Tufan Kutay Boran from Indonesia!

Greetings from Yogyakarta / Indonesia,

 

I am Tufan Kutay Boran. I completed my undergraduate degree in International Relations at Gazi University and my master's degree in International Relations at Selcuk University. At the moment, I am conducting my Ph.D. studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada in the department of government and politics since September/2019. My research is about the role of Islamic political parties and interest groups in Indonesian foreign policy after the Reformasi (Reformation). In this context, as a person who comes from geography almost completely foreign to the region, I will try to convey to you the experiences I have lived for 2 years in Indonesia.

Frankly, although I was worried that no scholarship student had come to Indonesia before me, I was also excited to be the first student to study the region. After I figured out that I was awarded the Indonesian scholarship program, the first thing I did was searching for doctoral programs here. In this context, the political science programs of Universitas Gadjah Mada (located in Yogyakarta city) and Universitas Indonesia (located in Jakarta city) were shown as the best programs in the ranking site such as QS. As a person who has an interest in Foreign Policy Analysis, I contacted the lecturers at these universities who could be a potential supervisor to me on this subject. However, when I was searching for programs in Indonesia, the first thing that I realized was that doctoral programs did not have international classes. In other words, it was compulsory to learn a local language (Bahasa Indonesia) before starting my doctoral studies.

As soon as I found out about this requirement, I started searching for Bahasa Indonesia courses. Subsequently, I enrolled in the Bahasa Indonesia course of Universitas Indonesia, which is located in Jakarta. Although I had a lot of difficulty in the early stages, I finally completed the intensive language course I took for 8 months with a degree. Meanwhile, during this period, I also followed the doctoral application periods of both Universitas Indonesia and Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM). Finally, the university I decided on was UGM.

After completing my language course, I moved to Yogyakarta, the city where UGM is located, and started my doctorate program in September / 2019. Sometimes I think fate is also necessary to believe that I soon started to experience the advantages of moving to Yogyakarta in connection with my thesis title that I chose.

Yogyakarta is about 430 km from Jakarta (6-7 hours by car), it is among the most popular cities on the island of Java. Located in the Central Java part of the Java island, this city is also called Istimewa city, namely the autonomous or special area region, together with Jakarta and Banda Aceh. Yogyakarta is called a special area since until now there is still a sultanate (Keraton)  in the center of the city. Today, the sultanate, which has a more symbolic value than politics, is as important and respected by the local people as the Head of State. In 1950 the Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat Sultanate officially became the Special Region of Yogyakarta, together with the Pakualaman Kadipaten, a special autonomous region at the provincial level as part of the Unitary State of Indonesia. Thus the status of the Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat Sultanate as a state ended and transformed into a special autonomous regional government. Meanwhile, the palace institutions were then separated from the "state" and continued by the Yogyakarta Sultanate Palace. Apart from being the official residence of the Sultan, Keraton Yogyakarta Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat currently also serves as one of the cultural heritages of the Javanese people. As a cultural center, the palace often carries out cultural activities and is one of the tourism destinations for the Special Region of Yogyakarta, which is often visited by domestic and foreign tourists.

Coming from a metropolitan city like Jakarta to a city, I soon started to see many advantages of coming to a city like Yogyakarta, where Java culture is very intense. Especially, Yogyakarta helped me a lot to understand many issues related to Java culture. As the most obvious example of this, I have to start with the spoken language. As the majority of the population living in Yogyakarta is called Javanese, the locals speak more Bahasa Java than the native language of the country, Bahasa Indonesia. Although Bahasa Java has the same grammatical structure, it is a very distinct language from Bahasa Indonesia in terms of vocabulary. Although I cannot speak Bahasa Java yet, hope to learn this language in the future is among my goals. Besides, knowing this Bahasa Java allows you to understand the music of Dangdut Koplo and Campursari, Indonesia's Javanese music genre, and the world cultural heritage puppet theater (wayang kulit) shows.

When we talk about it academically, Yogyakarta is the center of Muhammadiyah (1912), which was founded before the foundation of the Republic (1945). Moreover, this organization had a very important share in the shaping of Islam and its political structure in Indonesia. I strongly believe that it is not possible for someone who will work in the field of political science in Indonesia to make sense of both domestic political issues and foreign political issues without understanding the traditional-modernist Islam issue in Indonesia. Muhammadiyah is Indonesia's second-largest Islamic organization after Nahdlat'ul Ulama, in this context representing the modernist branch in Indonesia, while the NU represents the traditional branch. Both organizations have actively played important roles in the political arena, both during and after Indonesia's independence. Therefore, instead of Jakarta, continuing my thesis in a city like Yogyakarta allows me to live deeply in this atmosphere and to continue my thesis more motivated.

I hope I had the opportunity to share some of my experiences with Indonesia, especially Yogyakarta. For further questions please contact with me: boran.t.k@ugm.mail.ac.id.  

I wish everyone success in their work.

Stay healthy, stay safe.

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