Faculty Lecturer
Coordinator, Turkish Language Program
Veysel Şimşek teaches modern Turkish and Ottoman Turkish at McGill University. Previously, he taught these languages in Turkey and Canada to various groups of students from Turkish and other backgrounds. He also has considerable experience with translating and publishing documents, manuscripts, and printed material in Ottoman Turkish. Prior to his current appointment at the Institute of Islamic Studies, he held a Chauncey Postdoctoral Fellowship with International Security Studies of Yale University (2016-18), and served as a postdoctoral research fellow and interim codirector of the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) of McGill University (2015-16). His research interests include political, social, and intellectual history of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic (c. 1750–1950), and he has taught various courses on Ottoman, Middle Eastern and World History at Yale, McMaster, and Bilkent.
Education
2015 PhD, History, McMaster University, Canada
2005 MA, History, Bilkent University, Turkey
2002 BSc, Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Fall-Winter Semesters
ISLA 232/632D Introductory Turkish
ISLA 333/633D Lower Intermediate Turkish
ISLA 434/634D Higher-Intermediate Turkish
Winter Semester
ISLA 560 Ottoman Turkish
For questions and syllabi, don’t hesitate toveysel.simsek [at] mcgill.ca ( contact me by email).
Here’s also an introductory video on the Turkish language, its history, development, and basic grammar rules:
00:00 Introduction; Turkish Speaking Populations of the World
03:21 History of the Turkish Language
07:30 Ottoman Turkish
11:24 General Remarks on the Turkish Grammar
17:26 Some Administrative Notes on the Turkish Courses offered at McGill
20:15 Closing Remarks on the Turkish Culture, History, and People
Refereed Publications
Books/Edited Volumes
(with Frank Castiglioni and Ethan Menchinger) eds., Ottoman War and Peace: Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan. Leiden: Brill, 2019: xxvi+448
(with Virginia H. Aksan) eds., “Living Empire: Ottoman Identities in Transition, 1700–1850.” Special issue, The Journal of Ottoman Studies, no. 44 (2014): 9–501
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“Mercenaries and Conscripts: Ottoman Infantry, c. 1750-1920.” In “Infantry Warfare from Ancient Times to Today.” Special Issue. Società Italiana di Storia Militare (forthcoming in 2026)
“Visualizing the Ottoman Menzils and Travel Times (c. 1830) through Digital Tools.” In “Putting the Ottomans on the Map.” Special Issue. International Journal of Turkish Studies (forthcoming in 2025)
“Under Fire and Lice: Experiences of an Ottoman Soldier in World War I and the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922)” in Ottoman War and Peace: Ottoman War and Peace: Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan, eds. Frank Castiglioni, Ethan Menchinger and Veysel Simsek (Leiden: Brill, 2019): 143–156
“‘Backstabbing Arabs’ and ‘Shirking Kurds’: History, Nationalism, and Turkish Memory of World War I.” In The Great War: From Memory to History, eds. Jonathan Vance et al. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015: 99–126
“The First ‘Little Mehmeds’: Conscripts for the Ottoman Army, 1826–53.” The Journal of Ottoman Studies, no. 44 (2014): 265–311
Other Publications
“Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Düzenli Ordu için Asker Toplanması: 1826–1853” [Recruitment for the Regular Army in the Ottoman Empire: 1826–1853]. Toplumsal Tarih [Social History, Istanbul], no. 198 (2010): 36–42
Transcription of selected early nineteenth–century Ottoman constitutional texts. In 1815–1847, vol. 2 of Quellen zur Europäischen Verfassungsgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert [Handbook of European Constitutional History in the Nineteenth Century]. Bonn: J. H. W Dietz Nachfolger, 2010. CD–ROM
Holbrook, Victoria, “Hüsn–ü Aşk’a Önsöz.” Trans. Veysel Simsek and Emrah Pelvanoğlu. Yasakmeyve, no. 12 (2005): 52–59
Ongoing Digital Humanities Projects
Visualizing the pilgrimage routes and travel times in the Indian Ocean World, c. 1500–1900
Visualizing the road/messenger networks in the Balkans and the Middle East, c. 1830
Creating animated battlemaps featuring the Ottomans’ “Long Great War” in the Balkans and the Middle East, 1912–1922
