Ankara Archives

November 17, 2017August 20, 2020

Milli Kütüphane

Note: This review was written in June 2015 following research in Milli Kütüphane between March and May 2015. Web links have been updated, but other details (e.g. photocopying fees, cafeteria prices) may no longer be accurate. Hazine readers are invited to submit updated information.

Turkey’s national library, near the center of Ankara, has a diverse collection of materials dating from the early Ottoman Empire to the present. The bulk of the collection, namely monographs and periodicals, is of interest to historians specializing in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. With over 27,000 manuscripts from provincial Anatolian collections, this library is also the second-largest manuscript repository in Turkey after the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul. The digitized online collections, including the manuscripts, Ottoman periodicals, and audiovisual material, may also be useful to researchers in earlier periods of Ottoman history, Islamic studies, as well as music, film, and art history.

History

The Turkish government began to collect materials for a national library in 1946 under the auspices of the Turkish Ministry of Education. This collection was first opened to users in 1948 with a catalog of 60,000 items, though the National Library was not established as a formal legal entity until 1950. The original intention was for the library to become a repository for copies of every publication produced in Turkey, but this plan was never completely realized. Nevertheless, as the collection and number of users continued to expand in subsequent decades, planning for the much-larger building that currently houses the collections took place between 1965-1973. Construction of the present building was completed in 1982 and opened to the public in the following year.

Collections

Although it does not hold every Turkish publication ever printed, the National Library surely holds the most comprehensive collection of printed material in late Ottoman Turkish (about 80,000 items) and modern Turkish (about 1 million items), with particular strengths in periodicals (including over 230,000 journals and newspapers). Some of these items are available on microfilm. The National Library has sizeable numbers of monographs in Arabic, English, French, German, and Persian, but primarily of more recent publications. The library also holds many CDs and DVDs, including some hidden gems like oral histories, but these collections are poorly identified; the oral histories, for example, seem to have been collected in a single unidentified project and the subjects are mostly Istanbul professionals speaking to unnamed interviewers in 2010. The National Library’s most unique collection is certainly the Atatürk Document Repository (Atatürk Belgeliği), which includes a wide array of textual and visual materials related to Kemal Atatürk’s life and legacy. This collection, open to users since 1983, contains 15,011 items ranging from books, magazine and newspaper clippings to paintings, sculptures, photographs, and newsreels, to personal items like passports, badges and lottery tickets.

The National Library provides some excellent online resources. Manuscripts, periodicals in Ottoman script, old gramophone recordings, and visual art materials (particularly paintings and film posters) have largely been digitized and are freely available online (links below). Anyone can search the digitized catalogs, but to view the results, you must create a free user account. There is a per-page charge for downloading digitized images. Due to the rather cumbersome process of working at the library in person, I would highly recommend that researchers interested exclusively with such materials register online and work from elsewhere

Access

Registration. No one can enter the library without a user card. There is a pre-registration form on the library website, which can be submitted before you arrive. Bring your passport to the user registration desk (past the metal detector at the entrance, and around the left-hand corner) to have your photo taken and receive your user card. If you did not have a chance to pre-register online, you can fill out the same form at a computer kiosk next to the registration desk.

If you’re a Turkish citizen, or if you’re a foreigner on a residency permit or research visa with your paperwork cleared in advance, this is the entire process. If you’re on a tourist visa, you’ll be sent off to an office down the hall to fill in the standard research permit forms to approve you for a foreign researcher (yabancı uyruklu araştırmacı) user card. The staff is generally monolingual in Turkish, so if you have any trouble communicating, get someone to lead you down to this office, where there are a few staff members who speak English. The forms, written in Turkish and English, are straightforward and you do not need a letter of introduction; your passport and, if applicable, an ID card from your institution will be all you need. Your forms should be approved on the spot, and you’ll be sent out to hand copies to another office and go back to the front registration desk, where you will finally get the user card. Cards are issued for periods ranging from three months to one year. My three-month card cost 5 TL.

