Bursa Uludağ University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
Assoc. Prof. Hacer Karabağ Arslan
History of Republican Turkey · Socio-economic History · Urban and Rural History
I study the recent history of Turkey through the social and economic transformations of its cities and rural communities. I am a faculty member in the Department of History at Bursa Uludağ University. My work examines agriculture, migration, production and modernisation through archival documents, statistics and oral history, and connects local experience with national and international developments.
Research areas
Rural and agrarian transformation
Agricultural change in the Bursa countryside after 1945, village inventory surveys, US agricultural policy and oral history; extended to 1907–2023 by a TÜBİTAK 1001 project.
The War of Independence: Bursa, Yalova, İzmir
Occupation, propaganda, Red Cross reports, the prisoner exchange at Lausanne and the 1923 Turkish–Greek population exchange.
Economic history of the early Republic
Foreign capital and nationalisation, the Bursa Electricity Company, land sales to foreigners.
Yalova and Atatürk
Atatürk’s years in Bursa and Yalova, the Free Republican Party, the Turkish History Thesis; the Yalova history symposium volumes.
Urban history and cultural heritage
Exhibitions, documentaries and local history projects; urban memory and a planned agricultural museum.
Women, education and society
Women in the First Grand National Assembly, rural women and education, the Village Institutes.
Selected work
- 2025
Atatürk Bursa’sında Modernleşme: Lider ve Şehir
Bursa Metropolitan Municipality Culture Co., 310 pp.
- 2026
Occupational Fit and Agrarian Reordering in Bursa: Labor, Production, and Forced Migration After the 1923 Turkish–Greek Population Exchange
Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 28(6), 1–24
- 2026
Birinci Meclis’in Gizli Oturumlarında Kadın (1920–1923): Tartışmalar ve Yaklaşımlar
Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 26(52), 215–246
DOI · Open access
- 2025
Lozan Bağlamında Türk-Yunan Esir Değişimi: ICRC Gözlemleri ve Raporlarıyla Tarihsel Bir İnceleme
Vakanüvis 10(2), 1964–2020
DOI · Open access
About
I am a faculty member in the Department of History (Chair of the History of the Turkish Republic) at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Bursa Uludağ University. My research focuses on how social and economic change from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic was experienced in cities and in rural life. Agricultural history, rural transformation, urban history, migration and the population exchange are my main fields. Starting from Bursa and its region, I examine changing relations of production, population movements, foreign capital, public services and the modernisation policies of the Republic. Reading local sources against the changing conditions of Turkey and the world, I trace the links between large historical processes and the places where people lived.