Robert Olson

Robert Olson "is a professor of Middle East History and Politics at the University of Kentucky. He received his Ph.D. in 1973 from Indiana University. Olson is the author of The Siege of Mosul and Ottoman-Persian Relations, 1718-1743: A Study of Rebellion in the Capital and War in the Provinces of the Ottoman Empire (1975), translated into Arabic (1983); The Ba'th and Syria, 1947-1979: An Interpretative Historical Essay (1980); The Ba'th and Syria from the French Mandate to the Era of Hafez al-Asad, 1947-1982 (1982); The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion: 1880-1925 (1989); translated into Turkish (1989); translated into Persian (1999); translated into Kurdish (2000); translated into Arabic (2003); (paperback) The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism (1991); Imperial Meanderings and Republican By-Ways: Essays on Eighteenth Century Ottoman and Twentieth Century History of Turkey (1996); The Kurdish Question and Turkish-Iranian Relations: From World War I to 1998 (1998); revised and translated into Arabic under the title The Kurdish Question and Turkish-Iranian Relations: From World War I to 2000 (2001), translated into Persian (2002); Turkey's Relations with Iran, Syria, Israel and Russia, 1991-2000: The Kurdish and Islamist Questions (2001) and Masale Kurd va Revabet-e Iran va Turkiye/The Kurdish Question in Turkish-Iranian Relations in the Twentieth Century (In Persian, 2002). Turkey's Relations with Iran, 1979-2004: War, Revolution, Ideology, War, Coups and Geopolitics (2004). Editor: Islamic and Middle Eastern Societies: A Festschrift in Honor of Wadie Jwaideh (1987); The Kurdish Movement in Turkey in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East (1996); Co-editor: Orientalism, Islam and Islamists (1985), translated into Turkish (1992), and Iran: Essays on a Revolution in the Making (1981).

"Professor Olson is the author of some 70 research articles, 80 essays and reference works and 190 book reviews. He has been Fulbright Senior Professor of Research in the Middle East Civilization Program Fellowship (1990-91); University Research Professor, (1995-96); Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial University Professor (1999-2000) and Distinguished Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences (2000-01). He received the Best Book Award from the Third World Studies Association in 1999-2000. From 2000-2004 Professor Olson has served on the Strategic Assessment Group for the Central Intelligence Agency's Turkey Future Panel: 2000-2010 and the Kurdish Question." 


 * Advisory Committee, Washington Kurdish Institute