Cankat Kaplan received his BA in Sociology from Bilgi University of Istanbul and holds two MA degrees from the History Department of Istanbul Şehir University and the Department of Medieval Studies at the Central European University. As a PhD candidate at the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU, Cankat’s proposed dissertation deals with the Bayrami-Malami Sufi order of the long sixteenth century that marks unprecedented oppression against Sufis in the Ottoman lands. Sufis, especially Bayrami-Malami Sufis, were persecuted, their shaykhs were subject to oppression. Cankat focuses on the tension between Sufis, scholars, and the sultans and traces the debates that constructed the definitions of heresy versus piety in the sixteenth century. In addition to his dissertation topic, Cankat’s main research interests include the entangled history of esotericism in the late medieval and early modern period, intellectual networks of the post-Mongol world, Ottoman historiography, as well as the history of Sufism.