TÜBA Young Academy Member Dr. Özbay Receives Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award

TÜBA GEBİP Award winner, Istanbul Medeniyet University Faculty Member Assoc. Prof. Betül Özbay is the author of 'Unveiling the Past: Women's Rights in Ancient Turkic Legal Documents from the Turfan Oasis' and received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Georg Forster Senior Researcher Award.

Dr. Özbay stated that the project proposal aims to reveal the representation of women's legal status and rights in the Uyghur society, with an emphasis on civil documents written between the 12th and 14th centuries in the Turfan region, and that the project represents a very important step that sheds light on the historical roots of women's legal rights in pre-Islamic Turkish society.

Stating that she had previously worked on a voluminous archive of manuscripts excavated from the Turfan Valley and its surroundings in the East Turkistan region of China, most of which are preserved in various cities in Europe, Assoc. Prof. Betül Özbay said, 'My research on ancient Turkish civil documents has been going on for about four years. Since most of the original manuscripts are located in Berlin, it is a very valuable opportunity for me to continue my research in Germany; at this point, the support of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, the host institution where I plan to continue the first phase of the project, has been extremely important. I also believe that the team of the Old Uyghur dictionary project at the Institute of Turkology and Central Asian Studies at the University of Georg-August-Göttingen will make an invaluable contribution to the finalization of the project, which will provide an important framework for the social and legal rights of women in ancient Turkic society.'

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Georg Forster Research Fellowship allows highly qualified scientists and academics who have completed their PhD in less than 12 years to conduct long-term research in Germany. The fellowship is awarded to young, successful researchers who are making a difference in their field of research and bringing solutions to the problems of developing countries. This award, which covers all fields of scientific research, is given to approximately 10 people from developing countries each year.

Who is Assoc. Prof. Betül Özbay?

She started her higher education at Eskişehir Anadolu University, Department of Turkish Language and Literature in 2003. In the fall semester of 2006-2007, she studied at the Altaic Department of Szeged University in Hungary for a semester with the student exchange program. In 2008, she graduated from the undergraduate program and in 2010 she graduated from Yıldız Technical University (YTÜ), Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Old Turkish Language. During the 2011-2012 academic year, she studied Old Turkish and Middle Iranian languages at Freie University and Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Germany. In 2012, her PhD thesis on Middle Iranian languages was supervised by Prof. Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, Director of the Turfan Research Center at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Nicholas Sims-Williams, Director of the Cambridge Foundation for Ancient India and Iran. In 2016, she successfully completed her thesis titled 'Orta İran Dilleri ve Eski Uygurca Mani Yazılı Metinlerin Paleografik Özellikleri' and received the title of doctor. In 2017, with the support of TUBİTAK, she completed her post-doctoral studies at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences on 'Partça Bir İlahi Metni ile Eski Türkçe Bir Duanın Rekonstrüksiyonu'. Özbay's first book, 'Huastuanift Manihaist Uygurların Tövbe Duası', published by the Turkish Language Association in 2014, had its second edition published in 2019. Continuing her studies on Manichaeism, Central Iranian languages and Old Turkish, Özbay's book 'Manihaist Bir İlahi Huyadagmān Partça, Soğdca, Eski Uygurca, Metin ve Çeviri', which includes the Turkish translation of a text written in Parthian and Sogdian, one of the first Iranian languages in Türkiye, was published in June 2020.

Assoc. Prof. Betül Özbay from Istanbul Medeniyet University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Turkish Language and Literature, Division of Old Turkic Language, has been awarded the 2020 TÜBA-GEBİP Award.