Hasan Bülent Paksoy

Hasan Bülent Paksoy is a Turkish historian (b. 1948 in Ödemiş) who earned his doctoral degree at St. Antony's College of the Oxford University in England with a grant from the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom. The WorldCat (of OCLC) lists 16 entries under his name. Most of them are available online.

Paksoy has also worked in History departments at Ohio State University, Franklin University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Central Connecticut State University and the Middle East Center of Harvard University.

Paksoy, earned his undergraduate degree under the support of a Bostwick Scholarship at Trinity University in the US in 1970. Graduate Degree with USA National Science Foundation project assistantship in 1976 at The University of Texas at Dallas.

In addition to authoring numerous original and historical works, Paksoy is the translator of such historical fiction as The Sun is Also Fire, a short story about the struggle of the Turks of Transoxiana to remain independent of the expanding Caliphate in the 7th century and 8th century.

Publications

Professor Paksoy’s Paper "Governance on Mars" was published in Entelequia. Revista Interdisciplinar, nº 9, primavera 2009 ^[1] in which Professor Paksoy raised a series of questions. On 17 September 2010, at a press conference held in Kremlin, Moscow, introducing the International Space Station Expedition 25 Crew: NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri; NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Shannon Walker; along with Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin.^[2] The Russian Cosmonauts began answering the questions raised by Professor Paksoy beginning at time index 17 minutes, 25 seconds, of the said Press Conference. (Uploaded by NASA television) Video on YouTube On 26 January 2011 it was announced that the PLA Chinese Air Force began issuing pilot licenses for first time as reported by Zhang Qian, People's Daily Online, again, addressing the questions raised by Professor Paksoy.^[3]

During 2006, the second edition of his IDENTITIES: How Governed, Who Pays was issued, which summarizes the Universal principles of governance in history, based on the concept of individual and group identity, with an eye to the future.*^[4]

Between 2001 and 2004, Professor Paksoy served as the Unit Head of the Uysal–Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative (ATON) at Texas Tech University. As such, he took over a website containing 400 words and by the time he returned to teaching, he had provided additional materials (from his personal collection, which he amassed over the previous twenty-five years) in the amount of ten million words. That, in addition to the original collection contained in the so-called "Green Volumes" which he also had digitized, created the first as well as the most comprehensive digital archive on the topic in the world.^[5]

In 1987, Professor Paksoy published the paper “Central Asia’s New Dastans” in Central Asian Survey (Oxford) Vol. 6, No. 1, 1987. pp. 75–92 focusing on the novel Immortal Cliffs by Mammadali Makhmudov (psed.) whose true name is Evril Turan, in Shark Yildizi (Tashkent) October and November (Nos. 9 and 10) in 1981.^[6] As a result, Evril Turan was first rewarded by the Ozbek Government with the highest Honors of the Ozbek Republic in 1992, with the Cholpan Literary Award; then was jailed for the same reason. Evril Turan’s conditions were also reported by Siobhan Dowd, of the International P.E.N. Writers in Prison Committee (November 23, 1999) ^[7] This matter was brought to the attention of the Ozbek Republic President Islam Kerimov by the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in April 2000.^[8] As one result, it was reported that Evril Turan’s imprisonment conditions were "lightened.” Reportedly, Evril Turan is still imprisoned.

During 1999, Professor Paksoy’s ALPAMYSH: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule (Hartford: AACAR, 1989) ^[9] was at first highly praised in the Ozbek press,^[10][11] then involved in an attack by the Ozbek polemicists, which prompted Professor Paksoy to respond with “An Open Letter to the Editorial Board of Hurriyat (Tashkent)” in 2000, which is also included in his Lectures on Central Asia (Malaga: Entelequia, 2010) 2nd Ed.^[12][13] Professor Paksoy’s “Alpamis ve Bamsi Beyrek: iki ad bir destan” ^{[14] [15]} was rendered into Kazakh and republished in the journal Kazak Edebiyeti October 1986 (no. 41) shortly before the Kazak unrest of the same year Jeltoqsan as detailed in his Central Asia Reader: The Rediscovery of History (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994). The matter continues as of 19 June 2011 ^[16]

Professor Paksoy's latest volume is "Humans on Mars." An electronic version can be located at: http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy-13/Paksoy_HUMANS%20ON%20MARS.pdf.

Culminating a project he began 30 years earlier, Professor Paksoy completed translation of "Memoirs: National Existence and Cultural Struggles of Turkistan and Other Muslim Eastern Turks" by Prof Zeki Velidi Togan (Dec 16, 2011).

References