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Considering Feroz Ahmad’s contribution to Turkish world of thought, it is not possible not to see its two distinct features. The first one is the continuity in Feroz Ahmad’s thesis. In the texts he wrote in the recent past, he did not reject the thesis that he produced in the early stages. Secondly, he pursued the reverse chronology while trying to understand the history or the development and structure of Turkey. In his books focusing on the general history of Turkey, the starting point goes backwards at each phase. The book which has a significant weight in Feroz Ahmad’s world of thought is his first book: “The Young Turks”. One can see the shadow of the book “The Young Turks” on most of the texts he wrote afterwards. On the other hand, the books “The Turkish Experiment in Democracy” and “The Making Of Modern Turkey” are considered to have a successful place in the Turkish world of thought. “Turkey, The Quest for Identity” is like a summary of the author’s intellectual history. Feroz Ahmad discussed almost every point in the last hundred and fifty years of history of Turkey. His main thesis concentrate on the Young Turks, Kemalism and relation between military and politics. He seriously tried to figure out the class structure of Turkey and transformation of the army depending on time, politics and economic structure. In fact, his primary concern seems like trying to tell the matter over classes, status quo and the army. While putting emphasis on the idea that there is a continuity in the economic policies of Young Turks and Kemalists, he argued that it would be correct to consider the Republic as a disengagement from the past. While doing these, he partly conflicted with the right - left thesis and partly produced ideas in parallel with these thesis.
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The Phyrgian Kingdom situated in central Anatolia has always attracted the attention of researchers both as a powerful kingdom and in terms of her kings whose names have always been remembered throughout the history. The research on the ancient sources can give way to the possibility of bringing a new point of view to this civilization, which has come to our present day through legends and myths. During the pre-historic period and also during the Christian era, various philosophers, scientists and writers have studied the Phyrgian Kingdom and the ruling kings and have tried to explore this mysterious civilization. This article aims to study various written sources on the great Phyrgian king Midas, which have not yet been translated into Turkish. These sources are mainly the works of many ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, poets and historians such as Hesiodos, Herodotus, Ovidius, Plutharkos, and Marcus J, Justinus. We believe that it is important for these works to be made known to the modern reader. Thus, we have studied these sources using their English and Russian translations from Ancient Grek and Latin. We have observed that the ancient philosophers’ ideas on the legendary Phyrgian king Midas, as well as those of the modern researchers. These views sometimes overlap with one another, but sometimes do not. Nowadays, through scientific research and archaeological excavations, the dispute on the king Midas has been gaining new perspectives. This study has shown that the ancient sources are rich in terms of the documents related with Midas (Anatolian Civilizations). With the help of this data in the ancient sources it would be possible to better comprehend the different civilizations which have become sovereign states in Anatolia throughout history. We hope that this study will be a good reference for academicians and researchers who want to carry on their studies on the Phrygian Kingdom.
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Fyodor A. Emin is one of the most interesting writers of the 18th century Russian literature, because when he came to Russia and began to live there it was not well known where he was born and who he was. The famous writer and journalist Novikov and the publisher Kopnin who were his contemporaries tried to write Emin’s biography on the basis of his works and on what he had told them. But the Soviet researchers Beshenkovsky and Arzumanova found several documents in the Russian government archives, which proved that Emin’s ancestors were from Poland and they migrated to Ottoman Turkey. According to these documents, Emin, who had to become a muslim, couldn’t continue to live in Istanbul as an Otoman soldier because of some uncertain reasons and went to Russia. He lived in Russia until the end of his life serving three tsars. Emin as an immigrant was always in need of money and in debt. Several times he wrote official letters to the tsars about his insufficient salaries. At the end Catherine the Great lent him money, and asked to be notified about his every future translation, which would pay back the debt, given by her. Besides, Emin tried to find a kind of solution in the literature life by publishing novels, which were very attractive for the Russian people. In spite of his short literature life and learning Russian quite late, Emin had managed to become a very productive and popular adventure-romance novel writer among the ordinary people. Today Emin from Istanbul is considered to be one of the founders of the Russian novel.