Getting inside. Now that you have your card, get in line for the machines in the front lobby that assign spots in one of the six general reading rooms (one of these is reserved for professors, and another for high school students). Unfortunately, no one can enter the turnstiles into the library without a seat assignment, even if you intend to spend your time in a room without assigned seating (such as the rooms for viewing periodicals, microfilms, Atatürk documents, etc). The machines are straightforward: insert your user card, and you’ll be shown which rooms have available seating for you to select. It doesn’t matter much which room you choose unless you specifically want to use books printed in Ottoman script, in which case you must select the İbn-i-Sina Reading Room. After you have made your selection, take the receipt for your seat number, and your card will now unlock the turnstiles and permit access to the rest of the library.

When planning your research time, note that during the academic year, the library is overrun by Ankara’s large undergraduate population, and all the reading rooms tend to fill within an hour of opening. Once the library is full, it can take 1-2 hours or more of waiting in line by the entry machines before a slot opens up for you. To avoid this frustration, I recommend arriving up to a half hour before opening time (a line will already be forming). The other effect of this system is that you will not want to exit the library for longer than a ten-minute break until you are finished for the day. Ten minutes after you exit the front turnstiles, your seat assignment lapses and is made available to others waiting. Plenty of users duck outside to smoke a quick cigarette, but for food, you’re stuck with the library cafeteria (there’s barely enough time to cross the street to get to the next closest source of food).

During the summer vacation (mid-June to August) the competition for space is not quite as cutthroat; only those specifically using Ottoman-language materials and therefore needing space in the relatively small the İbn-i-Sina room may want to arrive early. You can monitor how full the reading rooms are directly on the library’s homepage under the heading “Okuma Salonları Doluluk Oranları.”

Requesting materials. In general, everything is requested via paper forms, and you can only submit three of these at one time (six for professors). There are computers on the second floor with access to the online catalog. For books, use the forms next to these computers and submit these to the “Okuyucu Bankosu” on the second floor. For periodicals or microfilm/non-book materials, go to the desk inside the periodicals room on the ground floor or the “non-book materials center” on the lower floor to fill out and submit the appropriate forms. Materials generally arrive between fifteen and twenty-five minutes after your request is received. The desk will hold on to your user card while you have the books, and give it back when you return them. Since you cannot exit the turnstiles without your user card, this is their way of preventing book theft. After hours and on weekends (only), you can request books online from the library website.

Reproductions

There is a photocopying service across from the Okuyucu Bankosu. As of May 2015, prices were 5 kuruş per A4 page (10 kuruş double-sided) or 10 kuruş per A3 page (20 kuruş double-sided). I did not use the service, but it appears that requests are fulfilled very quickly.

I never found any written policy on the use of digital cameras on modern materials, but I used mine to photograph twentieth-century books and periodicals in the reading rooms in clear view of staff and no one seemed to mind. Those working with older (Ottoman) or special materials should ask the reading room’s staff to confirm whether digital photography is acceptable for those items, especially since photocopying these materials is explicitly forbidden. Digitized materials and microfilms can be copied onto CDs/DVDs by staff; there is supposed to be a fee, but when I requested a DVD copy of an oral history recording, the staff refused to charge me anything.

According to the library website, researchers outside of Ankara can order materials to be scanned/copied and sent to them. I have no experience with this service.

Internet access: Free wifi seems to be available, but a Turkish mobile number is required to register for access to the wifi signal, so I was not able to test it. Wired internet access is available on the thirty computers of the “Interactive Salon,” really an open space on the same floor as the Okuyucu Bankosu. Access to these computers is granted by a machine that scans your user card, which limits you to one hour of internet use per day, and further prevents you from using these computers while in possession of any library books.

Food

Every floor has vending machines for bottled water and hot coffee/tea (only water bottles are allowed in the reading rooms). There is a cafeteria on the lower floor that sells simit and packaged snacks, hot and cold drinks, and basic hot meals (tost, köfte, spaghetti, salads and the like). Prices are low (up to 6 TL for a meal) and so is the quality of the food. Pay the cashier to the right of the entrance before taking your receipt to the food line on the left. Since there is no locker system, anyone who would rather pack their own lunch to eat in the cafeteria should have no problem doing so.

Getting there

The National Library is well served by public transit. It has its own Metro station on the new Kızılay-Koru line, which is definitely the most convenient option for anyone approaching from the east through Kızılay (Ankara’s transit hub) or the west from METU or Bilkent (Ankara’s main English-medium universities). There are also many bus and dolmuş lines departing from Ulus and Kızılay that stop in front of the library on İsmet İnönü Street.

