Prof. Türkan OLCAY

Biography

Türkan Olcay graduated from the Department of Russian philology at the Plovdiv University "Paisiy Hilendarski". She has been teaching her major and counseling master’s and doctoral dissertations at the Department of Russian language and literature in the Faculty of Letters of Istanbul University where in January 2012 became a full Professor. Beside that Olcay served as a guest professor at Anatolian University (Eskishehir, Turkey), visiting professor at “L. N. Gumilev” Eurasian National University (Astana, Kazakhstan) and also gave lectures at Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski" (Bulgaria) and Masaryk University of Brno (Czech Republıc). Her fields of specialisation are 19th century Russian literature, Turkish-Russian cultural and literal relations, as well as the life and socio-cultural activities of the Russian immigrants (known as "White  Russians") in Istanbul in the 1920’s. She has participated in many international conferences and written numerous publications including above ninety articles and four books (Spoken and Written Expression, Chapter 1; The Naturalist School in Russian Literature; Ivan S. Turgenev; Russian Literature of the First Half of the 19th Century). Her published works include a wide range of articles on reception of the Russian literature in Tukey, the contribution of Russian Immigrants to the cultural life of Istanbul in 1920s, A. P. Chekov’s plays on the Turkish scene, and Russian traces on the Istanbul scene, amongst many others.