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The Turkish History Thesis was a reflection of Turkism movement that had developed with influences of Crimean, Kazan and Azerbaijani intellectuals and matured during the Republican Period. The thesis was based on the idea that being different from Europe the Turkish culture, language and history were among the world’s ancient cultures and languages. The thesis was expressed in 1930s with the support of Ataturk and became very influential on Turkey’s educational and cultural policies, namely course books. People’s Houses became very functional for practice of the Turkish History Thesis in the field and the branches of the people’s houses made important works on language and culture. In order to simplify and enrich the Turkish language, a special attention was paid and field works were held on determination of place names. The collation branches organized by the people’s houses registered proverbs, mani, games and traditional sports like jeered and wrestling as well as other values belonging to the Turkish culture. Many of them were saved by the efforts of the people’s houses. With the efforts of Departments of Sports, Performance and Language-Literature, Yozgat People’s House made collation in the region and despite its limited possibilities it registered local poets’ poems, local games, proverbs and wedding traditions in Yozgad Newspaper and journals published by the people’s house. Sports and Performance branches did not only revive the traditional games but also brought shadow performances like Karagöz-Hacivat to the remotest villages. In this article, the people’s houses’ activities on the Turkish language and culture in relation with the Turkish History Thesis will be evaluated in the framework of the Yozgat People’s House’s works.
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Born in a small village in Ukraine, at a very young age Gogol wanting to be a clerk, travels to Petersburg however he has no success. Following a short adventure of living abroad, he returns to Petersburg and then he finally manages to find employment as an insignificant clerk. İn this process Gogol have opportunity to observe the life of the clerks. After writing his famous story, the Overcoat he is accused of insulting Russian people and harshly criticized for it. Gogol wrote a story named “the Nose” a few years prior to his infamous story of “the Overcoat”. The story of “the Nose”, similar to the story of “the Overcoat” tells humorous tale of the hierarchical relationships of the little man. In particular; the affairs of clerkship are central to his story “the Nose”. Gogol highlights small but significant details of the clerks in his story about Kovalev, a 9th degree clerk who had lost his nose. Throughout surreal setting of the story, Kovalev a proud clerk is searching for his nose which is separated from his face and pursuing its own independent life. Cevdet Kudret, born about 100 years after Gogol, worked as a teacher in Anatolia. He had to write number of his stories under pseudonym as a result of the pressure he was subjected to. Cevdet Kudret also continuing his other job as a lawyer then had the opportunity to learn the functioning of the bureaucracy. In Kudret’s story there also is animadversion of bureaucracy as well as number of details about the life of clerks. Another common aspects of the stories of “the Nose “ and “the Ear” is how these organs gain their own personalities as the stories develop. In other words process of subjectification of the nose and the ear is common to the both stories.
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Musical pieces using a conversational style and depicting the encounter of a Miller (Değirmenci) and a woman who brought wheat to the mill to grind into flour are common among Turkic communities living in and around Anatolia. This kind of pieces, whose initial source or place of origin is still unknown, are known to be preserved until today as melodic or thematic variants passing down by word of mouth. We should emphasis that the most characteristic feature of these musical pieces, whose geographical borders extend beyond Anatolia in direct proportion to the borders of communication and interaction, is its conversational style. This feature is the most important element which distinguishes “The Miller and the Woman” conversational pieces from other “mill” or “miller” themed musical pieces in and around Anatolia. On the other hand, these musical pieces entered the professional music world and started to be played by professionals thanks to vinyl records released in Turkey in the early 20th century under the name “The Miller Song”. A literature review and a variant comparison study should be carried out to question how these pieces gained popularity among certain communities. This study examines various “The Miller and the Woman” conversational pieces in written/print and oral literature, defines the regions where these pieces had the opportunity to pass on, and presents a basic argument about the conditions which led to the development of different variants. The study also refers to these pieces’ role in intercultural interaction through a sample piece sung with Greek lyrics.
