Tunc, Tanfer Emin (Author)
Gokhan Tunc (Author)
On 27 December 1939, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Erzincan, Turkey, claiming close to 33 000 lives, and leaving 100 000 injured and 250 000 homeless. World War II was in its initial stages, and the USA was particularly concerned about the vulnerable situation in Turkey, since there was a possibility that it would join forces with Germany, as the Ottoman Empire had done in World War I. Consequently, the Turkish request for information on ‘a type of quake resistant concrete construction understood to have been developed in California’, resulted in a flurry of correspondence between numerous Turkish and American actors, including the US State Department, which supplied this material with notable attentiveness. As this article will argue, this request not only represents an early critical juncture in the transfer of earthquake engineering knowledge from the USA to Turkey, but also illustrates how diplomacy and engineering can intersect at pivotal points in time. Engineers and other scientific experts strengthened the Turkish–American relationship during this period, thereby laying the foundation of the technical cooperation that would flourish during the Cold War. This watershed moment also resulted in immediate developments in Turkey, such as the development of a comprehensive national disaster management programme, a seismic zone map, and earthquake building codes.
...More
Book
Aleksandŭr Kostov;
(2015)
Инженерството на Балканите от началото на XVIII век до Първата световна война
(/isis/citation/CBB765213878/)
Article
Anduaga, Aitor;
(2011)
The Engineer as a “Linking Agent” in International Technology Transfer: The Case of Basque Engineers Trained in Liège
(/isis/citation/CBB001033627/)
Thesis
Plafcan, Daniel John, Jr.;
(2007)
Between State and Transnational Community: United States--Japan Technoscientific Diplomacy in Earth Observation
(/isis/citation/CBB001560790/)
Article
Sá, Magali Romero;
(2009)
Medicina, ciência e poder: as relações entre França, Alemanha e Brasil no período de 1919 a 1942
(/isis/citation/CBB000932950/)
Article
Li, Xuetong;
(2007)
Justice, Right and Benefit: Negotiation between Chinese Scholars and Sven Hedin in 1927
(/isis/citation/CBB000933504/)
Article
Neswald, Elizabeth;
(2013)
Strategies of International Community-Building in Early Twentieth-Century Metabolism Research: The Foreign Laboratory Visits of Francis Gano Benedict
(/isis/citation/CBB001252353/)
Article
Grant, Susan;
(2015)
The American Hospital in Moscow: A Lesson in International Cooperation, 1917--23
(/isis/citation/CBB001552806/)
Article
Nishimura, Shigehiro;
(2011)
International Patent Control and Transfer of Knowledge: The United States and Japan before World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB001211692/)
Article
Anduaga, Aitor;
(2014)
Earthquake Building Overseas: Military Engineers, Cyclonic-Seismic Affinity and the Spanish Dominion in the Philippines, 1860--1898
(/isis/citation/CBB001450025/)
Article
Fangerau, Heiner;
(2007)
Biology and War---American Biology and International Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000931559/)
Article
Shinozuka, Jeannie N.;
(2013)
Deadly Perils: Japanese Beetles and the Pestilential Immigrant, 1920s--1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB001201823/)
Essay Review
Brummett, Palmira;
(2011)
Essay Review
(/isis/citation/CBB001500513/)
Article
Reisman, Arnold;
(2008)
They Helped Modernize Turkey's Medical Education and Practice: Refugees from Nazism 1933--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB000931580/)
Book
Giancarlo, Casale;
(2010)
The Ottoman Age of Exploration
(/isis/citation/CBB001500512/)
Article
Kendra, James;
Nigg, Joanne;
(2014)
Engineering and the Social Sciences: Historical Evolution of Interdisciplinary Approaches to Hazard and Disaster
(/isis/citation/CBB001550639/)
Article
Yusupova, T. I.;
(2010)
Russian-Mongolian Scientific Cooperation: Origins and Development
(/isis/citation/CBB001211353/)
Article
Lamy, Jérôme;
(2011)
What Management Does to Space Projects: The Franco-Soviet Project ARCAD 3 in the Late 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB001230581/)
Article
Eden, Alp;
Irzik, Gürol;
(2012)
German Mathematicians in Exile in Turkey: Richard Von Mises, William Prager, Hilda Geiringer, and Their Impact on Turkish Mathematics
(/isis/citation/CBB001251214/)
Article
Kadioǧlu, Sevtap;
(2007-2008)
Emigré Scientists at the Ankara Higher Institute of Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB000931519/)
Article
Halfon, Saul;
(2006)
The Disunity of Consensus: International Population Policy Coordination as Socio-Technical Practice
(/isis/citation/CBB000671326/)
Be the first to comment!