Journalist
and writer (b. 1971, Çorum). He attended Çorum İnönü Primary School and
graduated from Çorum Atatürk High School and Boğaziçi University, Department of
History (1995). He received his master’s degreeat the Department of Medieval
History with his study called Bosna Krallığı: Bağımsızlıktan Osmanlı Fethine Kadar
Bosna (Kingdom of Bosnia: From
Independence to the Ottoman Conquest, Bosnia, 2002). At Gazi University, Social
Sciences Institute, he did his doctorate in the same department with his thesis
Maveraünnehir Bulgarları Hakkındaki
Rivayetlerin Tahlili (Analysis of Rumors about the Bulgarians of
Maveraünnehir, 2005)
He
started as a journalist at the newspaper Zaman in 1992. He was a
columnist and wrote articles about socio-economics for the newspapers Hafta
and then Gündüz from 1993 to 1995. His essays and articles about history
have been published in different collaborative books and reviews such as Yeni Forum,
Çerçeve, İzlenim, Avrasya Dosyası, Stratejik Analiz, Jeoekonomi, Yeni Türkiye,
Folklor Edebiyat, Karadeniz Araştırmaları, Türk Dünyası Tarih Dergisi and Bilgi in
addition to his translation works. He went to Seraglio-Bosnia as a
representative of the Cihan News Agency in 1995. Karatay speaks English,
Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian which means his works are concentrated on the
Balkans and East Europe. After he returned to Turkey, he worked on a project of
the Turkish Historical Society called Türkiye’nin Sosyal ve Kültürel Tarihi
(The Social and Cultural History of Turkey). He had a part in the founding of
the Eurasia Strategic Research Station and he was Chairman of the Department of
Balkan Research from 1999 to 2000. Then he supervised the 37-volume project Türkler
(The Turks), which was organized by the Yeni Türkiye Publishing Center and in
which he wrote the sections En Eski Türk-Slav Dil İlişkileri (The Most
Ancient Language Relations between Turkish and Slavic) and Hırvat ve Sırp
göçlerinde Oğur ilgisi (The Ogur Connection in the Migration of Croats and
Serbs). Furthermore, he concentrated on the problems of Çorum, especially
urbanization, and produced two hundred and forty articles for the newspaper Çorum
Hakimiyet. In 2002 he established Karem Publishing House in Ankara. In 2004
he started to publish a three-monthly academic review called Karadeniz
Araştırmaları. In 2005 he began a large publishing project called Balkanlar
El Kitabı (Handbook of the Balkans) with Bilgen A. Gökdağ. He has studied
the vocabulary of Slav and Finn-Ugor, sometimes extending to Germen languages,
as comparative to the Turkish language. In addition, he has studied the
etymology of Turkish words.
WORKS:
Ba’de Harab’il Bosna (The Bosnian War, 1997), Kosova
Kanlı Ova (Kosova Bloody Plain, 1998), Balkanların
Gülen Çehresi (The Laughing Face of the Balkans, 1999), Hırvat Ulusunun Oluşumu: Erken Ortaçağ’da
Türk-Hırvat İlişkileri (Formation of the Croat Nation: Relations between
the Turkish and Croatian in the Early Middle Ages, 2000), Bosna-Hersek Barış Süreci (The Peace Process of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
2002), İran ile Turan: Hayali Milletler
Çağında Avrasya ve Ortadoğu (Iran and Turan: Eurasia and the Middle East in
an Age of Imaginary Nations, 2003), In
Search of the Lost Tribe: The Origins and Making of the Croatian Nation
(2003).
ANTHOLOGY: The
Turks (with C. C. Oğuz ve H. C. Güzel, 6 volumes, 2002), Balkanlar El Kitabı (Handbook of
Balkans, with B. A. Gökdağ, 2005).
In
addition to these he has translated works and written essays in different
collaborative books.