Gallery
Plans for Abdul Hamid Bridge, Istanbul
Fatih's promise to protect Christians
Handwriting samples of Sultans Mustafa IV (top) and Selim III (bottom)
| Ottoman Archives | |
|---|---|
| Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri | |
| Location | Kağıthane, Istanbul, Turkey |
| Other information | |
| Website | www |
The Ottoman archives are a collection of historical sources related to the Ottoman Empire and a total of 39 nations whose territories one time or the other were part of this Empire, including 19 nations in the Middle East, 11 in the EU and Balkans, three in the Caucasus, two in Central Asia, Cyprus, as well as the Republic of Turkey.
The main collection, in the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri (The Prime Minister's Ottoman Archives) in Istanbul, holds the central State Archives (Devlet arşivleri).
After more than a century in the center of the old city, the Ottoman state archives were relocated in 2013 to the Kağıthane district of Istanbul.
The present collection contains a few documents from the earliest period up to the reign of Sultan Süleyman in the sixteenth century. The organization of these records as a modern archive began in 1847 with the establishment of Hazine-i Evrak. [1] The original building was located on the grounds of the grand vezir's offices in Gülhane and contained several main groups of documents: the records of the Imperial Council (Divan-i Hümayun) and the records of the grand vezir's office (Bab-i Ali), as well as the records of the financial departments (Maliye) and cadastral surveys (tapu tahrir defteri). Mustafa Reşid Paşa ordered the building a new record office in 1846. [2] It was completed by architect Gaspare T. Fossati in 1848. The office of "Surveillance of Treasury of Documents" was formed and Muhsin Efendi was appointed as its manager.
With the establishment of the Republic, the Hazine-i Evrak was transformed into Başvekalet Arşiv Umum Müdürlüğü (The General Directorate of the Prime Ministry) and eventually the Başbakanlık Arşiv Genel Müdürlüğü. During this period, the records of various nineteenth-century Ottoman offices and administrative authorities were added to the collections.[ citation needed ]
Concurrent with these changes and additions, Turkish scholars took the first steps to classify and catalog the various collections beginning in the 1910s. These early efforts produced a number of classified collections (tasnif) which are still cited according to the name of the scholar who created the catalog. Today the work of cataloging the vast collection continues. [1]
After more than a century in the center of the old city, the Ottoman archives were relocated in 2013 to the Kağıthane district of Istanbul.[ citation needed ]
The Ottoman Archives not only contain information about the Ottoman dynasty and the Ottoman state, but also about each nation that holds part of these resources. Though touted as being open to all researchers, scholars have complained about being prevented access to view documents due to the nature of their research topic. [3] [4] [5] However, many Armenian genocide researchers including the British-Armenian Ara Sarafian and Taner Akcam (known for his research on and acceptance of the Armenian genocide) have used the Ottoman archives in Istanbul extensively when citing research for their books, though they have made claims that they were obstructed before gaining access. [6] [3]
The European Parliament stressed in a resolution voted on 15 April 2015, that Turkey should use the commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian genocide as an important opportunity to recognize the Armenian genocide and open its archives. [7]
The WikiLeaks cable 04ISTANBUL1074 classified and signed by David Arnett on July 4, 2004 [8] at the Consulate General of the US in Istanbul states, that Turkey has eliminated incriminating documents concerning the Armenian genocide from the archives:
According to Sabancı University Professor Halil Berktay, there were two serious efforts to purge the archives of any incriminating documents on the Armenian question. The first took place in 1918, presumably before the Allied forces occupied Istanbul. Berktay and others point to testimony in the 1919 Turkish Military Tribunals indicating that important documents had been "stolen" from the archives. Berktay believes a second purge was executed in conjunction with Ozal's efforts to open the archives by a group of retired diplomats and generals led by former Ambassador Muharrem Nuri Birgi. [9]
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.
Halil Berktay is a Turkish historian at Ibn Haldun University and was columnist for the daily Taraf.
The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.
Çüngüş is a municipality and district of Diyarbakır Province, Turkey. Its area is 512 km2, and its population is 10,720 (2022).
Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In the genocide's aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, as of 2023, and later adopted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, as of 1991.
