director Emeritus of the Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, met with Saida Mirziyoyeva, daughter of Uzbekistani President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and deputy chairwoman of Uzbekistan’s Information and Mass-Media Agency, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on December 15, 2022.

Saida Mirziyoyeva directs a new project on the Jadidist Movement in Central Asia aimed at re-launching the Jadidist movement aimed at modernization and democratization in Uzbekistan. In particular, the project will involve organizing an international exhibition on Uzbek and Central Asian Reformists and introducing the teaching of Jadidism in the country’s school curricula.

Jadidism was a reformist movement among the Muslim populations of the Tsarist Russia between 1880 and 1920. The Jadid intellectuals in Turkistan (Central Asia’s historical name) have opened modern schools and published newspapers and journals to popularize Jadidist ideas among the Central Asian peoples. Later - between 1934 and 1940 - the Soviet government arrested most of the Jadid intellectuals and executed them. The Jadidist period, with its rich record of poetry, prose fiction, and drama, is regarded now as a national heritage of democracy, free speech, and human rights for the peoples of the present day Central Asian countries.

During their conversation, Saida Mirziyoyeva offered Dr. Kocaoğlu the opportunity to become head adviser in this prestigious project, and proposed that his father’s house in Bukhara, Uzbekistan be turned into a Museum of Jadidism and research library. A quote from Saida Mirziyoyeva’s remarks about her meeting with Dr. Kocaoğlu [English translation from Uzbek and Russian]: ‘’Yesterday, we had a very interesting meeting with Timur Kocaoğlu, the son of Usman Hocaoğlu, one of the leaders of the People’s Republic of Bukhara, a Turkish historian, political scientist, researcher of the Jadidism movement and their aims in their constitutions. During the conversation, objectives were determined for the implementation of joint plans (projects) that reveal the essence of Jadidism.”

A biographical note:

Dr. Kocaoğlu's is a Turkish historian, political scientist, researcher of the Jadidism Movement. His interests include linguistics, cultural history, and politics in Central Eurasia. He has previously taught at Marmara University and Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey before joining MSU in August 2011. He is author and editor of several books and scholarly articles on linguistics, history, and politics in Turkish and English including The Reform Movements and Revolutions in Turkistan 1900-1924 (SOTA Publications, 2001), Karay: The Trakai Dialect (Lincon Europa Academic Publishers, 2006), and the chapter “Past as Prologue? Challenging the Myth of the Subordinated, Docile Woman in Muslim Central Eurasia" in the book Gender Politics in Post-Communist Eurasia (Editors: Katherine O'Sullivan, Linda Racioppi; Michigan State University Press, 2009). His current research focuses on the reform movements and constitutional ideas in the Muslim Central Eurasia prior to the Soviet period between 1850 and 1923.