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With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia has experienced a religious revivalism. Region-wide religious revivalism is most obvious in increasingly popular mazar worship in Kyrgyzstan. The most common usage of the mazar term in Kyrgyzstan refers to a sacred place or a shrine. These holy sites are centered around natural objects or formations such as springs, caves, unusual rock formations, anthills, mountains, or trees. Some others are located at places where important events are believed to have occurred. Mazar visits hold a central place in spiritual lives of the Kyrgyz. They believe that the mazars have special qualities, are occupied by spirits and that the worship in these sacred sites is delivered to God in a more effective and meaningful way. The mazar-centered beliefs and rituals in Kyrgyzstan go back to pre-Islamic era, but have been adapted with Islamic principles and have survived until today. Throughout long history, a rich mazar culture has come into existence with stories, rituals and belief forms. Even though it has been damaged and even destroyed during the Soviet Union, the mazar tradition has revitalized during independence period with new meanings. The mazars provide new social, cultural, religious and even political functions for the Kyrgyz people today. While the mazars serve as tools for intellectual Kyrgyz who try to construct a national identity, they provide ordinary Kyrgyz with solace and hope of aid for their economic, health and family problems in an era of constant chaos and anxiety.
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Today an increasingly important branch of science is toponymy, the study of place names, which is one of the subbranches of science. The fact that there are certain trends in the administration of names which reflect the characteristics of the region makes this branch of science much more important. Studies on the place names have a great importance also for the research of intangible cultural heritage, because the place names indicate profound traces about cultures and civilizations existed in that geographical region throughout the history. For this reason, studies on place names are of a great importance in terms of cultural studies. While naming the settlements in the province of Nevsehir, the concepts related to person, profession, the human body, the family and kinship relations, institutional organizations, social structures, materials, structure and work, food, religious and national concepts of value, color, metal, time, race, size, community, state, nature and natural phenomena, plants and animals, geographic concepts, both positive and negative assumptions of society, terms of various disciplines, various words and concepts which are reflections of a local culture come into prominence. Names of locations are often given according to the Turkish traditions of naming. It is also known that these names have often a great importance in the study of folklore. For this reason, this work is composed of two main parts. In the first part, the names of the settlements in Nevsehir region are detected and classified, and in the second part, the suitability of these names to the tradition of giving a name are investigated and the data obtained are evaluated in terms of folklore.
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In spite of the purpose of civilization is seen in all countries which gained independence in the twentieth century, there was a deep ideological and political divisions about what is civilization and how it can be gained from a stranger culture. For example Turkey, Egypt and Algeria have quite different conceptions of civilization during the twentieth century. Countries such as Egypt, India and Algeria interpreted civilization as achieved social change moves without touching the traditional institutions and moreover they seen civilizations as development gained from traditional institutions; the leaders of Turkish modernization have seen civilization as a social change with all material and spiritual aspects. Even today, civilization concept have been discussed by domestic and foreign sociologist. Sharp distictions between Turkish sociologist Niyazi Berkes and Baykan Sezer about civilization analysis, in reality it is a summary of the all debate in Turkey and the world about civilization concept. İn terms of resolution of civilization, there are deep divisions between Turkish sociologists Niyazi Berkes and Baykan Sezer. Niyazi Berkes insisted that change of social structure must be independent from tradition, on the contrary Baykan Sezer approached civilization concept cautious and gave importance to the protection of the traditional structure. In this article Niyazi Berkes and Baykan Sezer’s understanding of civilization are intended for the analysis in terms of the clash of civilization theory created on 20th century. As a result, there are seen that Baykan Sezer’s understanding of civilization are similar with the clash of civilization theory in terms of the basic variables. But, different from the other two social scientist, Niyazi Berkes adopted Enlightenment civilization concept.