The Malta exiles were the purges of Ottoman intellectuals by the Allied forces. The exile to Malta occurred between March 1919 and October 1920 of politicians, high ranking soldiers (mainly), administrators and intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire after the armistice of Mudros during the Occupation of Istanbul by the Allied forces. The Malta exiles became inmates in a British prison where various Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) officials were held in the hopes that trials will be held at the Malta Tribunals at a future date.
The Istanbul trials of 1919–1920 were courts-martial of the Ottoman Empire that occurred soon after the Armistice of Mudros, in the aftermath of World War I.
Mustafa Abdülhalik Renda was a Turkish civil servant and politician of Tosk Albanian descent who was acting President of Turkey for one day after Atatürk's death in November 1938. He is infamously known for his role in the Armenian genocide.
Ara Sarafian is a British historian of Armenian origin. He is the founding director of the Gomidas Institute in London, which sponsors and carries out research and publishes books on modern Armenian and regional studies.
The Remaining Documents of Talaat Pasha, also known in Turkey as The Abandoned Documents of Talaat Pasha and Talaat Pasha's Black Book, is the title of a 2008 book by the Turkish journalist Murat Bardakçı. It reproduces in modern Turkish script a selection of documents from the WWI period by Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman Empire's Grand Vizier and Minister of Interior, that deal with the relocations of both Muslim Turks and Armenians and the expropriation of abandoned Armenian and Greek property. Its full English title is The Remaining Documents of Talaat Pasha: Documents and Important Correspondence Found in the Private Archives of Sadrazam Talaat Pasha about the Armenian Deportations.
Bekir Sami Bey was a Turkish politician of Ossetian origin. He served as the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey during 1920–1921.
After World War I, the effort to prosecute Ottoman war criminals was taken up by the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and ultimately included in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government organized a series of courts martial in 1919–1920 to prosecute war criminals, but these failed on account of political pressure. The main effort by the Allied administration that occupied Constantinople fell short of establishing an international tribunal in Malta to try the so-called Malta exiles, Ottoman war criminals held as POWs by the British forces in Malta. In the end, no tribunals were held in Malta.
The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, containing the Talat Pasha telegrams, is a book published by historian and journalist Aram Andonian in 1919. Originally redacted in Armenian, it was popularized worldwide through the English edition published by Hodder & Stoughton of London. It includes several documents (telegrams) that constitute evidence that the Armenian genocide was formally implemented as Ottoman Empire policy.
Altuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish-German historian and sociologist. During the 1990s, he was the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and has written several books on the genocide, such as A Shameful Act (1999), From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (2004), The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity (2012), and Killing Orders (2018). He is recognized as a "leading international authority" on the subject. Akçam's frequent participation in public debates on the legacy of the genocide have been compared to Theodor Adorno's role in postwar Germany.
The confiscation of Armenian properties by the Ottoman and Turkish governments involved seizure of the assets, properties and land of the country's Armenian community. Starting with the Hamidian massacres and peaking during the Armenian genocide, the confiscation of the Armenian property lasted continuously until 1974. Much of the confiscations during the Armenian genocide were made after the Armenians were deported into the Syrian Desert with the government declaring their goods and assets left behind as "abandoned". Virtually all properties owned by Armenians living in their ancestral homeland in Western Armenia were confiscated and later distributed among the local Muslim population.
Witnesses and testimony provide an important and valuable insight into the events which occurred both during and after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was prepared and carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915 as well as in the following years. As a result of the genocide, as many as 1.5 million Armenians who were living in their ancestral homeland were deported and murdered.
Reshid Akif Pasha, was an Ottoman statesman of Albanian descent during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. Throughout his career as a politician, Reshid Akif Paşa served as governor, minister of the interior, and in the Council of State. He is also noted for providing important testimony in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide.
In Turkey, the Directorate of State Archives was established in 1984 as an institution according to the Prime Ministry Organization Law No. 3056 to control the Republic Archives, Ottoman Archives and Departmental Documentations.
Bibliography of the Armenian genocide is a list of books about the Armenian genocide:
The Dagestan Campaign or Dağıstan Seferi, (Turkish) was a battle between the Ottoman Empire and Russia that happened right after the Battle of Baku during World War I. After the decisive victory in Baku, Ottoman soldiers occupied Dagestan, Derbent and Petrovsk. However, the Ottoman Empire was defeated and the territories reverted to the USSR.
