Who is Ilyas Topsakal, where is he from, how old is he, what is his education, profession and what does he do? Here are the details about Ilyas Topsakal.

Prof. Dr. Ilyas Topsakal Biography

Ilyas Topsakal was born in Samsun, Turkey in 1970. After completing his primary and secondary education at Samsun Imam Hatip High School, he enrolled in the Faculty of Theology at Erciyes University in 1989 and graduated in 1994. In the same year, he began his master’s degree at the Department of Islamic History and Arts at Marmara University’s Institute of Social Sciences.

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Ilyas Topsakal’s Career

In 1995, he became a research assistant in the Department of Islamic History at the Faculty of Theology at Çukurova University. From 1997 to 2000, he received a scholarship to study Turkish dialects and the Russian language in Russia and Kazakhstan to enhance his knowledge and skills related to his master’s thesis. After completing his master’s thesis on “The Volga Bulgars and Islam in the 10th-12th Centuries,” he began his doctoral studies in the same department. In 2007, he obtained his doctorate with his thesis on “Orthodox Missionary Activities and Turks in the Idil-Ural Region According to Russian Missionary Sources”. In the same year, he became a research assistant at the Department of Islamic History and Arts at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Theology. From 2008 to 2010, he completed his post-doctoral studies on the subject of Russian Missionary Ilminskiy and his system in the History Department at the University of Reading in England. He also gave seminars for master’s and doctoral students at the university for an additional year at their request.

After returning to Turkey in 2011, he applied for associate professorship and obtained the title in June 2012 with his studies on Siberian history, which is the first in Turkey in the field of General Turkish History. He has also conducted joint projects with the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which are still ongoing. He initiated Siberian History and Culture courses at Istanbul University to support his studies. Ilyas Topsakal became a professor in December 2017 and has been serving as the head of the Department of General Turkish History at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Letters since January 2018. He also serves as the Vice Chairman of the Silivri Prisons Monitoring Committee.

He has many articles in popular magazines about the Turkic world. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Turkic Studies Research for 10 years between 2003 and 2013. During this time, he also served as a project manager and researcher in many projects abroad as the R&D director of the Turkic World Studies Foundation and gave conferences to the public and students in various parts of Turkey. He is fluent in English, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish dialects. In addition to his four published books, he has served as an editor in various languages and has published dozens of articles in various journals.