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A process which is named as “initiation” by anthropologists describes a progression from a state or position to another. In a lot of culture, rituels accompanies to these processes like progression from childhood to adulthood, from bachelorhood to marriage, from life to death. Keeping this process in peace is important for cultures also because of the threatening nature of it. These steps are making difficulties for classification and so they are difficult to control. “Widowhood” is one of those statuses which is really problematic especially in patriarchal societies. Neither single nor married women mean “uncontrolled woman sexuality”. For patriarchal societies, this is a big problem when a family or a husband is not controlling it, especially if this woman is awake about her sexuality. In Anatolia, being “widow” means a really problematic status for a woman. In widowhood process, it is expected to be in mourning from woman till she marries with a man in a parallel status. This article examines two films (Kurbağalar and Dul Bir Kadın), as tools which nourish each other with culture. These films are made in 1980s’ that is called “woman cinema” in Turkish film history. In these years women get character instead of being “good” or “bad” woman. Although this new wave, secondary status of woman and patriarchal control of them can be observed in these films. Directors (Şerif Gören and Atıf Yılmaz) who leads this wave don’t seem to go beyond this masculine border.
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The resettlement policy that brought to the agenda and performed extensively in the mid-1990s as an extension of military strategy to consolidate control over territory was one of the most important “mass exile” of our recent history, which forcibly displaced over one million people. Thousands of families forcibly exiled mostly in several days to big cities without planning their destination. The studies about forced exile of people off their villages mainly focused on the issue in context of the “Kurdish question.” besides that the issue has an ethno-politic dimension like “Kurdish question” it has an obvious class dimension in terms of dispossession and proletarinization. This dimension has not sufficiently been focused so far. For this very basic reason this study based on a village research to enlighten the process of dispossession and proletarinization of exiled villagers resulted by the “civil war” that has been lasting for 25 years. This study searches for answers to the questions that the effects of the practices of the dispossession of 1990s on the phenomenon that was named urban poverty and the social identity of urban poors. As a result, though this study enlightens the depropertization and impoverishment of Müşkirek village one of the central village of Tunceli as result of resettlement policy that was applied until mid-1990s, it also gives an idea about the class transformation of millions as result of the policies of the period mentioned in general. Of course, this study that is based on qualitative interview method consisting of open ended questions and utilizes the knowledge of the field does not avoid offering a few solutions for the problem that has crystalized as “urban poverty.”
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The “Dream of Red Chambers” also known with its original name “Hong Lou Meng” has a unique place in Chinese history of literature. Along with the “Journey to the West”, “Outlaws of the Marsh” and the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, “Dream of Red Chambers” belongs to the very well known “four classical novels” in China. Among them, the “Dream of Red Chambers” occupies the highest place in terms of subject matter, style and richness of its language use. The most subtle and exhaustive depictions of traditional Chinese society also can be seen in this voluminous work. Social relations, ceremonies, etiquette, education, love and sex are among the prominent themes in the novel. Especially the relations between women and men displayed very complex features throughout the book. The women are depicted in detail for their beauty and manner and for the roles they played. Lady Feng (Anka) is one of those women who took part in such complex relations. She is also an outstanding figure among the woman characters and in a narrow sense, she displays an example for the “chaste women” of the gentry. In the 11th chapter, a coincidental encounter between her and Jia Rui brings about a story subtly criticizing some traditional values and morality of the 18th century in China. On the other hand, Jia Rui is a youngster who is short in such moral ambitions and has a strong sexual desire for her. In the end, his untamed desire led him to his collapse. The chapter concluded with a passage relating his hallucinative plight as a reflection of earlier events.
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It is known that past events in written history also reaches up-to date by means of oral literature with different aspects. Written history and oral history contain both differing and resembling elements. It is a fact that some of the information mentioned little or not in formal history, may sometimes be quoted orally in details. Thus, referring to “public memory” in the study of perusing and interpreting historical events have become widespread recently. It’s essential to study past events socially so as to shed clear light on past and recent history in various ways. One of the methods for discovering public interpretation of events in oral history, is to refer to bardic poetry. Martyrdom, war heroes and veterans are significant subjects of epic poems. The article, written history resources transferred to the historical events “oral history” or “social history” name is intended to reveal the sources of information, affect how you fell in bardic (asik) literature. For this purpose, “A Terrorist Organization EOKA which Led to the Establishment of the Cyprus Turkish Resistance Organization”, “Turkish Resistance Organization and the Cyprus Mujahideen” and “of the Fight Cyprus Mujahideen and Peace Operation and Cash Benefits” will be given under headings such as historical events, examples of these events will be talking about bardic poems in literature.