Contact

Address: İsmet İnönü Caddesi/Bahçelievler Son Durak, 06490 Çankaya/Ankara
Phone: +90 312 212 62 00
Fax: +90 312 223 04 51
Email: bilgi@mkutup.gov.tr

Hours: Mon-Fri, 9:00-0:00; Sat-Sun, 9:30-22:00

(New user registration: weekdays, 9:30-12.30 and 13:30-16:30; materials fetching: weekdays, 9.30-17:00)

Useful Information and Links:

Library Main Website

Main Catalog Search

Digital Collections (manuscripts, Ottoman periodicals, visual arts)

Information on Ankara’s bus system

Elise Burton is the Associates’ Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She completed her doctoral studies at Harvard University in 2017 and her current research focuses on the history of genetics research in Iran, Turkey, and Israel since the First World War.

November 13, 2013August 20, 2020

Red Crescent Archives (Turkey)

by Chris Gratien and Seçil Yılmaz

The Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay, formerly Hilâl-i Ahmer) is a charity organization founded during the late Ottoman period on the model of the Red Cross societies. Its activities in the areas of medicine, care for prisoners of war, and other social services, particularly during the World War I period and the early years of the Turkish Republic, make the archives of this organization a vital resource for historians interested in medicine, public health, war, and charity alike during this formative period. Recently, its archives in Ankara have been made public through a searchable online catalog, opening an exciting new field of research for Ottoman and Turkish historians.

History

The Ottoman Red Crescent was founded in 1868 partly in response to the experience of the Crimean War, in which disease overshadowed battle as the main cause of death and suffering among Ottoman soldiers. It was the first Red Crescent society of its kind and one of the most important charity organizations in the Muslim world. Its role in battlefield care made it integral to late Ottoman war efforts. The Red Crescent also played a critical role in the development of the young Turkish Republic’s health institutions.

In 2006, a major overhaul of these archives was initiated to make them available to researchers. This includes a cataloging effort similar to the organization of the Ottoman State Archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi), wherein each document is cataloged, described, and shortly thereafter digitized. Most of the documents pertaining to the 1868-1911 period have been cataloged and efforts continue for later periods.

Red Crescent Relief Efforts in Jerusalem c1917 (source: US Library of Congress)

Collection

The Red Crescent archives contain a variety of documents pertaining to health and health services in the Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey. For the Ottoman period (including World War I), these documents almost exclusively concern budget and funding issues along with services pertaining to war, particularly the 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman War (93 Harbi), the Italian invasion of Libya, the Balkan Wars, and of course, the First World War. There is very little overlap between the collections of the Ottoman archives and the Red Crescent.

In addition to offering a glimpse at late Ottoman medical institutions, social historians of the Ottoman Empire will also be drawn to documentation regarding Ottoman prisoners of war, which includes letters about and by Ottoman soldiers. The Red Crescent boasts over 300,000 POW cards from all sides of the conflict containing the names and origins of prisoners, their place of capture, and sometimes other biographical or health information. The collection also contain letters and requests from prisoners of war during the conflict. In this regard, researchers of other regions such as Europe or South Asia will find these archives useful as the Red Crescent was the intermediary between the Allies and Allied prisoners held in Ottoman territories.

During the Republican period and even during the War of Independence, the Red Crescent took on an increasingly national character and expanded its function to issues of health in the cities and countryside. Though it has not been well-studied, the contents of the collection indicate that the Red Crescent was part and parcel of early Republican health services in rural settings, where relatively few institutions had been established by the Ottoman state. Here, there is somewhat more overlap with the collections of the Başbakanlık Republican Archives, though the Red Crescent may prove to be much richer than the former in the area of health as its catalog grows.

In addition to archival documents, there is also a decent collection of visual materials such as photographs and postcards.

The collections include several varieties of documents, including hospital reports, health statistics, personal letters, account books, and reports by health inspectors. Due to the organization of the digital catalog, researchers cannot access files or folders in their sequential order. The archive’s online search function only provides individual files with no connection to surrounding material. In order to identify documents of a particular variety or source, researchers will need to identify particular boxes of interest or the names of particular officials or organizations associated with the research topic and search using these terms (more on this below).

