The Mayor visits SOAS
10 December 2008
Dr Benjamin Fortna, Head of the SOAS History Department, first met London Mayor Boris Johnson during the filming of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, which featured Mayor Johnson’s various intriguing forbears. In the Mayor’s background is a Turkish branch of the family whose most prominent member, Ali Kemal, was a well-known journalist and politician in early 20th-Century Istanbul. He ran afoul of the emerging nationalist group that was coalescing around Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), leading to Ali Kemal’s death in 1922.
When a recent seminar at SOAS, part of the Seminars on Turkey series, featured a talk by Dr Laurent Mignon about this ill-fated relative, Dr Fortna invited Mayor Johnson to attend the event. All keen to learn about their relative, Mayor Johnson, his father, and several other family members made appearances at the School to hear the lecture.
Dr Benjamin Fortna of the SOAS History Department, Mayor Boris Johnson, Dr Laurent Mignon from Bilkent Univ in Ankara, Mayor Johnson’s father Stanley and Stanley’s wife Jen.