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In Turkey, it was learned the first time from an article by Ziya Gökalp that folklore was considered as a science discipline in 1913. This article was followed by two articles by M. Fuad Köprülü and Rıza Tevfik Bölükbaşı in 1914. In Ottoman Turkish the term “halkiyât” was adopted for folklore. In Europe, being called as volkskunde in Germany in 1813 and as folklore in England in 1846, folklore was adopted as a science discipline from the middle of the 19th century. In our country, folklore was organized with all of its branches the first time as an association (1927), later as a government acency (MEB Millî Folklor Enstitüsü 1966), finally as a university department (DTCF Halk Bilimi Kürsüsü 1980, Halk Bilimi Ana Bilim Dalı 1982, Halk Bilimi Bölümü 1993). So the things have been done to fullfil the requirements to be a science discipline. At the end of this progress of which we’ve been celebrating the 100th anniversary, in 2013 there are folklore departments in our four university (Ankara University, Hacettepe University, Gazi University, Cumhuriyet University) and there are departments under the Turkish Literature Departments. There’s a great increase of the number of folklore instructors and folklore publications today comparing with 1980. Nowadays in Turkey, the data and the products obtained by means of folklore studies are being shared among all the science disciplines and are being used in social development. Also, in all branches of modern art folk products are used and those products become evident elements, colours and dynamics of cultural identity.
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Migration process that is started in 1940s gained notable speed in 1950s, in which some agricultural changes experienced in rural areas, and continued in the forthcoming years. This made way for housing problem afflicting low-income population who are heaped up in big cities and setting up shanty houses as well as shanty regions. As an example of reflection of changes experienced in societal and economic structure in literature products we may give a lot of literature works that make reference to living in that kind of housings. The stories and novels of Kemal Ateş who are well known by his academic activities and studies relating to language are very interesting in terms of recounting shanty lives and sociological observations. Ateş reflects the appearances of Ankara shanty houses, which are well known by him as he lived in them, beginning from 1950s to 1970s. He describes the people who striving for living in a big city and their struggles for life. He displays the people who come from the around counties and provinces, have to lead their lives without having amenities, describing their relationships with each other and city as well as their customs. He recounts tales about the lives of shanty people shaped by an inter culture between village and town. The aim of this study is to deal the squatting fact experienced in Turkey as being appearanced in the works of Kemal Ateş and make comparisions between observations related to real life with the contents of literature product. For this purpose we applied to the knowledge and documents of the experts who worked on squatting fact in Turkey. We approached the works of Kemal Ateş in this perspective. We think that the said stories and novels deal the the squatting fact, which is a social reality in Turkey, by a realist perspective.
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In his novel Anahtar (The Key) (1949), Refik Halit Karay deals with the dilemmas which occured as a result of changes brought about by the modernization of society, through the couple Kenan and Perihan. While they were happily living in their old, small, and uncomfortable home, they drift apart upon moving into a big and impresive home, as a result of imprevements in their financial condition. In this paper, the aforementioned novel is analyzed according to the approach used by Gaston Machelard in his The Poetics of Space. Thus, houses we split into rooms for privacy, drawers or closets we use to hide things that we do not want anybody to see, stairs that lead to both darkness and light are all reflections of our inner worlds. Therefore, the places we possess are not ours, they are us. Even if we leave, we carry our homes with us like a tortoise, and as Assmann has said, we keep our memories of home alive through certain symbols that we code into our minds. For this reason, the key that she keeps is an important tool for Perihan who uses little symbols or repetitive actions in order not to forget her past -like other stimulants as “scent” “sound” “light” and “dream”- which provides spatial and chronic voyages to her old memories. In contrast for Kenan, whose connection to the past is lacking, it is an expression of sin. Anahtar can also be read as a symbolic text, via the personal reminders aimed at the past in the form of mind codes, of the author’s opposition to the social status quo that is the result of a new regime, conveyed through the perspective of a family.
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The conceptualizations of Yuruk and Turkmen hold a qualification that can be evaluated in the form of ‘integrations of collective identity patterns’ as ‘collective belonging forms’ in the most general sense. Collective belonging forms correspond to a socio-cultural construction format that the individuals acquire during ‘identification’ process at subjective level in objective social reality and that have operability practically and symbolically. In terms of pattern integrations in question, it seems possible for collective identity to be categorized as layers mediated by religious spiritual, denominational-social power relations, socio-cultural ethnicity, national references, gender roles and ‘other’ classification criteria that is possible to develop. On the basis of ‘affinity’ and ‘differentiation’ processes in terms of collective belonging references; ‘in-group’ and ‘off-group’ legitimization dynamics of individuals within the objective reality play role for integrations of collective identity pattern. In this study, conceptual indicator and the ways of social representations, which form the ‘perceptions’ of the Yuruk about the Turkmen, who ,from the same historical angle in terms of integrations of collective identity pattern, continued socio-cultural ethnicity, national belonging and a nomadic lifestyle for a long time in a similar way are emphasized. It is observed that communities in Çanakkale that define themselves as Tahtacı Turkmen resemble communities that call themselves ‘Yuruk’ in the point of ‘ Turkishness’ which forms the most dominant codes in terms of integrations of collective identity pattern and which play role as an integration of general super ordinate identity pattern in the evaluation aimed at in-group and off-group, yet within the framework of faith-religion integrations they contextually differ from these people who are Sunni-Muslim with Turkish-Turkmen distinction references.
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The subject of this article is related to conditions of Armenian Catholics between 1847 and 1918 in Ottoman State. I referenced to the Ottoman State Annuals (Salname-i Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye) issued 68 issues. The aim is to present the point of view to Armenian Catholics in Ottoman official publications. Separately, it is facilitate to be understood Armenian Catholics admitted as a different ‘nation (millet)’ and conditions of the other Ottoman Catholics. Ottoman administrated non-muslims in accordance with the principle “keeping the pre-conquest structure”. İn the preconquest, Armenian Catholics in Ottoman territory didn’t have different catholic hierarchy, so they didn’t be admitted as a different nation. Separately, Armenians admitted catholic creed progressively multiplied in Ottoman period. When Pope approved Ottoman Catholic Armenians as a different hierarchy in 1740, they were administrated over Armenian Patriarchate of İstanbul. Ottoman governments didn’t acceptance them as a different ‘nation (millet)’. Because, they endeavored to keep the pre-conquest structure. So, Apostolic Armenians are named as ‘original Armenians’ (asıl Ermeniler) in Ottoman documents. They are admitted as a different hierarchy (nation-millet) by Sultan Mahmut II (1830). Priest Andon Nurican was elected as the first leader of Ottoman Catholic Armenians. Pope approved him as the archbishop of İstanbul. But, Ottoman government didn’t approve because of the fact that he wasn’t a citizen of Ottoman. Hagop Chuqurian was elected in place of him. Ottoman government approved him as the leader of Ottoman Catholics on 5 January 1831. The second leader was entitled patriarch by Ottoman government in 1835. The other Ottoman Catohilic Nations (Syrian Catholics, Chaldeans, Maronites, Melkites, Bulgarian Catholics) were subordinated to Armenian Catholic hieararchy. In the first Ottoman State Annual (1263/1847), Armenian Catholics and Greek Melkites are recorded as different nations. As a result, Armenian Catholics is unrecorded in only one issue from first to last recorded non-muslims. Besides, the sophisticated structure of Ottoman Catholics, such as two leaders and centres of patriarchate at the same time, is appeared in Annuals, too.
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