The contents of the Red Crescent’s collections are largely unexplored by researchers and not fully known to the organization itself. According to the archive’s website, there are some 1500 boxes and 550 bound notebooks in Ottoman and French from the period beginning with the organizations founding until the language reforms in 1928. However, it is our experience that the contents are a bit more varied than this. For example, this sample document that we have provided originates from the Egyptian Red Crescent and is entirely in Arabic.

Researchers will need a command of modern Turkish to be effective, though of course, most of the documents from the Ottoman period are in Ottoman Turkish.

Stacks — The original documents are stored at the archives, but researchers will not be issued original documents. Rather, researchers must consult materials in the digital environment unless they have not been digitized. (Source: kizilay.org)

The Research Experience:

For researchers, the main question regarding the Red Crescent archives is whether or not to go to the physical archives itself. The archive is located in the Etimesgut neighborhood of the Ankara suburbs, and while researchers are free to work there, there is no proper workspace. Moreover, researchers will be expected to order documents through the website and receive photocopies by mail regardless of whether they go there or not. Thus, it is possible for the entire process to be handled through correspondence. Here, we will make the argument for a visit to the archives in person and explain in which situations this is necessary.

Since this archive is relatively hard to use and access, a trip to Red Crescent Archives is probably not worth your time unless you are working on specific issues related to health, medicine, prisoners, or war, though it is always worth searching the catalog to see what might be available remotely.

There are several factors that will encourage committed scholars to make a visit arising from the limitations of the catalog. Many of the descriptions are short or obscure. Some, for example, only mention the individual who composed them, making them utterly impossible to find via keyword search unless one knows to search for that individual. Moreover, the one sentence description may prove inadequate in determining whether or not to purchase the fairly pricy photocopies (more on this below). Going to the archive in person will allow you to see entire folders (which represent the original file boxes) of the documents, which usually have a shared theme or point of origin. This also enables you to get a closer look at the actual contents of documents before ordering them and gives you access to some paper documents that have not yet been digitized. If you are already in Turkey, a visit to the archive will ultimately save you a great deal of time and money, and it will surely yield better research results.

Kızılay Kütüpanesi — Red Crescent Library and Museum (from kızılay.org)

Access

The archive is open weekdays from 9:00 to 18:00 and closes for a one-hour lunch break at noon. Researchers are asked to contact the archivists before coming, as completing the application and request process by email will expedite the research process (information here). A passport is sufficient to gain access, but bring a second form of ID to leave with the guards. Laptops are forbidden as is photography. Spoken Turkish is absolutely essential to use the archive effectively, even though some documents pertaining to foreign POWs will be in English and French. The staff is extremely friendly and helpful, and you will likely be the only researcher there on any given day. Wheelchair access may be an issue as the reading room is on the second floor.

Reproductions

The archive’s reproduction fees are relatively expensive, as revenue generated from photocopies are considered a donation to the society. Photocopies cost 50 kuruş per pose, while scans of all documents cost 10 TL per pose. The archive does not fulfill reproduction requests on site, so researchers must provide a mailing address in order to receive copies or scans. Requests are fulfilled promptly and copies are generally obtained within one or two weeks.

Transportation and Food

Although there is a neighborhood in the heart of Ankara named Kızılay, researchers will be disappointed to find the site of the Red Crescent archives is in a much more remote location in Etimesgut, a northern suburb of Ankara accessible mainly by minibus. It occupies two buildings at the back of a large site operated by the Red Crescent, so it will be normal to be a little disoriented during the first visit. There is essentially nowhere to eat near the site. There is a serviceable cafeteria used by the employees, who will likely offer you to accompany them to lunch if you are just there for a day or two. In general though, we recommend researchers pack a lunch.

Miscellaneous

The library staff will give researchers a short tour of the modest museum and library at the archives upon their visit. This museum contains some important visual materials, artifacts, and books and publications by and about the organization that may be consulted by researchers. If you are doing extensive research at the Red Crescent, particularly on the institution itself, inquire about the contents of the museum as it may contain some very interesting materials.

Future Developments

As the digitization and cataloging process is ongoing, it is always worth checking in periodically to see if anything on your topic has been added.

Contact information

Address: Arşiv Yönetimi Bölümü

Türk Kızılayı Caddesi No:6

Etimesgut – ANKARA

Archives Department Administrator

Hande UZUN KÜLCÜ

Tel: +90 (312) 293 64 26

handeu@kizilay.org.tr

Fax: +90 (312) 293 64 36

Resources and Links: