Academic background
Drs. Armand Sag was born in the year 1984 in the Dutch city Utrecht. In 2004, while attending the University of Utrecht, he finished his Teacher College: History and State Apparatus propaedeutics 'with great honor'. He graduated from Utrecht University with a bachelor History 'with honor' and a minor Turkology 'with highest honor' in 2008. His bachelor thesis was about the Janissaries in the Ottoman Empire from 1425 until 1550. He received his master's degree in International Relations with the international 'upper class'-grade average at Utrecht University in 2009. His master thesis dealt with the emerging international relations between the Netherlands and Turkey from 1612 onwards, thus making his specialization Turkish History.

Career in science
In 2010, at the age of 25, Armand Sag founded the Institute for Turkish Studies, where he is currently working as chairman and senior researcher. As senior researcher, he focuses mainly on issues around Turkology, Turkish history and international relations of Eurasia (specifically: the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Turkish-Dutch relations). Within the institute, he is the founding editor-in-chief of the academic journal 'International Review of Turkish Studies', which is published by the Institute for Turkish Studies. He is currently also a Ph.D.-fellow, earning his Ph.D. in history in the field of the Ottoman Balkans during the period of 1908 until 1923, more specifically the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Prior to this, Armand Sag was working as a historian at a Turkish history museum called 'Museum Turkey - The Netherlands' in the city Hoorn, the Netherlands from 2008 until 2010. In addition, Armand Sag regularly gave classes at Utrecht University during his master's study due to his academic career ambitions.

In December of 2010 he completed his first book, 'History and more; reflections of a historian' [the original title is: 'Historie en meer; overpeinzingen van een historicus'] which came out on April 22th, 2011. The book is currently on sale at all major bookstores in the Netherlands as well as on online internet bookshops, including the biggest online bookshop of the Netherlands: the well-known Dutch Bol.com website.

Well-known
Drs. Armand Sag is currently writing in Turkish for his weekly column 'Contemporary Europe' ['Avrupa Gündemi' in Turkish] for the website TurkishForum.com.tr. He also has a monthly Dutch column called 'My thoughts' [or 'Mijn overpeinzingen' in Dutch] in Platform Magazine. The Dutch quarterly magazine Tulpia also publishes articles by Armand Sag on a regularly basis. Furthermore, he writes articles on international relations for the news portal Alles In Perspectief.nl [or 'Everything In Perspective'], where he also works as the editor-in-chief.

Armand Sag has especially received attention due to the following statements in his articles:
1. his plea for an unified Europe by giving more responsibilities to the European Union and to also have one common language allong with a central policy and structure with a governmental system;
2. his support to abolish the Dutch royal house;
3. his claim that the Turkish-Dutch international relations started with a de facto and de jure recognition of the Netherlands by the Ottoman Turks, accordingly the Turks were the first to recognize the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

Read more...

© Armand Sağ 2008 - 2012