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An Update on Turkish Archives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Kemal H. Karpat
Kemal H. Karpat*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

Students of Middle Eastern, North African, and Balkan history of the period extending roughly from the middle of the fifteenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of World War I ought to know about the vital developments that have occurred since 1985 in the Turkish Archives or Başbakanlik Arşivleri (prime minister’s archives). These materials were to be moved to the central archive building in Ankara, but the ultimate decision was made to keep the Ottoman documents in Istanbul and to use the large Ankara archive building for preserving the material accumulated during the Republic.

An international conference was convened by the Turkish government in 1985 to discuss the situation of the Ottoman archives. The meeting was opened by Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, who promised on behalf of the government to do whatever was necessary to expedite the classification of the existing material and facilitate its use. After the conference, Professor Halil Inalcik and I were invited to Ankara to discusss with Mr. Hasan Celal Güzel—then prime minister’s aide, currently minister of culture—the measures necessary to train archivists. Later, in the summer of 1986, I participated in several working sessions presided over by Mr. Güzel to discuss various technical questions, such as the administrative framework of the archives, the training of personnel both at home and abroad, and so on. In a recent visit to the archives (November 1988), I was able to assess on the spot the work carried out since 1986 under the supervision of Professor Ismet Miroglu, the current director general of the archives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , December 1989 , pp. 181 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1989

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References

1 Ed. note: The Library of Congress has been presented with microfilm copies of the catalogued Ottoman archival documents for the years 1691–1894, as have the Bibliothèque Nationale and the British Museum Library, among others.

2 The new title “irade” was used after the Tanzimat, 1839, replacing the old “muhimme” title.

3 This collection consists of documents mainly from the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909).

4 The best guide to the archives is still Çetin, Atillâ, Başbakanlik Arşivi Kιlavuzu (Istanbul 1979)Google Scholar. For the Yıldız Collection, see Çetin’s, “Yıldız Arşivine dair,” Tarih Dergisi 32 (March 1979) 563–586.Google Scholar