Contact Info

Professor

Ryan Gingeras is a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and is an expert in modern Eastern European and Middle East history. He is the author of six books, including most recently, The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire. His Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire received short list distinctions for the Rothschild Book Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies and the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize. He has published on a wide variety of topics related to history and politics in such publications as Foreign Affairs, New York Times, Washington Post, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Journal, Iranian Studies, Past & Present, and War on the Rocks. As a faculty member of the Naval Postgraduate School, he has participated and contributed to research and executive education projects on the behalf of the Department of State, Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. In addition to speaking German, Spanish and Turkish fluently, he also possesses working knowledge of Albanian, Macedonian and Greek.

Teaching Interests:

History Great Power Competition

History of Modern Europe

History, Politics and Strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea

SELECT PUBLICATIONS:

Books

• The Last Days of the Empire (London: Penguin Press, 2022).
• Eternal Dawn: Turkey in the Age of Atatürk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
• Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
• Heir to the Empire: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Heroin, Organized Crime and the Making of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
• Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912-1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Selected Articles and Book Chapters:

• “Istanbul Confidential: Heroin, Espionage and Politics in Cold War Turkey, 1945-1960,” Diplomatic History 37.4 (2013), 779-806.

• “Poppy Politics: American Agents, Iranian Addicts and Afghan Opium, 1945-1980,” Iranian Studies (2012).

• “In the Hunt for the Sultans of Smack: Dope, Gangsters and the Construction of the Turkish Deep State,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Summer 2011), 426-441.

• “Last Rites for a ‘Pure Outlaw’: Clandestine Service, Historiography and the Origins of the Turkish ‘Deep State’,” Past and Present 206 (February 2010), 121-144.

• “Opium Trails: Turkey and the Making of the Modern Heroin Trade,” in Paul Gootenberg (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Drug History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

• “An Empire Unredeemed: Tracing the Ottoman State’s Path towards Collapse,” in Thomas Martin, et al (eds.), Ends of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

• “The French Connection: A Brief History,” in James Windle, et al (eds.), Historical Perspective on Organized Crime and Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2018).

Selected Policy-Related Articles:

• “Why Erdogan Might Choose War with Greece,” War on the Rocks, October 5, 2022.
• “Dogfight Over the Aegean: Turkish-Greek Relations in Light of Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, June 8, 2022.
• “If Putin Stumbles, Will Erdogan Recalibrate?” War on the Rocks, March 2, 2022.
• “The U.S. formally recognized the Armenian genocide. Why now, a century later?” Washington Post, April 24, 2021.
• “What a Retired Sailor Teaches us about Turkey?” War on the Rocks, October 21, 2020
• “Blue Homeland: The Heated Politics behind Turkey’s New Maritime Strategy,” War on the Rocks, 2 June 2020.
• with Nicholas Danforth, “Turkey’s Plan to Move Refugees to Syria Is Dangerous,” New York Times, 7 October 2019.
• “Ottoman Ghosts: Imperial Memories in Turkey and Syria,” Foreign Affairs, 6 October 2016